The Conversation about mental health posts goes in waves - from "it's ok to just do nothing for a while" and "self care is lying in bed with a cup of tea" to a hard backlash against that ("those posts were so damaging to me") and posts like "acually self care is cleaning your apartment," and there's lots of reasons for that --
- those posts are for different people. the person who believes that there's nothing wrong with them, they just need to keep going, or the person who believes that not washing dishes means there's something unfixably wrong with them needs to hear that that's unsustainable & a break will help, but the person who feels that everything's already ruined so there's no point in doing anything needs to hear that small steps are still steps.
- those posts are for the same person at different times, because people need to hear different things at different times in their lives.
- when you post on the internet you can't limit a post to only the people it will benefit - like when broad spectrum antibiotics take out beneficial bacteria. and people don't always know which one will help them, so the audience doesn't even self-select. "it's ok if you do nothing" will help some people and hurt others!
- honestly the thing is that it's "you can't push yourself all the time, but keeping your space in a state that doesn't cause anxiety or discomfort is probably better for you," but hitting the right balance requires a lot of self-knowledge, which you can't get from a text post on tumblr.
i don't have a good conclusion here - just "nothing in excess," I suppose.
