97.9 The Hill WCHL and Chapelboro.com are your headquarters for local news and local voices in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Every weekday morning, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck chats with government officials, UNC scholars, business and nonprofit leaders, area musicians, and others in our community as they share their thoughts, their experience, and their expertise on the central issues of today. Click here to listen back to all of Aaron’s conversations – and tune in to “This Morning with Aaron Keck” at 7:30 a.m. on 97.9 The Hill to hear those conversations live.
Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so this time Aaron welcomes behavioral health clinician Angela Krider. (It’s also Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month; Krider was born in the Philippines and grew up in Hawai’i.)
Krider says she got into mental health partly thanks to a nudge from a mentor, but largely because of her experience working with patients. “I think the moment that really got me was when the patients kept saying ‘we get more encouragement from interacting with you, and you seeing us as a human being, than anywhere else,'” she says. “Seeing people as an individual is what helps to uplift mental health.”
Now, she’s focusing her efforts on encouraging folks to take care of their own mental health – by pushing back against the notion that we have to overwork ourselves in order to get ahead. “This lie that society has accepted, ‘we have to keep working until we burn ourselves out, stress is a badge of honor’ – that’s a lie,” she says. “We’re actually not designed to do that. Our brains and bodies are not designed that way…(and) all these symptoms that we now label anxiety and depression, they’re signals. They’re a language that our brains are sending to our bodies, saying ‘slow down!'”
In that vein, Krider also urges everyone to make sure to take some time for themselves – a message she often finds herself repeating with moms. “I asked (one) ‘when was the last time you got to be, not ‘Mom,’ but just an individual? When was the last time you actually were just you?” she says. “And she started crying, (because) she couldn’t even remember.”
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