Mental Health Struggles Are Real—But So Is Accountability

The Scroll of Doom (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trigger)

You're sitting there, scrolling through your phone for the eleventh time in the last hour (or is it the twelfth? thirteenth? — the relentless march of digital time has a way of blurring the edges of reality until you're not quite sure where one moment ends and another begins, a sort of chronological smearing that feels not unlike the way your vision goes soft around the periphery after staring at a screen for too long), when suddenly—BAM!—you come across a post that makes your blood boil. (A 2021 study found that the average American checks their phone 262 times per day, or once every 3.7 minutes of waking time. Are we scrolling through our phones, or are our phones scrolling through us?)

It's your friend Sarah, venting about how someone "totally triggered" her anxiety and now she can't even. Your thumb hovers over the comment button as you contemplate whether to unleash a barrage of validation or... wait, what's that feeling in the pit of your stomach? That gnawing, squirming sensation that's equal parts discomfort and revelation, like you've just bitten into an apple and found half a worm?

(SPOILER ALERT: It's the dawning realization that maybe we've all become a little too comfortable hiding behind our mental health struggles, wielding them like some sort of psychosocial shield against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or more accurately, the completely reasonable expectation that we behave like functional adults most of the time. Though the expectation of functional adulthood is itself a relatively recent societal construct, emerging alongside the industrial revolution and the rise of the middle class. One could argue that our current struggles with "adulting" are a direct result of this artificially extended period of maturation. Or maybe we're just lazy. The author pleads the fifth.)

The Great Accountability Conundrum (or: Schrödinger's Responsibility)

ACCOUNTABILITY (n.):

1. The state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
2. A cosmic joke played on humanity by an uncaring universe, designed to make us squirm uncomfortably in our own skin.
3. That thing you desperately avoid by blaming your actions on literally anything else, including but not limited to: your zodiac sign, the phase of the moon, the butterfly effect, or that one time in third grade when Billy stole your favorite crayon.

Here's the thing about mental health and accountability: they're not mutually exclusive. They're more like two peas in a very complicated, often misunderstood pod—a pod that's part of a larger plant of human experience, which is itself rooted in the soil of society, nourished by the sunlight of self-awareness and the water of interpersonal relationships, occasionally plagued by the aphids of self-doubt and the fungal infections of societal expectations...

But I digress. Let's conduct a thought experiment, shall we? Picture this: You're at a party. You accidentally knock over someone's drink. Do you:

1. Apologize profusely and offer to buy them a new one, all while secretly wondering if this faux pas will be the talk of the office on Monday, spiraling into a series of increasingly catastrophic social scenarios in your mind
2. Blame it on your clumsiness and laugh it off, using self-deprecation as a shield against the crushing weight of social judgment
3. Announce to the room that you have an inner ear condition that affects your balance and anyone who expects you to clean up the mess is ableist
4. Freeze in panic, wondering if this social faux pas will butterfly effect its way into ruining your entire life, leading to a downward spiral that ends with you living in a cardboard box under a bridge, your only friend a volleyball named Wilson that you've drawn a face on using the remnants of the spilled drink

If you chose C, congratulations! You've mastered the art of using mental health as a get-out-of-jail-free card, a sort of psychosocial "Get Out of Responsibility Free" card, if you will. But—and this is a big, all-caps, bold-faced, italicized, underlined, triple-parenthesized (((BUT)))—life isn't a board game, and accountability isn't optional.

The Great Accountability Escape (or: Houdini's Got Nothing on Your Psyche)

Let me be clear: Mental health struggles are real, valid, and often incredibly challenging. They can provide important context for our actions and help others understand where we're coming from. However, they don't erase the impact of our words and actions on others.

Consider this: If you're walking down the street and accidentally step on someone's foot, does it matter whether you did it because you were distracted by your phone, you have poor depth perception, or you're dealing with anxiety that makes you hyper-aware of your surroundings to the point of clumsiness? The person whose foot you stepped on still experiences pain, regardless of your internal state. Your mental health may explain your actions, but it doesn't negate their consequences.

The Accountability Toolkit (or: MacGyver-ing Your Way to Mental Health Responsibility)

So what's an introspective, growth-minded individual to do in this messy, chaotic, often bewildering world of ours? How do we balance self-compassion with personal responsibility? Well, buckle up, buttercup, because we're about to embark on a trip through radical accountability (without the guilt trip).

Step 1: Acknowledge Your Struggles (Without Making Them Your Identity)

It's okay to say, "I'm having a really tough time with my anxiety right now." It's not okay to use that as an excuse to treat people like emotional punching bags (because contrary to popular belief, other humans are not, in fact, sentient stress balls designed to absorb your emotional overflow). Your mental health is part of your story, not the whole book. (And if it were a book, it would probably be one of those dense, postmodern tomes that critics love and casual readers use as doorstops, filled with run-on sentences, obscure references, and asides that threaten to overtake the main text...)

Step 2: Own Your Impact (Even When Your Intentions Were Pure)

Remember that time you told your friend their new haircut looked "interesting" and they didn't speak to you for a week? Yeah, that. Your anxiety might explain why you blurted out the first thing that came to mind, but it doesn't negate the hurt feelings you caused. A simple "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you" goes a long way.

Step 3: Set Boundaries (Without Building Walls)

You have every right to ask people to respect your triggers and boundaries. But—and this is crucial—you don't have the right to expect the world to tiptoe around you. If certain situations or conversations consistently trigger you, it's your responsibility to develop coping mechanisms or remove yourself from those situations.

Step 4: Practice Radical Self-Awareness (It's Like Yoga for Your Ego)

Next time you find yourself about to blame your actions on your mental health, pause. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself: "Am I using this as a shield to avoid taking responsibility?" If the answer is yes (and let's be honest, it probably is, because we humans are masters of self-deception, capable of mental gymnastics that would make Olympic athletes weep with envy), it's time for some good old-fashioned accountability.

Step 5: Embrace the Power of "And" (Because Life Is Rarely Either/Or)

You can be struggling AND still be responsible for your actions. You can ask for understanding AND own up to your mistakes. You can work on healing yourself AND be mindful of how you affect others. It's not about choosing one or the other—it's about holding both truths simultaneously. (It's a cognitive juggling act, keeping multiple realities aloft at once, a feat of mental dexterity that would make Schrödinger's cat proud, if it weren't too busy being simultaneously alive and dead to notice.)

The Accountability Paradox: Owning Your Locus of Control (Or: The Great Tightrope Walk of Responsibility)

We're left with more questions than answers, more paradoxes than solutions. The line between owning our mental health and weaponizing it wavers like a mirage in the desert of self-awareness. We're all walking a tightrope, trying to balance our internal struggles with our external responsibilities, often without a net.

The true test of accountability isn't in grand gestures or perfect behavior, but in the small, daily choices we make. It's in the moment we pause before hitting "send" on that angry email (SENT AT 2:37 AM IN ALL CAPS). It's in the breath we take before responding to criticism (inhale: one Mississippi, exhale: I-am-not-my-thoughts). It's in the quiet acknowledgment of our impact on others, even when—especially when—we're struggling.

But here's where the rubber meets the road (or where the tightrope walker's slippered foot meets the wire, if we're sticking with our circus metaphor): it's all about your locus of control. This psychological concept refers to the extent to which you believe you have control over the outcomes in your life. Those with an internal locus of control believe their actions primarily influence their life's events. Those with an external locus tend to believe that external forces—luck, fate, or others' actions—are the main drivers of their experiences.

Embracing an internal locus of control is the secret of accountability. It's recognizing that while you can't control everything that happens to you, you can control your responses. It's owning your reactions, your decisions, your mistakes, and yes, even your mental health struggles.

This doesn't mean blaming yourself for every negative thing that happens. Rather, it's recognizing where your sphere of influence begins and ends. You didn't choose to have anxiety, but you can choose how you manage it. You can't control others' actions, but you can control your responses to them. It's the difference between "I'm anxious because the world is terrible" and "I'm experiencing anxiety, and here's what I can do about it." (It's worth noting that this shift in perspective is often easier said than done. It's not like there's a switch in your brain labeled "INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL" that you can just flip on. If there were, we'd all be a lot more accountable and a lot less interesting at parties.)

And as for Sarah's triggering post? Well, sometimes the most responsible thing we can do is to recognize that our reaction is our own to manage. The digital landscape is filled with shared anxieties and public vulnerabilities, but the only actions we can truly control are our own.

Your thumb still hovers over that comment button.

Your thumb twitches slightly. The screen's glow illuminates your face in the dim room.

What's next? Schrödinger's Cat wants to know.