People get tattoos for various reasons, including honouring someone or creating a mark on something they treasure. Other than this, it can be a revitalising process that helps your mental health.
Whether you are commemorating a life event or coming up from a bad relationship, a tattoo (such as the barbed wire tattoo) can help your mind relax and have some peace. It’s not a midlife crisis, as some people usually put it, but a way to fulfil’s desires. This article will discuss how tattoos can help heal and improve mental health.
Here are the ways:
Impulsivity
Your mind might be wondering how a simple tattoo can positively affect mental health. When undergoing the tattooing process and getting the inking, you get an adrenaline and endorphin rush that makes you feel out of this world. It makes you think about the whole process and its effect on the current and future life. Since it’s a permanent thing, it makes you think of many things and their impact on your life. While you might regret the tattoo at another given time, you will never regret the impact it had on your skin and mental health. The impulsiveness of creating a design on your skin positively affects your mental health on the decisions you make.
Self-care
Many people worldwide suffering from depression are finding ways to be free of things affecting them. Getting a tattoo helps at times to relieve depression. Other than the person taking care of the ink after getting the tattoo, the entire process enables the person suffering to take care of themselves. The tattoos expose skin to fresh air, and you should therefore use some lotion to maintain it. It is also suggested to don’t go swimming if you have a new tattoo as the freshly inscribed skin will attract bacteria and amoebas. With such precautions, one gets to know the dos and don’ts in life and things they couldn’t do when deeply suffering from depression. The tattooing process helps them forgo everything and concentrate on the healing process. This concentration helps them improve their mental health by focusing on things that matter.
Commitment
Getting a body tattoo comes with a commitment. Besides making someone remember some things, it helps them never go back on some routes again. The tattoo will be a forever reminder of harmful episodes people experienced or things worth remembering. You get reminded of how you survived after a nasty ordeal and the vows you kept. The drawings will forever be in your body, making you adjust to things you experienced before and live with them. These adjustments help you overcome the mental demons and live a positive life afterwards. Having a tattoo is a symbol of pride. It makes one get committed to things they engraved on their skin, including family, lovers, and other precious things in their lives. Such helps improve their memories.
Comradely
People who suffer from mental health feel that they are alone and that they aren’t worth living. Most tattoos done are part of the mental health movement to help those suffering get comrades and heal from the ailment. Getting a tattoo makes you part of this powerful movement. Most tattoos around the world look similar, with some marks like love or semicolon. These marks started as a movement to celebrate and make people suffering from mental illness and depression feel they are loved and that they aren’t alone. When survivors see these symbols, they identify a comrade and get the feeling of not being alone. Such helps them relieve their problems and helps to boost their mental health.
They help raise awareness
In some regions, tattoos have been used to create awareness by large movements, thus ending up stigma related to mental health. They act as conversation starters to individuals exposed to stigma and deliver the message to everyone to avoid spreading the stigma. The drawing also allows individuals suffering from mental health to communicate with others and create awareness of the ailment. In most cases, it’s used to notify individuals that mental health is not for everyone, and since they are mostly public, they help to counter the shame that comes with mental health struggles. It helps remind people suffering from depression and anxiety where they have come from, their journey, and where they are now and helps prepare them for the future.
Tattoos are becoming popular daily, as people use them to create mental health awareness and other movements. This idea helps people suffering from mental health feel loved and be part of the larger group. If you want to get a tattoo to appreciate what brought you from mental health, stress, or depression, or you want to commemorate something or someone, and it will help your mind, please give it a try. Its impulsivity will create a difference.
Peter Wallace has been an advocate for mental health awareness for years. He holds a master’s degree in counselling from the University of Edinburgh.
