helping other people does make me feel better tho
this is actually a legit mental health strategy!
when you’ve got so many problems and/or such big problems that you can’t solve any of them, you can fall into learned helplessness (where you learn from repeated failures that you can’t ever succeed, and so you don’t try anymore, even once you’re in a situation where you can succeed)
so if a friend shares one of their problems with you and you can help them with it, even if it seems small or irrelevant compared to your own issues, you can prevent or reduce your learned helplessness (because yay, you succeeded! not totally helpless!)
also, both empathy and compassion can help to reduce the distress of those who are struggling and help to facilitate problem-solving and emotion-soothing behaviours (two important adaptive coping strategies… we cope as groups, not just as individuals) from others, so it can often be a case of “a problem shared is a problem halved”
if you feel better in any way after helping your friends, then it’s not as simple as “valuing their mental health over yours”. social interactions aren’t always give-and-take transactions, you might both get something good out of it :)
and on the flip side, there’s absolutely no shame in saying “feel free to rant, I’m listening, I just don’t have the spoons to respond / give advice right now” :)
