Your mental health is very important for your overall health. Keeping your mental health good will make you feel so much better overall. For me keeping my mental health in check means looking after things like my sleep, my eating habits, challenging negative thoughts and using coping skills when necessary. Let’s talk about these things and more. Here are 10 ways to improve your mental health.
1.) Journaling
One of the things you can do to look after your mental health is to journal. Journaling allows you to express your feelings in a safe way. It allows you to work through problems and helps you really work on solutions to problems. If you have had a bad day, coming home to write in your journal can be very therapeutic. It lets you get all the bad out so you will have more room for the good.
Journal prompt ideas
- Journal about your day-get all your thoughts and feelings about the day out on paper.
- What are you grateful for?
- Write a note for yourself on your bad days-include things like reasons to keep going, coping skill ideas and positive affirmations for yourself.
Using Coping Skills
Coping skills are activities that you can use when you’re feeling bad to help you cope with the situation. There are many coping skills and ways to cope when a situation is hard. Here is a list of some of the ones I like to use:
- ABC Store-to use this one you think of a type of store. I usually use stores like Walmart or Target. You can use any store you like but I like them to have a wide variety of items to choose from. Then you go down the alphabet and think of something that you can buy at that store for each letter of the alphabet. At first it will seem really easy and may feel like it’s not working but as you get to harder letters like Q and X and you really have to think hard to come up with these, you will be more focused on the coping skill than your situation and will calm down.
- Happy place-This coping skill is pretty simple. Think of your happy place. It can be anywhere that you are the most happy. Then think of 2 or 3 things for each of your senses. What can you taste? What can you hear? What do you see? What can you feel? What can you smell?
Here’s a list of some other coping skills you can use:
Eating healthy
Eating healthy plays a role in our mental health. If you’re only eating junk food you’re going to not be as healthy and not feel as good. If you eat a well balanced diet with healthy foods you will have more energy and be ready to take on the world. This also applies to exercise. Exercise is a great way to feel better about yourself and to feel better physically too.
Sleeping well
Sleeping well is another thing like eating healthy that helps your mental health. When you sleep well and get 8 hours of sleep a night you feel better mentally and physically. When you get less sleep you are going to be tired and dragging. Sometimes if I get too much sleep I am dragging also.
Boundaries.
This is something I am personally working on in therapy right now. I need to learn to say no. Saying no when you don’t want to do something is a way to protect your mental health. Because I am not great with setting boundaries I will link to some articles to help you learn about boundaries.
Therapy
Therapy has been life saving for me. Being able to have someone to talk to about things that are going on in your life and have sound advice about how to improve in your life is an awesome thing. Having someone to talk to about your depression symptoms and them being able to teach you how to manage your depression can be life changing. And then even if you don’t have depression just having someone to run things by and help you work though things weekly is helpful.
Medication
If you do have a problem with depression or any other mental illness type issue medication can be very helpful. There is a lot of stigma around taking medication for mental health issues, but in my own experience it has changed my life. Without it I get severely depressed, hear voices, and get suicidal. With it right now I am not depressed, haven’t heard any voices in a while and i’m not suicidal. I actually want to live to see what tomorrow has in store. So I highly recommend taking medication if a doctor says it would be helpful for you.
Affirmations
One of the things I have started using to help my mental state is positive affirmations. These are statements that are said about yourself. Things like: I am getting better every day, I am strong, and my favorite one is I can do this. It just helps if I’m having a bad day or facing something hard to just say to myself or out loud “I can do this” over and over again. It shifts your mindset to a more positive outlook and is very helpful for getting through hard times.
Challenge Negative thoughts
Challenging negative thoughts involves taking a negative thought and asking: Is this true? A lot of times you find out that the negative thought is not true. Take for example the thought “nobody loves me.” I ask myself if this is true and find out that it is not true. I know my mom loves me even if no one else does or I could say my dog and cat love me. Anything to prove to yourself that the negative thought is a lie. The more you prove the negative thoughts to be lies and then replace them with the truth the better your mental state will be.
Gratitude
The last way to look after your mental health is to practice gratitude. Everyday make a list (it can be short like 5 to 10 things) of the things you’re grateful for from that day. Thinking about what you are grateful for can shift your mindset from thinking you need more to be happy, to a place where I have what I need to be happy now.
Now you have 10 ways to look after your mental health. Start today with small improvements to make your mental health the best that it can be.
Leave a comment and let me know what ways you use to look after your mental health.
Check out my previous post about 8 ways I want to help you in this thing called life with including mental health.