Wellbeing
Are You Looking After Your Mental Wellbeing?
Do you ever consider your mental health? Looking after your mental wellbeing is important and these feelings can often fluctuate from day to day. If you’re not feeling great, it can feel harder to take action to benefit your wellbeing.
We all experience difficult times and feel negative emotions when facing challenges in our lives. We all respond to our experiences differently; there is no single ‘right way’ to react.
Being aware of how life challenges can affect our mental health can make it easier to understand, whether this is to help ourselves or someone we care about, who may be struggling.
Life challenges that we face throughout our lives include:
- Personal life and relationships
- Money, work and housing
- Life changes
- Health issues
- Traumatic life events
- Smoking, alcohol, gambling and drug misuse
Some of us are more deeply affected by events than others. Often, how we deal with things can depend on how well other areas of our life are going, and how well supported we feel in our lives.
Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Coronavirus has affected all aspects of our lives and the constant bombardment about the pandemic can feel never-ending; this is impacting our physical and mental health.
The rules of staying at home, social distancing and self-isolating are affecting us psychologically. For this reason alone, now more than ever is the time to support our mental wellbeing.
Not only are people in fear of the virus, many also face stressful life challenges; job losses or reduced working hours and less income. Social distancing and self-isolating means we are not seeing our loved ones, and we are worried about vulnerable friends and family.
It can be hard to escape the constant barrage of bad news in the media, which only adds to our feelings of despair, stress and wondering when this will all be over.
There are small steps we can take in our everyday lives to look after our mental wellbeing. The benefits of taking action to support your wellbeing are:
- Greater self-confidence and control
- Improved quality of life
- Healthier behaviours
- Improved relationships
- Better understanding of your own health
- Reduced stress and anxiety
- Increased immunity
How do you know if your mental wellbeing needs improving?
It’s important to have self-awareness and take responsibility for your mental wellbeing. That way, you will notice if your mental wellbeing is slipping and when it’s time to take action to give it a boost.
If you think you are experiencing lower mental health than usual, you might want to ask yourself these questions:
- Have you been withdrawing, and you’ve not felt like socialising lately?
- Have you been distancing yourself from friends, family and colleagues?
- Have you felt that your work, sporting or leisure time activities have fallen below your usual level of achievement?
- Have you experienced a significant change in your eating habits, either by having a much smaller, or bigger, appetite than usual?
- Have you noticed that you’re sleeping more than usual, finding it difficult to fall asleep or having difficulty staying asleep?
- Have you found it more of a struggle to take care of your personal appearance lately?
This list isn’t exhaustive or a checklist, the important thing is that you take action as soon as you notice at least one of these signs. When you’re not feeling great, it can be hard to know what will help you to feel better. It’s a good idea to create a ‘Wellbeing Toolkit’ that includes all the things you know will help you to maintain a good level of wellbeing.
To help you develop your own Wellbeing Toolkit, take a piece of paper and write down:
- How do I know when I’m stressed?
- Things that I can do to support my mental wellbeing:
- Every week
- When I’m stressed
To help you with some inspiration, here are my Golden Nuggets and Top Tips. They will help you overcome your mental health challenges and improve your wellbeing, so you can live a happier and fulfilled life.
Golden Nuggets
Practice Self-Care
It’s easy to slip into the habit of sleeping late, spending all day in your pyjamas and eating junk food, but looking after yourself is essential for your mental health. Even simple tasks such as washing your face can feel difficult sometimes, but they can make a big difference to the way you feel.
Ensure you are in a well-ventilated room and following basic self-care – healthy eating, sleep, lots of hydration – and try to keep to a routine.
Top Tip
If you often find yourself overwhelmed, then a mindfulness meditation might be worth a go. Many people dismiss the technique, believing it requires sitting in silence for 30-60 minutes of the day. But this is not the case, all you need is a few minutes.
Set aside just five minutes of your day to practise mindfulness. If you want to feel focused, try setting your morning alarm slightly earlier to meditate before work. Think about what you want to achieve that day. If you want to relax, try in the evening before bed to improve your sleep.
Follow your breath to settle your attention, then focus on everything around you as you continue your breathing. Become completely absorbed in what you can hear, feel, smell or see.
Be Active
Getting yourself moving is easier said than done when you feel low or anxious, but it can significantly boost your mood.
If you are well enough, exercise is really good for mental as well as physical wellbeing. Find music that helps to boost your mood. If you are able, get into your garden and get daily doses of sunshine. Exercising at home can be simple and there are options for most ages and abilities, including yoga, cardio, walking, running or cycling.
If you’re currently stuck at home, you may be feeling demoralised about what this will mean for your fitness. Whether you were training for a marathon (which has subsequently been cancelled) or usually enjoy working out at the gym (which may be closed), it can be tough when you have to put your usual routine on hold.
Top Tip
If you can’t leave the house, then one of the most effective workouts is a mix of body-weight exercises and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Body-weight HIIT workouts are relatively short and don’t take up much space. Best of all, they don’t require any equipment. You can find plenty of these online and you can do them at the best time to suit your lifestyle.
Off-Loading
Distracting yourself and writing down your thoughts and feelings can help to offload any worries and fears you may have. It’s also important to try to keep busy, whether that means going for a daily walk or learning a new skill. There are still plenty of activities you can engage with at home, including crafts, painting, reading, cooking and baking.
Top Tip
If you feel low, keeping a journal can be a helpful way to unload emotions. Take things a day at a time. Planning may have once been essential, but projection can evoke fear and anxiety. Go with the flow! If you feel well enough, look at some free online courses to expand your learning.
Be kind to yourself; if you don’t feel up to doing anything, that’s fine too. It’s important to be kind to yourself and recognise when you need a break. Take care of yourself, focus on your recovery, and you’ll get through this. Tell yourself ‘what I am doing is enough’. Be good to yourself.
Try to relax and focus on positive things, knowing that every effort is being made globally to bring this situation to a close, but it will take time.
So, let’s summarise those golden nuggets again:
- Practice Self-care
- Be Active
- Off-loading
Get professional help
Pura Vida Your Life resources and materials are intended to give you tools to cultivate a positive and balanced lifestyle, rather than provide any immediate solutions. The information provided is for your educational use only, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Get support from a mental health charity or the NHS: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/
If you have found this useful, then please share this with anyone you know who would also benefit to help them along their journey in life.
Thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week for Pura Vida Your Life Happenings for insight, inspiration and more golden nuggets to help you live a happier and fulfilled life.
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