Emotional and Mental Health
Improving Your Emotional and Mental Health
What can I do to improve my emotional and mental health?
Social support
Research has shown that people who have good social support from family and friends are better able to deal with stressors and cope with change. Having support from other people seems to act as a protecting factor against mental health difficulties. Therefore, it is important to build support and to keep in contact with people, even when you do not feel so good. It is probably even more important to have contact with those people at the times when you feel anxious or low in mood.
It is helpful to imagine if it was one of your friends or family who was feeling low in mood or anxious/ stressed. How would you help them? What would you say? What would you think of them? This can give a good indication of how others may think in a positive way about you, when you may not feel positive about yourself.
Express yourself
Communication and expressing how you feel are a key aspect of mental well-being. When feelings and thoughts are not expressed, they do not usually just go away. This could build up to contribute to feelings of stress, anger or low mood, which can also affect physical as well as mental well-being. Even though there are many reasons why people do not feel they want to talk about their own feelings, it is important to do so sometimes.
Another positive way of expressing feelings is by writing. Even if you do not share it with anyone, things often look clearer when on paper, rather than lots of things whizzing around your head.
Take time for yourself
It is important to keep a balance in life and make time for you. Think of things that you like doing and ways of relaxing. Sometimes it is good to have a hobby/interest which is just for you to enjoy. It is helpful to take some time every day if possible so that you can feel more relaxed and better manage any stress.
Stress can build up if you are always doing things that you feel need to be done, including things for other people and you are not doing many pleasurable activities. There needs to be a balance. Therefore, as stress increases you should try to balance it out by also increasing time for you to relax. After all, you can not help others if you do not help yourself first.
Laughing
Research has found that laughing has great health benefits, both physically and mentally. There are lots of health benefits to humour and it is often used as a therapy. One of these benefits is that when we laugh certain hormones are released called endorphins. These endorphins help create a feeling of happiness, which helps reduce feelings of depression and stress. Therefore, this reduces potentially harmful chemicals that can be produced by prolonged feelings of stress. This also makes you feel more relaxed and therefore, you are in a much better position to deal with the not-so-good things that happen in day-to-day life.
Exercise
Extensive research has found the great benefits that exercise has, not just on physical health but also, importantly, on mental health. Regular exercise has been found to significantly reduce depression and anxiety/stress. Physical activity prompts the brain to produce chemicals such as serotonin and endorphins, which are found to be lacking in a person who suffers depression.
After exercising you are likely to feel a sense of achievement, which helps increase motivation (reduced motivation is often one of the main symptoms of depression) and improve self-esteem (low self-esteem is a major contributor to mental health difficulties).
Positive thinking
Thinking positively is very important when considering well-being. Negative thinking can blow problems up and is associated with the development and maintenance of depression/anxiety. Once a person continues to think in this unhelpful way, they find it difficult to turn their thoughts to be more positive. Nobody is able to think positively all the time, but when thinking in a negative way it is important to have the ability to recognize this and to then challenge this way of thinking, so that this way of thinking does not become frequent (e.g. consider if there are any alternative explanations or ways of seeing a situation).
Positive thinking will eventually improve mood (e.g. frustration, feeling down), physical symptoms (e.g. sweating, increased heart rate/breathing) and also help you to do things (e.g. things you may not enjoy doing). Negative thoughts cause negative emotions/moods (e.g. sadness, anger, helplessness, dread etc), which sometimes leading to feelings of anxiety and low mood
Healthy diet
Having a healthy diet is very important for physical and mental health. Certain foods and drinks can affect mood. For example, caffeine can increase anxiety and chocolate causes changes in blood sugar levels, which can sometimes result in periods of low mood. Serotonin helps stabilize mood and when a person suffers low mood, this chemical is found to be reduced. Bananas have been found to help promote production of the brain chemical serotonin.
Eating healthily is also important in maintaining energy levels and energy is needed in order to function effectively both physically and mentally. Alcohol should be drunk in moderation. Alcohol is a depressant so it can have negative effects on mood and increase feelings of anxiety. This can either be during or after drinking alcohol.
Setting goals
Increased activity is associated with positive moods/feelings. Although when a person’s mood is lower they may not feel like doing anything and everything seems more of an effort, it is actually more important that usual activity is maintained as much as possible. Lack of activity seems to prolong negative feelings and motivation can reduce further, resulting in feeling ‘stuck’ in that mood. It is important to set small achievable goals and try to focus on achieving these no matter how you feel. Achievement helps increase self-esteem and by increasing your self-esteem it helps protect you from suffering low mood/anxiety.
However, it is also important that you do not set too many things for yourself as this is likely to cause feelings of stress/anxiety. By breaking down bigger tasks and only setting smaller goals, e.g. going for a short walk, and then slowly building on that. This helps to build confidence and motivation and therefore this leads to improvement in mood. Setting higher goals may sometimes result in being unable to achieve what you set out to which can eventually reduce your confidence and sometimes contribute to a low mood.
Who can I go to for help?
Everyone has bad days, which could be for no apparent reason or when negative life events such as bereavement, accidents etc occur. However, if you notice that negative feelings/emotions are occurring more frequently for no apparent reason e.g. over a few weeks and you are finding them difficult to manage and would like support; it is a good idea to visit your GP.
The GP should be able to offer advice and options about services that can provide you with support. If you prefer, there are a range of self-help booklets available in bookshops and libraries. There is also a range of information on the internet.
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