This year is an opportunity for personal growth, to focus on YOU. Many of us are a stickler for putting others' interests before our own and whilst that can be kind to some, it’s not doing you any favours.
With that in mind, how can you change and improve your mental health and wellbeing for 2022? There are some helpful steps that you can take to spend more time on yourself, bettering your quality of life in both the mind and body.
The importance of your mental health
Mental health is very important because if you’re not looking after yourself, then you’re likely to burn out and impact other areas of your life. There’s a lot of challenges that can come with day-to-day life, whether that’s personal or professional. In any given week here in the UK, 8 in 100 people will suffer from a mixture of anxiety and depression.
These are two very common mental health problems not just in this country but around the world. In order to help with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, there are proactive steps you can take in order to improve your well-being this year.
The steps you take today are going to help towards a happier future for your body and your mind.
Tips for changing and improving your mental wellbeing
There are plenty of things that you can do to help with your mental well-being. Whilst exercise and eating well might be helpful for some, it’s not the solution for everyone.
Talk about your feelings
It may seem hard to do but talking about your feelings can be helpful. Often what we’re feeling is built up inside and by talking to no one about it, those feelings can feel overbearing. Not everyone is comfortable speaking to people they know about their feelings and perhaps how dark those thoughts might be, so there are plenty of resources out there that can help. A few good suggestions of places to contact are:
Mind - Mental health charity
SupportLine - Emotional support for children, young adults, and adults
NHS - National health services for all ages.
You can always choose to see a therapist in person too if that’s something you feel would be helpful. Not everyone has the same approach to talking about their feelings so if you’d rather do it a certain way, do what makes you feel comfortable.
Address the triggers
Triggers are an important part of your mental health because there are certain things or scenarios that will likely trigger those emotions and feelings. Stress can be brought on by something going on at work. Depression might come from something happening in your personal life.
Wherever your struggles lie, it’s useful to identify the triggers that make you feel worse. Sometimes these can’t be helped but there may be situations that you can remove yourself from or prevent from happening to better your health.
Setting boundaries is very useful to do because it gives you the space you need. Sometimes people have a habit of overstepping the mark, whether they intend to do so or not.
Take a break
Taking a break isn’t a sign of weakness. If anything many of us should be taking regular time off to relax and switch off. This can be particularly relevant to people’s work-life balance. There’s more expectation for employees to work harder and longer hours. However, that’s not always something that can be sustained for long.
Too much work and not enough breaks or time to relax are going to result in burnout. So with that in mind, it’s important to try and schedule some break times. Whether that’s a day off here or an afternoon off there. You may want to take off a whole week or two at some point, just an opportunity to switch off and not be on call to anyone.
Treating yourself to some of the things in life you enjoy such as Elf Bar Vape Cigs or curling up on the sofa and enjoying a movie is going to help you find that balance recover and take time for yourself.
Learn to say no
This isn’t just something that refers to your work life but your personal life too. It’s important that you learn to say no in life.
Learning to say no does take some time and it’s not surprising, especially to social psychologist Susan Newman, PhD, who mentions ‘most people have a hard time timing down requests’ and that ‘we’re taught to do what our parents say and what authority figures tell us’.
Saying no more often is going to do your mental health a lot of good and it’s going to help other manage expectations of you and what you can take on.
Our mental health and wellbeing are critical and something that needs to be addressed more so than ignored. The more you can do to help your mental wellbeing this year, the better. Find ways to help with your mental health and wellbeing in 2022.