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Building mental health is a life-long process. From childhood to old age, working on mental well-being is essential.
Everything we do — including nutrition, exercise, medicine, and even doctor visits — is aimed at enhancing our physical health. Some of us also find it difficult to accept that mental illnesses exist or are serious concerns.
However, nowadays, more people are talking about and acknowledging mental health and recognizing that it's not an outcome but rather a process.
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How to Build Better Mental Health?
When something is essential, it's treated differently. It's difficult to think of a more crucial aspect of overall wellness than mental health. On that note, here are five strategies to improve your mental health:
1) Exercise
Exercise causes your brain to release hormones that make you feel happier, less anxious, and more calm. That can be achieved by simply running around the block.
Research says that engaging in 30 minutes of physical activity each day, three to five days per week, can help with depression or even anxiety.
Exercise does not necessarily require running a 5K marathon. Anything that gets you moving can usually make you feel better. When we build habits around mental health, they can start small and gradually increase our commitment.
2) Healthy Eating
Food is not only the building block of our physical health but also mental health. The body's ability to handle stress is put to the test by an improper diet. Meanwhile,, stress might result in poor eating patterns.
An American Psychological Association survey claims that people frequently seek out high-calorie, high-fat foods when under stress. According to the study, 38% of American adults claim to have overindulged or eaten unhealthily as a result of stress.
Among those, 50% claim to indulge in unhealthy or excessive eating at least once every week. This is a vicious cycle, as unhealthy and excessive eating causes weight gain and lowers self-esteem, unlike consuming a balanced diet.
3) Manage Self-talk
Internal dialogue that repeats over and over in our heads can be destructive to our mental health.
Perhaps you've heard the negative thoughts, "I'm not good enough", "I'm unable to do it", or "I simply want to hide". Self-talk that's constructive combats these negative internal beliefs and encourages cheerfulness, exuberance, and optimism.
Positive self-talk can help you perform better, advance further, or simply keep moving forward by drawing the positive out of the negative. It involves accepting things as they are, much like mindfulness, but learning to notice the positive rather than dwelling on the shortcomings.
4) Make Time for Your Relationships
You feel respected and appreciated when you're with the people you love and get along with.
Your sense of emotional wellbeing can be improved, and you can feel more connected to the people around you when you have healthy relationships with your friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors.
Have lunch with a coworker, or arrange a get-together with a friend you haven't seen in a while. If possible, spending time with someone in person is preferable to communicating with them online.
5) Express Yourself
Your mental health may suffer if your emotions are improperly controlled or left uncontrolled.
You can be reluctant to communicate emotions that you perceive as negative. It can be beneficial to your mental health to be able to describe how you are feeling and what you enjoy and dislike.
Depression and anxiety disorders are thought to be brought on by suppressing emotions.
Every feeling is significant and necessary. The intensity of the experience, how it's expressed (too much or too little), appropriateness of the expression, and frequency of the feeling occurring determine whether it's healthy or unhealthy.
Takeaway
Keep in mind that improving mental health is a difficult process. There's no shame in admitting when you have a tough time.
Try confiding in a friend or member of your family if you feel that your tension, sadness, or other negative emotions are beginning to build up. You can better analyze your emotions and even lighten some of the weight you're carrying by talking to someone about your worries.
Additionally, if the other person is going through similar difficulties, it might bring you two closer. All these things can lift your spirits. You should consult a medical or mental health expert for assistance if your mental health is causing you any concern. Even if you start today, it would be a good start.
Janvi Kapur is a counselor with a Master's degree in applied psychology with a specialization in clinical psychology.
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