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Mental health struggles are not uncommon! In fact, one in three Canadians (about 9.1 million people) will be affected by a mental illness during their lifetime. Knowing how common mental health struggles are, it is important to fully understand the significance of prioritizing your emotional wellbeing, and to focus on finding strategies to help cope with the challenges you may be facing.
Nurturing our mental health and wellbeing is important in every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence to adulthood. Our mental health affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.
So how do we take care of our mental health?
Allowing room in our lives for self-care, mindfulness and self forgiveness allows us to better handle life’s stressors. It is important to remember to take care of your mind and heart just as thoroughly as you would take care of your body. It is important to find the best strategy that allows you to help your emotional wellbeing.
Here are some strategies that will help you prioritize your mental health, to allow you to be the best version of yourself:
- You need to make time for self care. Before you can take care of anyone else, you have to take care of yourself. Find an activity that you enjoy or that makes you feel good, and carve out time during the week to focus on it. This will allow you to remember that life is not only about daily stressors, and will bring in the potential for joy.
- Focus on eating well, exercising and getting enough sleep. A healthy, well balanced diet, proper sleep schedule, as well as daily exercise will help you think clearly, facilitate the brain's processing of emotional information, and help you cope with stress.
- Ask for help. Believe it or not, this one can be the most challenging for many people. We live in a time where productivity is glamorized and where a prevailing message is that we need to be able to “do it all and do it all well (perfectly)”. Not only is this not possible, but it’s harmful to our mental health and is leading to burnout. While asking for help can feel difficult, it is so important. Consider where help may actually be helpful and seek out creative ways to find help!
- Therapy can be a beneficial way to prioritize and take care of your mental health. It can help you learn life-long coping skills that are specific to you. While some people may struggle with mental illness due to biological factors such as brain chemistry, others may be struggling due to life experiences such trauma, abuse, or overwhelm. Seeing a therapist will allow you to find the best coping method for your specific needs. Therapy will also change how you interact with people in your life. Maybe you’re so used to keeping your feelings bottled inside that you have a hard time being assertive with the people you love. A therapist can help balance the way we communicate with our loved ones to improve our relationships. Also, talking over your past, present, and future with a therapist can lead to greater self-understanding, and help you feel happier overall. Even though self-understanding does not always mean self-acceptance, it is the first step towards truly embracing who you are.
Taking care of your mental health needs to become as much of a priority as taking care of your physical health. If your physical body stopped working effectively, you would likely seek out solutions. Be kind to your mind and consider where you need support, and then seek out solutions in the same way. Connect today
