Self-Care: Mental

What helps your thoughts to remain healthy? How can you ensure that your thoughts remain calm, positive, and clear? Here are some suggestions of the good thought and mental habits you need to ensure you keep up:

Meditation and Mindfulness – helps you to calm down and clear your thoughts. Gives you the ability to start to examine and work on your mental self-care. Helps you to get in contact with yourself and work out what is going on with you emotionally. It also helps you to slow down and so helps you to find the time to do things for yourself. I would highly recommend daily meditation and mindfulness practice to everyone.

Challenge negative thoughts – is what you are thinking really true? Is it really everyone who thinks that you are fat? Be careful as we can get into very unhealthy negative thinking patterns. These can then spiral, and we can find ourselves in a depression or anxiety attack. When you recognise these thought patterns, you can take action to stop the thoughts, and start thinking positive thoughts. You can then stop a depressive or anxiety spiral before it even starts.

Let go of things that you cannot change – we often spend a lot of time replaying old conversations and events. We could be wishing we did things differently, or just remembering things. However, no matter how much we think about the past, we cannot change it. We can learn lessons for the future, otherwise just drop it and stop dwelling in the past. Equally we can spend a lot of time worrying about things in the future. We spend a lot of time on ‘what if’s’. If we have no control over what happens though, we are simply wasting time and energy.

Stop expecting yourself to be perfect – learn to give yourself a break. Nobody is perfect, it is an unrealistic expectation. It simply sets you up for failure and feeling bad about yourself. Accept that you are good enough, just as good as anyone else. You will have good days and bad days, just like everyone else, and that is OK. You are wonderful just the way you are.

Keep positive – if we find the positive in each day then we will be more positive. Look for the silver lining, notice the good things in life. Change your filter on the world. Try saying 3 positive things about the day before you go to sleep each night.

Don’t be a victim– there is a difference between self-compassion and self-pity. Be kind and caring towards yourself to make you feel better, but don’t stay stuck in a horrible place. Take control of your life and do something to remedy your situation. Take back your power and stop being helpless. Don’t be the victim. You are allowed to take some time to feel sorry for yourself, but then act. Remember, you cannot expect anyone to solve your problems for you. It is up to you to solve them yourself. You can enrol others to help you, but you must help yourself first.

Learn or do something new – this can really help to stimulate ourselves mentally. It develops our curiosity and love of life. It helps us to accept change. Try a new hobby, go to a museum, try a new recipe.

For more information, or just a chat, please contact me on 07742 209312 or nicole@greenoaktherapies.co.uk