Top Tips for Ultimate Mental Health Support in Daily Life: Part II
Earlier this month in part I of Top Tips for Ultimate Mental Health Support in Daily Life, I covered factors that affect mental health and the benefits of establishing and engaging in mental health support in daily life. In part II, I will be providing you with the skills and tools to help you achieve mental health support in your daily life. Areas such as habits and grounding techniques will be explored.
Daily Habits for Maintaining Good Mental Health
Maintenance of good mental health stems from incorporating daily habits that encourage emotional well-being and resilience such as:
Routine: routine and structure are great for mental health as it provides stability and reduces elements of uncertainty and unfamiliarity which can contribute to the presence (or an increase) of anxiety. When engaging in routine, it’s important to also allow for it to be flexible at times. Rigidity in routine and structure can also contribute to anxiety.
Self-care: while this may seem like a cliche, there is a lot of truth and benefit to regularly engaging in self-care. Unfortunately, when anxiety and depression increase (or schedules get busy and stressful), self-care is the first thing to go.
Grounding Techniques/Mindfulness: grounding techniques and mindfulness practices are powerful tools in improving mental well-being, encouraging emotional regulation, reducing stress and anxiety. Mindfulness is ultimately about being fully present in the moment without casting judgement on yourself or your surroundings. Grounding techniques can be another avenue to achieving mindfulness. Both tools are considered practices; meaning regular engagement is key in order to achieve benefit.
Grounding Techniques for Mental Well-Being
While you may have heard the term grounding or mindfulness, you may not know exactly what the implementation of grounding and mindfulness looks like. Below are a few of the top grounding techniques and mindfulness exercises I provide to clients that you can begin engaging in today!
5,4,3,2,1 Method: this is one of the quickest and most easily accessible grounding techniques that encourages you to incorporate all 5 senses when describing your surroundings in your current environment. Check out my Best Self Therapy YouTube video, Grounding Techniques: The 5,4,3,2,1 Method, walking you through this grounding technique.
Square Breathing: square breathing is another easily accessible exercise. In this exercise, you breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, and hold for 4 seconds. To involve more senses (increasing the benefit of the exercise), you may also choose to draw the square while you are breathing.
Body Scan or Progressive Muscle Relaxation: both exercises, guide you through a top down (starting from the head and working down to your toes) approach of scanning the body and encouraging relaxation. In the progressive muscle relaxation exercise, you are encouraged to tense each body part you’re scanning on the inhale and releasing the tension on the exhale. This offers two benefits to you:
1) recognizing and identifying where tension is held in your body and,
2) provides your body with the chance to experience when full muscle relaxation and release feels like
Mental Health Daily Support Implementation
In order to get the most benefit out of the skills and strategies above, it’s important to know how to best implement these techniques and exercises. A big obstacle preventing people from establishing the above daily habits is time. Many clients often communicate to me “I don’t have the time to practice meditation or self-care”. Keep in mind, these practices don’t have to carry a huge time commitment; utilize the time already in your routine to incorporate self-care and mindfulness. For example, if you have a longer commute to and from work, listen to your favorite podcast or sip your favorite (legal) beverage. Intentionality around how you’re spending the time already in your routine can encourage integration of self-care and mindfulness/meditation.
Anytime you’re looking to implement something new, it’s important to slowly introduce the new way of functioning to your life. For example, if you’re wanting to integrate more self-care into your daily life, I encourage you to start practicing self-care one or two days a week for 5-10 minutes each. Once that starts feeling more manageable and part of your routine, you can increase either the amount of days or how long you’re engaging in self-care. I encourage this approach for a few reasons:
it makes the new and different way of functioning feel more inviting and manageable
if you start too big, you will be motivated for a week or two however, you’ll soon find it’ll begin to feel overwhelming and hard to maintain all the new ways of functioning; often times resulting in stopping all new/beneficial things
Which of the above grounding techniques or ways of functioning (i.e. routine and self-care) might you want to begin integrating into your way of functioning? If you’re looking for more guidance in this area, I encourage you to to schedule your FREE 15 minute phone consultation below so you and I can explore what our time working together might look like.
Here’s to living a better life as your best self.
Brittany Squillace, MA, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Grief Counselor
