It might strike as a tedious ol’ notion that being in nature is abundantly healthy. It’s especially eye-roll inducing for folks who identify as introverts, have ability limitations or anxiety and depression issues, amongst other sometimes debilitating concerns. The science doesn’t lie, though, and since we’ve all been cooped-up for the past several winter months, I’d be remiss if I didn’t spout-off this age-old wellness conceit.
Peace Through Pilgramage
There’s a specific peacefulness I personally experience during my Sunday hike ritual. I’ve been making said weekly nature pilgrimage for the better part of five years since a serious chronic illness diagnosis challenged me to upend and reform my entire life (a thing I am grateful for years on.) I know on the sparse Sundays wherein I don’t make it to the trail (freezing rain and particularly bad flare days do happen) I notice a quiet, simmering sense of stuckness and malaise transmits across my week. It’s nothing too loud, but just enough to be of note. That tells me something, and fortunately the science bares out solid evidence of what I might be sensing.
Be Like Water
Certain natural landforms and locales are rich with negative ions, miniscule, odorless and invisible molecules that humans can breathe in locations such as the ocean, mountains, and moving natural water sources. Once negative ions enter the bloodstream, they are said to produce biochemical responses that can elevate our good-mood chemical serotonin. This may have a virtuous effect in helping to reduce depression and stress response, and give us an energetic boost.
Enter Nature Regularly!
I know myself and many others I’ve had the pleasure to work and recreate with attest to this sense of deep, visceral stillness and recovery gained in the wilderness; whatever your particular zone of preference and ability level.
In our everyday lives, we are more often than not awash in electronic positive ions, which, belying their descriptive taxonomy, are not in fact good for us. Our screens are the newest modern appendage, and we’re almost never free of the under-hum of powered devices and public utilities. We’re so acclimated, we may only recognize it when we wander off to the wilderness and perhaps notice first a strangeness soon overcome by a serenity we don’t receive in everyday life.
So, this springy month I challenge us all to enter into nature regularly, and however each of us can. Let’s allow for nature’s intended healing vibrations to do their work while we do ours. Now that’s enough of staring at this screen… let’s go outside.
At the very moment of writing this, I’m in a small downtown apartment, lived in since December when major and necessary personal losses occurred. Just 2.5 hours ago the largest earthquake to occur in Utah since 1992 jostled my city while I was making my morning coffee to prepare for yet another day working from home and providing hours of telehealth sessions and meetings for the COVID-19 quarantine. My mind is working to make sense of everything, feeling like the earth did moments ago; shaking, swaying, trembling and out of control. The day has been filled with repeated aftershocks, each perceptible tremor fueling a tiny panic pilot-light within.
Control seems to be an ever-dwindling concept; our modern luxuries and comforts can so easily become unavailable, suspended, constricted or in some cases lost entirely. We have been forced violently into what I am referring to as a “rapid state of evolution and adaptation” that certainly none of us chose. Often the defining factor in traumatic experiences is the loss of self-determination and control. This day, this week, this month and year are forming a traumatic core for most of us.
The Illusion of Control
There’s a couple things that bring me solace in crises. One of them hails from my early therapist training days in ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy.) A fundamental and core concept of ACT is the idea that control is not only an illusion, it’s a harmful one in many cases. Often, our intense desire to be in control (including when nature and life is showing us just how unreal that is) merely heightens and expands distress and suffering. ACT asks us the question of whether or not we are willing to practice a particular art of acceptance known as “creative hopelessness.” The way I think about it, when we are faced with the removal of control, predictability and our constant, fruitless attempts to re-write what has already been written, a space opens. In the letting go of things-whether witting or not-there ensues an expanse, and void of sorts, where the things we held onto once were. As we grieve these things, we can recognize that this space is a room… for something new. This is where our creativity can alight, transforming within us a renewed, adapted resilience in the space of openness.
Creating Space for Radical Hopefulness
Speaking of adaptations, another concept I’ve played with these past few days is something of an apt adjustment to the mindfulness notion of ‘radical acceptance.’ Radical connotes something bold, something changeful, something that challenges convention.
Many of us are aching about the need to accept many things right now, and of course acceptance, as all things, is a process that is fundamentally non-linear. I propose, in addition to practicing radical acceptance right now, we work towards radical hopefulness too. Our arts, music, food, culture, gatherings, resources… are ancient, perennial and adaptable traditions. Like our mountains, quaking as they are this day, our most precious ways of being human will go on. Maybe they’ll even shift and adjust in ways that eventually result in deep and appreciated growth. Maybe the skies and our minds will clear.
So let’s work to be radically hopeful today, while the ground shivers beneath us as though in some odd act of vulnerable recognition. Let’s remember that our precious planet is bigger and bolder than most of us realize each day in our sheltered normalities. Let’s recognize that the tiniest factors can have a massive impact. Let’s grow loving, wise, compassion, conscious, grateful and radically hopeful. My thoughts to you and yours today and forward.
This month some of us may elect to observe the ever-contentious Hallmark holiday of Valentines. Still others may opt out for social, personal, historical or political reasons… or all of the above. Whatever your stance on the commodification of romantic love, there is more to the psychological impact of intimacy and isolation than a single day in February (and an assortment of toothpaste-filled candies in a heart shaped box) can address.
The larger social dialogues on love and romanticism have been shifting dramatically. This has been readily apparent throughout the past few decades as we have adopted new norms within the smartphone world. The Psychology of love has been a hot science for some time now; from the early social psychologists to Kinsey to the stacks of pop-psych books shelved and gathering dust in homes and libraries. Podcasts are obsessing over it, movies always have… pop music is entirely about it. But what do we know today about intimacy, love, attachment and the human need for connection? Many of us would perhaps offer nothing more than a shrug and eye roll at the question.
The desire, even need to be loved and to give one’s love is one of the ‘biggies’ that bring people to the therapy sofa/chair/chaise/pick-your-preferred-seating. Whether it’s romantic love, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, familial, platonic or the many other iterations, some manner of love is actually a need for most (if not all, based on other identity factors) of us.
Recent research on the phenomenon of ‘skin hunger’ caught my fascination some time ago. The notion (and reality) that lack of touch could lead to significantly deteriorated health outcomes strikes me as a powerful testament to the need for loving connection. Even if you don’t particularly adore being touched by other people in most social scenarios, the contact with a pet, trained and licensed massage therapist or body worker can be essential to your mental and physical well being. Have you ever felt like all you needed was someone to hold your hand or hug you in order to find some sense of release or relief? Maybe you’ve felt skin hunger.
There’s a decent amount of buzz lately about millennials being the ‘loneliness generation.’ I tend to think it’s beyond one generational scope, especially as that article implies. However, loneliness is linked soundly to poorer health over the lifespan and across all domains. There’s something serious and salient to the need to overcome isolation. There’s deepening evidence of the loneliness and addiction epidemics being profoundly adjacent concerns, a further testament to the need for connection.
If you’re experiencing a mid-winter slump in social connectedness, maybe it’s time to ‘find your tribe.’ Join a group, a book club, visit the dog park, do your work at a hip and bustling local coffee shop, visit an animal shelter and connect with some other creatures working on managing isolation, take a cooking class at one of our local grocers. The big “V-Day” doesn’t have to be a dreaded reminder of loneliness, it can be a wake-up call to re-engage with the world, just as the winter wanes, the sunlight creeps through and the thaw begins. Your health, and your life, will thank you for it.
It’s a new decade, a new year, and a time that can feel daunting for many reasons. Maybe you’re reflecting back on 2019 with a few grunts and squirms. Maybe the past year (or decade) has been predominantly kind…maybe they’ve been a balance of struggle and success.
New Year’s resolutions can lead to unrealistic expectations for magical thinking, internal pressures and unsupported self-imposed imperatives. Perhaps it’s not about meeting ‘that goal’ this year; I’ve discovered for myself that focusing on the present and the process rather than the outcome creates the space I need for myself to grow and change positively. Early in my counseling career, one of my beloved supervisors said “there is no arrival time.” I struggled with that concept for a while, until I came to comprehend it at a deep level. I began to understand that my attachment to ‘completion’ or ‘arrival’ was an unhelpful tether. This new understanding did not mean that I would not or could not benefit from clarity of values and coordinated goals. It meant that I could give myself space to be truly honest with myself about what really mattered to me, while accepting myself today regardless of where I’m at on my personal journey.
The notion that we may ‘miss the mark’ in expecting answers or outcomes is explored in the British sci-fi classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. In the series, on a planet called Magrathea, a species of “hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings” decided they simply must create a computer to find the answer to “life, the universe & everything.” Ten million some-odd years ensue, and said beings finally create the computer they name “Deep Thought.” They ask Deep Thought (with wringing hands and anxious anticipation) to provide the answer they have so desperately sought for millions of years. After a lengthy pause, Deep Thought asserts that the answer is “42.” Naturally, these beings are aghast at the response and grapple with their sentient creation. Deep Thought assures them, the answer is certainly 42. The intelligent beings become all the more dejected by this information after many millennia of striving. Deep Thought tells them they asked for the answer, without understanding the question.
I love this parable, for me, it encompasses the path of genuine and sustained well being and resilience. This time of year, we can become somewhat culturally obsessed with resolutions we hope will give us peace, stability, sobriety, etc. I invite us to allow this year to be a season of curiosity rather than allow it to become a ‘season of answer seeking’. Maybe we can focus on asking a lot of very meaningful, powerful questions and staying in the practice of curiosity. Maybe then, we’ll find out what our own “42” really means.
I hope you all had a moment or more of peace, joy, rest and love this past season, and that you have space to ask heaps of brilliant questions in this new year!
There’s a lot of chatter lately about ‘finding your why’ in the world of business. Catchphrase aside, this idea is not only applicable for entrepreneurs and Fortune-500 CEO’s. In mental health and addiction recovery, asking ourselves ‘why?’ is both challenging and critical. It can be a guiding inquiry that leads us to deeper purpose in our healing process.
“Why” is a word counselors are often discouraged from using in sessions with clients. If not posed with tremendous care, ‘why?’ may elicit defensiveness or feelings of shame; yet the significance of what the question can reveal within us keeps us asking. Beyond language, the idea of ‘your why’ is about locating within yourself the core of what motivates you.
Victor Frankl said “between stimulus and response there is a space, in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I love this quote; to me it’s a reminder that when we find in ourselves the anchors of what is meaningful to us, we find the power to engage clearly and purposefully with our circumstances. Your ‘why’ is a compass; a tool that, when located and calibrated, can guide you through life’s inevitable ordeals and joys.
‘Why?’ isn’t just about the things you want, goals you have, or outward changes you would like to make. That is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What’s below all of those external affirmations is the invitation to know yourself deeply, to examine your deeply held values. I like to think of it as coming home. Goals and behavior changes are the eventual benefits, but none of that matters until you find home in yourself. Maybe that’s the biggest ‘why?’ of all.
Here’s a little exercise I like to do to ‘come home’ to my ‘why?’ from time-to-time: make a “Loves List”. Write out a big, beautiful list of everything you deeply love, cherish and feel gratitude for. There’s no limit to your love, write to your heart’s content! Now, hold onto it. Keep it somewhere you can revisit it regularly. This is a doorway to your ‘why.’
Happy holidays, however you choose to connect to them, and we’ll be back at the turn of a new decade!
I’m going to start this month by acknowledging that the idea that we can choose to find meaning in pain is borne from deep personal and professional experience. I’ve enjoyed the privilege to be invited to sit with folks through incredible, sometimes unspeakable struggle and loss, as well as to see them thrive in the face of it. I’ve also had my life upended, shredded, dismantled and reformed in ways I could never have anticipated. I’ve had the honor to abandon my expectations and discover new paths, sometimes through violent, whiplashing change.
So here’s my statement for the thawing winter and forthcoming springtime regrowth; pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. Let’s sit with that for a moment.
Maybe you’re irritated by that notion. Maybe you’re curious. Maybe you think I’m an idiot (feel free to any such responses.) Here’s my philosophical pitch to you-life will undoubtedly bring us all great and possibly enormous pain through all our years. That’s a fact. Physical, emotional, psychological…all of the above in one big nasty cookie-dough mishmash. Pain will happen. But what relationship will we have with our inevitable pain? What association and eventual meaning will we make of it? What if the relationship I have with my pain is where my power lies? What if I have a choice?
Now don’t misapprehend; I am in no way dismissing, minimizing or discarding pain in its ability to debilitate, destruct or disturb. Those are all potential truths of the powerfulness of pain. However, the reality of pain does not necessitate the response to it. I can feel incredible pain, yet choose not to mire myself in judgment, combat or detachment from it. I can honor my pain, attend to it with loving kindness, and allow it to move through me until it naturally shifts and maybe even subsides. Perhaps that is the path of non-suffering.
Let me offer an example; a female-identified (she/her/hers) person in her early thirties gets a call from a doctor with bad news…exceptional, life-altering, incurable bad news. For years she sees doctors, imbibes combinations of medical concoctions. Her partnership begins to fall apart alongside her health. The goals and expectations she had for a family, for certain assumed markers in life fall by the wayside. By her later thirties she’s lost a marriage and hopes for her own family, her home, her pets, her able-bodiedness. Yet she’s never suffered, and she has felt great and hefty pain of all fashions. How did she not suffer? Because she chose to acknowledge her great, hefty pain, learn from it, face it with boldness and vulnerability, learn to say no and ask for help, and to find new meaning: a new, creative sense of self in the dream indefinitely deferred. Now, her life is very, very different than the one she’d planned, and yet she has joy, purpose and love in that different life nonetheless. Do you want to know why I know that pain is not a choice but suffering is? Because I am her.
Think today on how you might choose the non-suffering relationship with your pain. May we all see a few warmer days and sprouting things coming forth soon.
by Paige Zuckerman, Red Willow Clinical Director / November 2019
How intensive outpatient programming offers a different path of addiction treatment
Addiction is a disease of potential devastation, and one of the most common and increasing health crises worldwide. When facing addiction, whether it be a substance or process issue (gambling, sex, shopping, etc.), the wide array of treatment options can be as overwhelming as the disease itself. Traditionally, most of us are exposed to the pop-culture perspective on “rehab” via depictions of either ultra-posh beachside facilities or cautionary tales of sterile hospitals. The truth of treatment is that there are options for many needs, life demands, and identities. Making an informed choice about your addiction recovery care is a crucial determinant of success.
Some folks opt for residential treatment, or the widely familiar 30-day (or more) inpatient option. These may be suitable options for you, but there can be significant barriers to the feasibility of such focused programs. Cost and life demands are crucial considerations in choosing a care plan. If you’re on a budget, a working professional, parent, caregiver, or managing major roles in life that make it difficult or impossible to be unavailable for extended periods of time, “IOP”, or intensive outpatient programs are worth your consideration.
Intensive outpatient programs are designed to strike a balance between your life and your recovery; a balance that will ideally become a lifelong practice! Sometimes an IOP is a ‘step-down’ option from residential and sober living spaces, and sometimes it serves as a wholly standalone opportunity. IOP’s usually offer several evenings per week of diverse group therapies within a supportive and collaborative sober environment. Some also offer additional services such as case management, family, couples and individual therapy.
IOP can be an excellent option, especially if you’re hoping to maintain your work schedule and/or other important responsibilities during your recovery. If you are exploring alternatives to full-time or residential treatment, intensive outpatient programs may be an ideal solution for you or your loved one.
Your healing, ongoing stability and community support can be elevated through intensive outpatient programs, and your meaningful and balanced life can recover and thrive with you!
There are definitely identifiable Mormon stereotypes: family-oriented, clean-cut, hard-working types. Members in good standing forgo sex outside of marriage, the consuming of alcohol and tobacco, and the drinking of coffee and non-herbal teas. But within the Mormon Corridor, the area in the United States in which Mormons are the most concentrated, a serious drug addiction problem has taken root.
The initial source of the addiction is not the local liquor store, gas station, or even coffee shop. Nor is it some dark, off-the-grid location chosen by a shady drug dealer. No, the initial source of the addiction is very often the well-lit rooms of medical clinics and the counters of pharmacists. For children, it is often their parents’ medicine cabinets.
The dealers? Doctors or other medical professionals trying to alleviate pain. The culprit? Opioid painkillers.
And it is a big problem in the Book of Mormon Belt.
So much so in Utah that community health leaders recently initiated public awareness campaigns. They hosted prescription drug drop-off events for medicines no longer needed for their initial purposes. And, last Wednesday, Utah received a 5-year, two-million-dollar grant from the federal government to try and remediate the swell of opiate addictions, overdoses, and related deaths in the state.
The grant was given on International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31st.
So why is Utah experiencing real vulnerability in the current prescription opioid epidemic in the United States? Why are predominately-Mormon communities seemingly more susceptible to prescription drug addiction than they are to other addictions? I have some ideas.
1. Altitude and Opiate Addiction
The state logo is quite apt: “Life Elevated.” The text, stamped across images of Utah’s iconic rock formations, says a lot with two words.
ut, because of Utah’s unique geography, the air is thinner. It is the price we pay for living so high up. There is less oxygen per square meter of air here than at locations closer to sea level.
High altitudes have been linked to an increase in mental illness and behavioral disorder distribution in the populations that live there. Higher suicide rates are evident as well. The fact is, the brain requires oxygen to effectively produce and exchange vital neurochemicals like serotonin. The oxygen level of the high-altitude air in Utah is less than optimal for these processes. And this, unfortunately, has lent itself to an uptick in depression rates and other mental illness distributions across the state. Of course, other factors most likely contribute to this as well, but altitude is a significant one.
And mental health professionals know all too well that mental illness is a frequent co-conspirator of substance abuse. Obviously, not everyone with a mental health condition uses substances illicitly or abuses legal ones. But among those dependent on substances, a co-occurring behavioral or mental disorder is present more often than it is not.
While causal links are generally difficult to prove, and establishing correlation can, itself, be a tricky business, experts tend to agree that the link between substance abuse and mental illness goes beyond mere antidote. Self-medicating is a real occurrence. Whether it is alcohol, marijuana, or some other substance, people with mental illnesses will sometimes turn to substances to try to escape their symptoms. In Utah, where the high altitudes may increase the frequency of mental disorder, they may consequently be putting residents at greater risk for substance abuse.
So why is opioid dependence, in particular, a thing to which our communities may be more vulnerable?
2. Legal and Religious Status of Opiate Drugs
It is no secret that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS or Mormon Church, has powerful influence in the state of Utah. This fact is frequently pointed to as a possible explanation whenever Utah scores low on alcohol, tobacco, or other drug use in national surveys.
The Mormon scriptural code for health, known by its members as the Word of Wisdom, disallows the consuming of alcohol, tobacco, coffee and non-herbal teas. Furthermore, obeying the “laws of the land” is an emphasized teaching, making illegal drugs obviously against Church statutes as well. But the status of opiate drugs being prescription painkillers not against legal or religious code may make abuse easier to rationalize—even for the most devout Mormon church-goers.
The reality, however, is that opioid abuse is against the law and basic Mormon teachings. According to top Church leaders, all addiction is to be avoided as it is autonomy-destroying. These leaders have even explicitly condemned the abuse of prescription drugs. And a case against opioid dependence can be made from a careful reading of the Word of Wisdom, which states that members should use plants “with prudence.” (Opiates were traditionally derived from the poppy plant, and opioid painkiller addiction flies in the face of prudence.)
3. Discreteness of Opioid Dependence
If you live in Utah (again, a predominantly Mormon community that shuns alcohol and tobacco use, not to mention tea and coffee), chances are that things might get kind of awkward if people see you with beer or cigarettes.
People who drink or smoke often take steps to avoid landing on the receiving end of righteous admonition from concerned Mormon neighbors, family, and friends. No person wants their personal choices to have a socially negative impact on their lives or the lives of their children.
These fears may add to the allure of prescription opioid painkillers. Who suspects a paper Rx-bag and small orange pill bottle contain the source of a deadly addiction? Going to the doctor and to the pharmacy are thought of as healthy and responsible activities turning the bag and bottle into symbols of health and responsibility.
But opioid addiction is irresponsible and dangerous.
It’s an addiction that is so easy to rationalize and disguise, that some individuals might not even recognize its development within themselves, even though they’re the ones taking the medications. This is why it is so important for people to be adequately informed when their doctors prescribe such drugs. And it is a wise decision to have a family member or friend informed as well. This loved one might be able to recognize the early signs of addiction in yourself better than you can. In fact, having several people “in the know” is an excellent precaution.
4. Frequency of seeking medical care
When the numbers came out a few years ago showing Utah’s apparent high rate of antidepressant use, a BYU professor offered a possible explanation. Professor Daniel K. Judd related how Mormons are, statistically speaking, more likely than the general population to have attended college. He suggested this bump in education just might explain why more Utahns are on antidepressants because the more education an individual has, the more likely he or she is to seek professional medical treatment when symptoms arise.
I don’t know whether or not his explanation adequately explains Utah’s increased antidepressant usage, but there is something I want to borrow from this line of thinking: the possibility that Church members may seek medical treatment more often than non-members.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides a support network, encourages a social climate, runs an educational system, and preaches with a certain health-focus that when combined leads members to seek medical care at an increased rate. Paradoxically, this might be able to explain, in a small way, why Utah communities have proven vulnerable to the opioid crisis sweeping the country.
The more likely one is to seek treatment for pain symptoms, the more likely one is to be prescribed painkillers. The more often this occurs, the more likely one is to eventually be prescribed an opioid.
If Mormon individuals really do seek medical treatment with higher vigilance at the arrival of symptoms, this might slightly up the risk for substance abuse opportunities. It is just an idea, but it does not seem completely unreasonable and may merit further academic research.
But Where Do We Go From Here? What Can We Do About This Serious Problem?
1. Explore other options for pain relief.
Patients should ask their doctors if there are other clinically valid options for pain relief instead of a prescribed opioid painkiller.
2. Inform loved ones.
If opioid use seems like the best option, a patient may benefit from having a close friend or family member be informed about his or her treatment.
3. Discard unneeded prescription drugs.
When the medicine is no longer needed for its intended purpose, it is essential for the patient to follow the instructions of his or her doctor and properly discard the medication.
4. Take extra precautions as physicians.
Doctors, for their part, should seek to thoroughly educate their patients regarding the risks of using opioid painkillers and the dangers of opioid addiction. They can also exercise careful judgment when prescribing such drugs, taking into account the past mental histories of their patients. A patient with a history of mental illness or addiction may be at a heightened risk for dependence.
5. Become educated and spread information as community leaders.
Government and church leaders can educate themselves further as well, and seek to inform people. The state of Utah and the Mormon Church has already taken a stand against prescription drug abuse, but perhaps they can do so with renewed focus, highlighting their support to the addicted population.
If you are addicted to prescription drugs, whether opiates or something else, get the support you need. Seek the help of a mental health professional and a primary care doctor. If people close to you are struggling with opioid drug abuse, let them know you support them in their fight against addiction.
Getting off any drug you have grown dependent on has certain risks, and this is definitely true with opioid painkillers. Seek the professional medical help you need in order to get through this stage of recovery, which can be dangerous and disorienting when undertaken alone.
Although in society mental self-care often takes a backseat to physical self-care, you cannot afford to neglect it. Your mental and emotional health affect not only your mood but also your sleeping patterns, how you make choices, your relationships with others, how you deal with stress, and even your physical health.
There are a lot of reasons why giving to others helps not only the world around you but also you and your mental wellbeing.
Berkeley University of California’s Greater Good Science Center wrote, “Giving has also been linked to the release of oxytocin, a hormone (also released during sex and breast feeding) that induces feelings of warmth, euphoria, and connection to others.”
The science center also mentioned several studies that show how giving makes us happy and is good for our health:
“A 2008 study by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton and colleagues found that giving money to someone else lifted participants’ happiness more tha[n] spending it on themselves.”
And, “in a 2006 study, Jorge Moll and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that when people give to charities, it activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating a ‘warm glow’ effect. Scientists also believe that altruistic behavior releases endorphin’s in the brain, producing the positive feeling known as the ‘helper’s high.’”
Ideas for ways to improve mental health by giving are listed below.
Small acts of giving
Write a note of encouragement or thanks to a spouse, child, or friend.
Let someone pass you on the freeway.
Smile at people you do and don’t know.
Really listen when another person speaks to you.
Lend a hand when you see someone struggling with something like carrying their groceries or shoveling their sidewalk.
Larger acts of giving
Volunteer at a soup kitchen, hospital, or local school.
Give a charitable donation.
Travel and help those less fortunate than you.
Become a mentor to someone could use some direction.
Contribute to someone else’ college fund.
2. Break up Routine
It may come as a surprise, but doing something as simple as breaking up your routine can actually make you more mentally healthy.
The University of Michigan wrote, “Although our routines make us more efficient and enhance our feelings of security and safety, a little change of pace can perk up a tedious schedule.”
Similar to breaking up your routine, and often just as helpful, is taking a break. Psychology Today wrote, “In those moments when it all seems like too much, step away, and do anything but whatever was stressing you out until you feel a little better.”
U of M also gave suggestions on how you can break up routine:
“Alter your jogging route,.”
“Plan a road-trip.”
“Take a walk in a different park.”
“Hang some new pictures.”
“Try a new restaurant.”
3. Create Play Time
Perhaps the most unexpected way you can improve mental health is by playing. Playing is actually one of the best ways you can strengthen your mental health and instantly improve your mood.
Skyland Trail, a nonprofit mental health treatment organization based in Atlanta, reported, “Social support is one of the best predictors of good mental health. Enjoying time with loved ones (face to face; not on Facebook or Twitter) is the best medicine of all.”
That means when you enjoy time with loved ones, when you are out playing with them, your sense of social support increases, causing you to feel better in the moment and in the long run.
While today it’s no secret that physical activity and mental health go hand in hand, many don’t realize why.
Huffington Post wrote, “Endorphins are released in response to pain and stress and help to alleviate anxiety and depression. The surging ‘second wind’ and euphoric ‘runners’ high’ during and after a vigorous run are a result of endorphins. Similar to morphine, it acts as an analgesic and sedative, diminishing our perception of pain.”
Seeking out playful physical activities, then, is one of the best ways you can increase happy-inducing endorphins that actually decrease your perception of physical and/or mental pain.
There are other ways of “playing,” however, that can be done without physically exerting yourself.
Huffington Post continued, “Along with regular exercise, laughter is one of the easiest ways to induce endorphin release. Even the anticipation and expectation of laugher, e.g., attending a comedy show, increases levels of endorphins. Taking your sense of humor to work, forwarding that funny email, and finding several things to laugh at during the day is a great way to keep the doctor away.”
In short, when you’re trying to come up with ways you can play to become more mentally healthy, try to come up with things that will make you laugh. Like Huffington Post mentioned, playfully joke with your coworkers or attend a comedy show — both are valuable ways to spend your much needed play time.
Here is a short list of ways you can play to bolster your mental wellbeing.
Have a family-and-friends house party.
Join an ultimate frisbee team.
Go hiking.
Take a date to a stand-up comedy show.
Send funny jokes to coworkers through email.
When you’re trying to come up with ways to improve your mental and emotional health, don’t forget these slightly unexpected ways. Giving to others, breaking up your routines, and making time for play not only improve your mood but also help you lead a more fulfilling and joyful life.
Of course, please know for clinical mental illnesses these three tactics alone won’t be enough. Often, those suffering with such illnesses should also implement the six other methods brought up in my earlier post: (1) Practice gratitude, (2) meditate regularly, (3) improve physical health, (4) seek medical help, (5) counsel with a therapist, and (6) lean on your support system.
As you allow mental self-care to move from the back to the front seat in your life, have fun with it. Making your mental health a priority doesn’t have to be grievous or boring. Give to others, add something new to your life, and schedule in time for play — it’ll do you more good than you can measure.
