There's been a lot in the news lately
about how mental health is on the decline for many people.
Even if you're not on the verge of a mental breakdown,
your mental health still may be suboptimal,
and you don't really appreciate it
because you're not paying attention.
How would you know?
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a Psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
And although you should always be in tune
with the state of your mental health,
this month gives us a chance
to highlight the importance of mental wellness,
whether or not you have a mental illness.
So how do you know if you're doing well,
or if you need to make changes or seek professional help?
Here are seven questions to ask yourself
to do a mental check-in.
The first thing you can look at is your life balance.
How is your energy distributed
between four domains in your life:
your physical health; achievements,
which include work, school, money
and other accomplishments;
relationships, which would be family, friends,
acquaintances and general community life;
and then the fourth domain is meaning and future,
and this would incorporate your values and goals.
These are the main areas where we spend our time and energy.
Take a few minutes to think about
how much energy you spend in each area.
If you work eight to ten hours a day,
that's a third of your time,
and you may not be able to change that.
But time doesn't always equal energy output.
Does your work require even more of your energy
because you worry about it when you're not working,
or you even do work in your off hours?
Do you come home so drained at the end of the day
that you don't have much left to do anything else,
like prepare a healthy meal instead of getting takeout,
or connect with people who you care about?
The main idea with this self-reflection
is to recognize areas in your life
that you may be neglecting,
and try and find some ways
to reserve more of your energy for those areas.
Number two check-in question
is how have your moods been on most days?
We will always have good days and bad days,
but look at how you've been in the past month.
And yes, a month is a long time,
but you want to look back and see what the pattern is.
Negative emotions to identify would be feeling low
and discouraged on most days,
having more anxiety or anger.
How much have you laughed in the past weeks?
You don't need to quantify, but just think.
Have you found things amusing and enjoyable?
You're not going to find things funny
if you're sad or annoyed on most days.
Number three is how have you been sleeping?
The average amount of sleep required
for an adult is seven to nine hours.
If you sleep less than that,
you may notice that you can still function,
but you're running on a battery that's not fully charged.
You also build up a sleep debt that affects your thinking
and how you process information.
Sleep deprivation also has negative physical effects.
But aside from the number of hours that you get,
what's the quality like?
Are you tossing and turning?
You may be in the bed for ten hours,
but you get up a few times during the night,
and end up only sleeping five hours.
An easy test for your quality of sleep
is how rested do you or don't you feel
when you wake up in the morning?
Number four is how well
have you been taking care of your body?
Have you been craving processed foods
with lots of sugar and salt?
When we get stressed, some people crave sweets,
and some people crave salty or savory foods.
These cravings can be a signal
that you're under a lot of stress
and using food to cope,
or it could just be that these are the foods
that your body is used to eating,
and you're in a rut of eating this way.
Also, how much exercise are you getting?
The trend of working remotely
has been super convenient in a lot of ways,
but it has also decreased our activity levels,
and increased how much time we spend sitting
in front of computers as a whole.
Number five check-in question is related to four,
but from a different angle,
and that is, how have you been feeling physically?
The mind and the body are connected,
and poor mental health can show up in physical signs
like feeling tired all the time,
or starting out with a decent amount of energy,
but feeling utter exhaustion at the end of the day.
And it's not because you were doing physical labor either.
You could have spent the whole day in Zoom meetings
and feel like you're going to collapse.
Other physical symptoms could be headaches, nausea,
stomach aches, constipation, and muscle aches.
You can get tension headaches when you feel stressed,
or you can get a headache from neck tension.
Jaw clenching can cause pain
that affects the muscles of your face and head.
Number six check-in question is who is your support system?
Do you have someone you can turn to
when you need to talk or need help,
or are you the person who is there for everyone else,
but when you're down there's no one around?
That's a really lonely place to be,
and there's different scenarios that can make that happen.
Like maybe your inner circle
is only comprised of dependent people,
who don't have the capacity to give back.
In this case, you need to connect with some people
who are more you're equal
when it comes to maturity and emotional assets.
Another scenario is maybe you don't know how
to communicate your needs to people,
and they assume that you're good,
and can't recognize that you're not
unless you explicitly ask for help.
These are just a couple of thoughts on this issue,
but the overall point is
to take a look at what kind of support you have.
It doesn't have to be filled with people
who come to your rescue, but instead,
people who you feel are on your side,
listen to you,
and make you feel good when you're in their presence.
We can sometimes spend too much time around people
who take from us, and make us feel bad about ourselves.
I talk about one reason for that in a video that I did
on breaking the cycle of negative relationships.
The last mental check-in question that I'll talk about
is what are you doing that gives you joy?
If that answer is, "Nothing, I hate everything I do,"
then this really needs to be a focus for change.
You may not be able to control doing the things
that drain you, but you can try to balance it
with activities that make you happy.
They don't have to be things that sound impressive,
like hiking or volunteering in a soup kitchen.
It could be as basic as binge watching a show,
playing with your pet, playing a card game,
or even engaging in a craft.
Everyone needs downtime,
and you need some of it every day.
And sleep is not downtime.
That's battery recharge time.
You can wear yourself out
if you're busy completing your to-do list all the way up
until you drop into the bed,
and then wake up and start another day of the same thing.
You need some time to be quiet,
or do something that serves you
while you're awake and aware.
You need to experience the pleasure
of engaging in something you enjoy.
If you ask yourself these questions
and realize you're not doing well in most areas,
take an inventory of what's missing,
and start chipping away, little by little,
to make changes to improve your mental health.
I've got a mental wellness community,
where we address these issues
with weekly wellness challenges,
monthly workshops, live question and answer sessions,
and weekly journaling exercises.
This month's wellness theme
for the challenges is clean eating.
You can find out more at mentalwellnessspace.com.
If you feel like your mental health has declined
to the point where it's causing serious problems
in your relationships, or your school,
or your work is suffering,
or you feel so much distress
that it's hard to manage each day,
then you should seek the help of a professional.
You can start with a therapist
if you aren't sure how much help you need,
and you want to talk through some things.
The therapist can help you recognize thinking traps
that are holding you back,
and destructive lifestyle habits
that are affecting your mental health.
The therapist can also weigh in
on whether it seems like your symptoms are disruptive enough
that you should consider medication,
and then the therapist should be able
to give you psychiatrist referrals.
BetterHelp is an affordable online option for therapy.
I have a sponsored link in the description.
Psychology Today is also a resource where you can search
for a therapist or psychiatrist in your state.
States require that the person
who treats you must have a license
in the state where you live.
BetterHelp will choose someone who is in your state,
and Psychology Today allows you to search by your state.
One last resource is mentalhealthamerica.org.
They have a lot of good, free information on their site.
They have mental health screening tools
that you can take online
to see if it looks like you may have a certain disorder.
They also have a cognitive distortion restructuring tool
that helps you recognize certain cognitive distortions,
and even gives you ways to reframe those thoughts.
It's an artificial intelligence tool
that I think is very handy,
and you can check it out if you're interested.
I'll also have a link for that in the description.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.