I'm Dr. Ali Mattu clinical psychologist and I asked all my therapist friends to share
their favorite mental health tips.
Seventy five responded and I'm going to share my favorite tips with you and help you apply
them to your life today!
The most common response I got is about connecting with people like Bernardo P who says get together
with friends even if it's for a beer or coffee.
If you're on your own go outside to an event where there are people even if you don't socialize
human contact always helps.
Connection with other people friends and family all that sort of stuff has been shown to be
really helpful for your physical health and your mental health.
Amelia says do not hesitate to use your supports when you need them.
Friends, family, therapy.
Whether we're talking about resilience or we're talking about dealing with grief or
loss finding a way to get help from your friends and family has been shown to be one of the
most important variables in getting better.
Anne Marie Albano says nurture genuine caring relationships at home with friends and at
work such as with you at @AliMattu.
Awww Anne Marie - I love you too.
So if you want to make new friends become a familiar entity keep showing up at the same
type of social situation and ask someone open ended questions questions that don't have
a yes or no answer.
And from that you'll understand a little bit more about them and if you are interested
in becoming greater friends ask them to do something outside of the situation where you
normally hang out.
That's how we become friends.
With time share a little bit more about yourself share more secrets and you'll be on your way.
If you want to strengthen existing relationships just do something nice.
A random act of kindness for a friend or family member that you care about is going to go
a long way to strengthening that relationship you have.
If you are in a relationship and you want to strengthen that spend more time together
without devices or turn those devices off have some uninterrupted time together.
The second most common response I got was captured by Kari Scovel's tweet when she says
move your body.
Lynette Lau says balance rests with exercise because getting out and moving is important
even though you're exhausted.
And Erin Haugen says movement exercise walking the dog taking the stairs etc. it counts especially
on those days when it's super busy.
We know that one of the past antidepressants is to get your body moving get your body active.
If you want to do this a few things to remember we are rarely motivated to move when we're
in a state of rest.
It's very very hard to get moving.
But motivation usually kicks in once you've started to move and your body begins to get
more active.
I like to remind people to make it easy to be more active.
Park farther away in the parking lot so that you have to walk a little bit more.
Or instead of having your lunch delivered walk to a nearby place and pick up lunch.
The third most common theme that emerged was finding meaning Payton Jones said Life isn't
always happy.
Don't expect it to be.
Don't chase after happiness.
Find things that are meaningful to you and chase those instead.
Laura Dunson said focus on what gives your life meaning rather than chasing fleeting
happiness.
Avoid the trap of comparing your life to other people's social media highlights if you want
to identify the things that are meaningful to you, here's how you can do it.
I want you to imagine it's your one hundredth birthday.
You're surrounded by your closest friends and family the people you really love.
They start to share stories about who you are what you mean to them what you stand for
and what you've achieved in your life.
What are the things that they're saying?
These are your values and if you live your life according to your values.
That's how you find meaning.
That's how you find purpose and that's how you find connection to something that is greater
than yourself.
Next we've got a lot of tweets about experiencing emotions.
Trisa Amozeg said learn what feelings are for sometimes even unpleasant feelings are
doing an important job.
Whatever your feeling makes sense somehow even if it's irrational.
So it's best to accept your feelings before you try to change them.
Get very good at labeling what you're experiencing inside your body.
Not only is that going to help you communicate to other people what you're feeling and help
them to know what you need.
But there's a lot of research that suggests just labeling your emotions takes some of
the intensity of these emotions down.
Erika Busch said Do the thing that is giving you stress anticipating how stressful it will
be is always worse than doing it.
Oh my gosh that is so true.
Jonathan Fader said training yourself to develop adaptive learned responses to stress.
Understand your stress.
Learn what you need to do to deal with that stress the stress is giving you information.
Is it because you're underprepared?
Is it because you don't know what to do?
Is it because you are overwhelmed and you need the help of friends or family?
Related to experiencing emotions were all the tweets about embracing the moment.
Like Andrew Riley who said be non-judgementally present don't describe moments as good or
bad just as they are right now in your environment.
Take a moment and look at five different things happening around you now touch four different
textures near you.
Listen to three different sounds in the environment.
Pay attention to two different smells and notice one taste.
This is a quick grounding skill you can use when you need to to feel more present in the
moment you're in.
Roll for Change said breath.
Seriously just stop and take a moment.
Several times a day to focus on breath only you can match inhales and exhales and just
slow your breath down so you can inhale four seconds hold it for a moment and exhale for
four seconds.
The next section I'm going to call go the fork to sleep.
Dani Arigo said all my tips boiled down to this.
It can be easy to ignore self care or put it off or believe that it's selfish to engage
in at all.
But we can't do or be our best for ourselves or others if we don't take time to recharge.
Shobhika Jaju said Never compromise on sleep and Rene Zweig said be on a schedule including
sleep.
So we're not 100% sure why we sleep but we know sleep is super important when we get
enough sleep our attention is better our memory is better we can deal with our emotions better.
We want to get better sleep.
There's two things you can do.
Number one wake up around the same time every day.
I know it's really hard you want to sleep in on the weekends probably because you're
sleep deprived during the week days but as much as you can wake up near the same time
it's going to help your body out a lot.
The other thing you can do is get really good at dealing with insomnia.
So if you're in bed it's been more than usually how long it takes you to fall asleep and you're
tossing and turning.
Don't stay in bed.
Get out!
Go and do something that's either soothing more boring.
Just make sure it doesn't involve a screen.
The blue light from a screen might actually wake you up.
Michael Mularkey summed up the next section really well.
Your thoughts and feelings are important.
Still your thoughts and feelings especially negative ones about yourself.
They're not facts.
Your thoughts are just thoughts.
They might be scary but they're not dangerous.
Jessica Divento said hold space for duality.
So often we get stuck between is this happening or this happening but actually both of those
things might be true.
Do you have a thought that really scares you a fear you can get out of your head.
I want you to write that down right now.
Is there any way you can intentionally test this out and get some real world data on what
actually happens?
The next section is one of my favorite topics and it's about self care.
Muqaddas says taking baths exercise reading for leisure napping and spending time with
loved ones.
Deborah Glasofer says build breaks into your day.
When you go on vacation go on vacation do whatever you do to destress exercise watch
dumb TV talk to colleagues about your day on the regular.
It's about being at work when you're at work and being at home when you're at home.
So that means yes avoid those work e-mails when you're at home.
There's still going to be there in the morning.
If you can get some jobs you can't but you should if you can.
Josue Cardona says cut toxic people out of your life.
Cut toxic people out of your life.
One way I apply that if you're going to attack The Psych Show community in the comment section
you're going to get banned.
I made a whole video about my self care routine and how I apply these things to my life every
day.
One take home message learn to say no.
It's a lot easier if you know what your boundaries are what you can do and you say no when you're
afraid you might be exceeding those boundaries.
Andrea Letamendi summed up the next section really well find something you love and unapologetically
embrace it.
I spent half my life hiding all the things that I love hiding my love of science fiction
of Star Trek of comic books of superheroes all that sort of stuff.
The second half of my life I've embraced it.
I've gone to comic cons I've cosplayed.
I talk about this stuff here on this channel and everywhere I go.
That second half of my life has been a lot better.
Kristin Bianchi says follow sports if you like them and share that fandom with others
that fandom part is so important to connect with the community and celebrate this thing
that you love together.
Think about a TV show a movie a sports team a book anything a hobby that you love.
And I want you to answer this question.
What is it about this thing that you love.
What does it mean to you.
Now go online go to Reddit find a YouTuber find someone.
Find a community that is related to this topic or join a Meetup group related to this topic
and share that share that with other people.
Why you love this thing.
Why it means so much to you.
I also really love what Nabil El-Ghoroury says Hobbie like reading for fun have something
outside of psychology have something you enjoy doing that's outside of your work outside
of the thing that you do every day.
Because when work is going to be more difficult it's really nice to have something that you
enjoy that's completely unrelated to it.
The last section is all about making small accomplishments.
Shane Owens says Give yourself realistical...realistical?
Give yourself realistic challenges when you fail learn from that and try again when you
succeed.
Reinforce yourself and paused to experience it rinse lather repeat.
Regine Galanti says thinking about my priorities each day and week and doing my best to let
non priorities slide.
So sometimes there's a sink of dishes.
What both of these individuals are saying is really focusing on one thing making it
realistic and it's okay if you aren't able to achieve some type of goal learn from it
and keep trying.
Ask yourself what inside of me is going to get in the way of me achieving this goal and
then find a way to Problem solve that to change your environment to make it easier so that
that thing inside of you does not get in the way.
What are your favorite mental health tips?
Let me know in the comments below.
Special thanks to everyone who commented on this Twitter thread.
You could check out the link to that original tweet in the description below.
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