Mental health tips from 75 therapists.mp4

I'm Dr. Ali Mattu, clinical psychologist, and I asked all my therapist friends to share their favorite mental health tips. 75 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. And Marie Albano says, nurture genuine, caring relationships at home with friends and at work such as with you, at Ali Mattu, and 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 Keri Scovel's tweet when she says move your body. Lynette Lau says balance rest with exercise because getting out and moving is important even though you're exhausted. And Aaron Haugen says movement, exercise, walking the dog, taking the stairs, etc. It counts, especially on those days when you're super busy. We know that one of the best 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. Peyton 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. Lauren 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 100th 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 these 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, Whatever you're 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 those emotions down. 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, 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 Reilly, who said, 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 whenever you need to, to feel more present in the moment you're in. Rolling for Change said, You can match inhales and exhales and just slow your breath down. So you can inhale for four seconds, hold it for a moment and exhale for four seconds. The next section I'm going to call, Danny Arrigo said, 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. Sobhika Jaju said, And Renee Zwig said, 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. If you 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 weekdays. 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 or boring. Just make sure it doesn't involve a screen. The blue light from the screen might actually wake you up. Michael Malarkey 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 DeVento 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't 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. Mukadas says, taking baths, exercise, reading for leisure, napping and spending time with loved ones. Deborah Glacifer says, build breaks into your day. When you go on vacation, go on vacation. Do whatever you do to de-stress. 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 emails when you're at home. They're still going to be there in the morning if you can. Some jobs you can't, but you can't, 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 comments 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 Ledimenti 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. Chris and Bianca says, follow sports if you like them and share that fandom with others. That fandom part is so important to connect with a 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-Gurory says. Hobby, 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 realistic challenges. When you fail, learn from that and try again. When you succeed, reinforce yourself and pause to experience it. Rinse, lather, repeat. Regine Galante 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 can check out the link to that original tweet in the description below. I also want to thank my patrons for sponsoring this episode. Without you, I wouldn't be able to do this. The Psych Show would not happen. And welcome to my new patrons, Samuel H. and Marissa H. 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