Priotitize your Mental Health: How to Emerge from Stressful Times as the Winner
How Alexa takes care of her mental health during stressful periods
Stressful periods come and go. Sometimes they happen because of heavy workloads. Sometimes they have to do with certain personal events taking place. Sometimes they’re simply there because of a wonky time where balancing multiple things at once can become a bit difficult.
In the end, these moments pass over time. However, they can often take a toll on us both physically and mentally. When these moments hit me, I often find that it’s more important than ever to look after my mental health.
Here’s why: poor mental health affects us in more ways than one. It affects not just our minds but our bodies as well; it runs us down, makes us feel lethargic, sometimes even ill. So, can we look out for ourselves and avoid this during particularly stressful periods? Here’s how I do it…
Taking time for myself
During stressful periods, it’s more important than ever that I take time for myself. It can be easy to get caught up in everything that I always need to do and my mind feels like thinking about a million things at once. However, by taking time for myself, I can give my mind a bit of a break. It helps me reset and work more productively moving forward.
One of the best ways to do this is by literally scheduling time for myself in my calendar, and just like meetings and deadlines, if I have it in my calendar, I know I need to follow up on it. It also means that I can make sure I don’t fill up my days so much that I forget to think about myself as well.
In those times, I make sure to do things that I enjoy; I focus on my hobbies. I take some time to read or crochet my blanket a bit more. These activities turn off my brain and help me recharge.
Asking for help when I need it
Good social health is important for mental health as well. By keeping up our social health — reaching out to friends and family, talking with them, spending quality time with them — we naturally also improve our mood. Socialization is also increasingly important when going through a stressful period. We might feel like we want to take on everything ourselves, but the truth is that sometimes we need help.
When I’m going through a stressful time, I make sure to ask for help when I need it. Maybe it’s at work and I need someone to assist me with a task so the workload isn’t too much. Maybe it’s in my personal life and just talking to someone can help ease the physical and mental burdens that I may feel.
Mindfulness and meditation
Mindfulness and meditation are two practices that I started to adopt back in 2017 and I haven’t looked back since. These practices have helped me immensely, particularly in times when I feel a heavy amount of stress. Mindfulness helps me refocus my mind as well as calm and slow down. Even if it’s just 2 minutes, it helps me find my centre again and I can continue with what I need to do with a more relaxed mindset.
I also find that I have sleeping problems during these kinds of periods, and meditation helps with these troubles. By doing a meditation session before sleep, the deep breaths help not just my mind but also my body feel much more relaxed. By putting myself in that relaxed state, I’m able to fall asleep not just faster but I can also achieve a more peaceful sleep.
Prioritizing my meals
Stressful periods don’t just affect me mentally — I find that they also affect my eating habits. When I’m overly stressed, I find myself skipping meals and when I do remember to eat, the meals are not very healthy or filling. So I find it important to remind myself to take time to eat regular healthy meals, despite feeling busy or overwhelmed. Not only does this force me to slow down and take time for myself, again, but it can benefit my mental health, as it’s boosted by good physical health. Eating regular, healthy meals fuels the mind and improves concentration and productivity. By taking care of our bodies, we also take care of our brains and alleviate the pressures of stressful periods.
How do you take care of yourself when you’re going through a stressful time?
