How to Improve your Mental Health…..from the good folks at Reddit!

As you all may know, I love Reddit. I borrow from it all the time because the answers are so raw and fascinating. I know I could use AI to generate most of my content, but I’m old school and like to hear from REAL People.

This week’s question was “What did you do to improve your mental health besides therapy?”

Here are the answers:

• Find something to look forward to. It literally pulled me out of depression.
• Starting small. Clean a room; organize a drawer or closet. As you start to piece things together, it feels less overwhelming, and you start to feel less stressed. When you try to do it all at once, that is when you tend to falter.
• Being more mindful about your social media usage.
• Exercise more. This is a fucking tough one if you are a fairly stationary person, but seriously, exercise has massive mental health benefits. Particularly outdoor exercise.
• Spending more time in nature, writing and reading, eating healthily, and exercising.
• Positive self-talk. Interrupt those negative thoughts and focus on forcing positive ones.
• Taking a sun break at work every day. Just go out and spend 10-15 minutes getting some sunshine.
• Eating well and taking care of your gut flora. A lot of people feel their emotions in their gut brain (enteric nervous system), so making your intestines happy will improve your mental health.
• Practicing cognitive behavioral therapy on your own.
• Incorporating breathing exercises and grounding exercises into your daily coping skills toolbox.
• Eliminating or significantly reducing screen-time. Electronic media is addictive; it keeps you overstimulated and takes much more of your emotional energy than you might think.
• Quit drinking
• Sleep hygiene. Going about my day and going to therapy for my anxiety was much more bearable when I started taking my sleep seriously.
• Not judging people. It takes a while to stop doing it and a lot of mental effort, but you’ll find you’re way less insecure about yourself and how people see you if you stop looking at everyone else with a negative critical view.
• Unapologetically cut ties with people that make you anxious in any way. The less toxicity in your life, the better.
• Stop watching NEWS AND CURRENT EVENTS I walked away from “knowing what’s going on in the world” a few months ago, and while I miss the idea of knowing what’s up, I don’t miss the stress of knowing what’s going on. Knowing anything won’t fix it, so just move on and live your life.
• Having a routine. No matter what my schedule is for the day, whenever I’m in a routine of getting up, getting dressed, and taking a shower, I’m in a good place.
• De-emphasizing the importance of my every thought. Most human thoughts are nonsense. I question every single negative thought, and every single one so far has turned out to be bullshit. No joke. It’s a game-changer.
• The above post reminds me to never trust how you feel about your life past 9 p.m. (and how spot on it hit me like a truck.)
• Learning to love myself. A few years ago, I was in a very low spot with my self-esteem, and I wanted to be better. My therapist and I talked a lot about treating myself like I would a friend. It sounds cheesy, but I started writing compliments to myself on post-it notes in the morning and placing them on a mirror. It didn’t take too long before I started to believe them. It’s amazing how being nice to yourself and giving yourself grace can really improve your mental health.
• Keeping my surroundings clean and organized. I’m not saying you gotta be able to eat off the carpet (although that’s god tier shit), but keeping everything tidy and in its place will help a whole lot.

Once again—thank you kind souls of Reddit for sharing your real life tips. You are the best!

About the Author:

Dennis Gillan has been featured on FOX, CBS, ABC, and NBC, because he is a nationally known speaker on mental health and suicide prevention. He is an author, podcaster, and TEDx speaker, as well as the Executive Director of the Half a Sorrow Foundation, which aims to improve mental health by promoting real conversations. His specialty lies in breaking the stigma surrounding mental health and teaching people to engage in and lead conversations that lead to help.Dennis is a sought-after trainer for several suicide prevention programs and the founder of the Camo Hat Club, a global initiative to encourage men to discuss their mental health. Dennis has had the honor of speaking to over 15,000 leaders and teams from small businesses, nonprofits, colleges, and multi-billion dollar enterprises such as UBS Financial, NBC Universal, Ocean Spray, and the US Department of Defense. His mission is to empower leaders to engage in conversations about mental health both at work and at home. The life you save may be your own, and you’ll be grateful you hired him to speak.Dennis maintains three websites: www.dennisgillan.com, www.halfasorrow.org, and www.camohatclub.com, all designed to further the mission of helping others with their mental health.

#suicideprevention #mentalhealth #youmatter