10 Mental Health New Year Resolutions

Of course you don’t have to wait until a specific time or day to look after your mental health, but many people do associate the beginning of a new year with reflecting, starting afresh or improving areas of our lives that we have perhaps neglected a bit. Everybody has mental health and therefore everyone needs to make sure that they adopt habits which positively impact their mental health.

There are several things you can do to look after your mental health but with a new year approaching I thought I would share 10 resolutions which focus on mental health care.

1.      Seek Professional Help

      Whether this is going to your Doctor about your mental health difficulties for the first time and starting therapy, counselling, medication or some other form of professional treatment, changing your treatment (for example, switching the type of therapy you attend or the type of medication you take – at the recommendation of your doctor, of course) or even changing the way you approach your treatment, the start of a New Year can be a good time to focus on your mental health treatment.

Ideas:
-Go to your GP and tell them about your difficulties and discuss further action and treatment.
-Begin therapy, counselling or medication, depending on what is most suitable for you.
-Change to a different GP, therapist or counsellor – sadly, not everyone has this luxury but if you do not feel comfortable with your practitioner and there are others available then consider switching. It is so important that you feel comfortable in your treatment.
-Change your treatment if it is not working for you – if you have been going to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for a long while and it hasn’t helped (and it isn’t because you haven’t been going or participating) then definitely look into alternative treatments, such as Dialectical behaviour therapy, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation etc.) and discuss them with your GP. Just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean that it will work for you and just because one thing doesn’t help you, that doesn’t mean nothing will.

2.      Track Your Mental Health

As soon as a New Year begins, many people around the world whip out their bullet journals and planners. People track their exercise, their water intake, their sleep but one thing that I think everyone should be tracking is their mental health. One in four people have a mental illness but everyone has mental health and just like physical health, tracking your mental health can be extremely useful. 

If you are tracking several things like alcohol consumption, exercise and social events, you may also begin to recognise patterns. For example, perhaps the more you exercise the better your moods seem to be. Or perhaps an increase in your alcohol consumption seems to correlate with poor mental health or bad moods. Recognising these patters can be extremely beneficial when it comes to changing our habits in order to improve our mental health.

Ideas
-Track your moods with faces (happy, sad) or colours (black means depressed, blue means sad, red for anger, green for eating disorder, grey for anxiety etc.)
-Score your illness or mood every on a scale between 1 and 10 to see if there is anything in common on ‘bad days’.
-If you have a mental illness, use a different page for tracking your mood and mental illness. For example, one page can be for emotions such as sadness, happiness and anger but a different page can be for depressive episodes, panic attacks, anxiety disorder, eating disorder etc. This can be helpful to avoid confusion between tracking the feeling of sadness and the illness depression as well as the feeling of anxiety and an anxiety disorder.

3.      Declutter your social media

      This year I removed a lot of people from my social media and it was such a good decision. It wasn’t necessarily negative people, although you should unfollow them too, but mostly it was people who made me feel bad even if that was my ‘fault. I am an extremely jealous person and I am not proud of that but when you struggle with low self esteem (and really, who doesn’t) removing the people who make you feel small or unhappy can work wonders.

Ideas:
-If you have an eating disorder, or struggle with body image and disordered eating then please unfollow all pro-ana, pro-mia, fitness and weight loss accounts. Even ‘healthy eating’ accounts can be extremely triggering when you have an eating disorder. Please prioritise your mental health. You don’t need to go on a diet, workout more or lose weight simply because companies start to feed off of peoples’ post-holiday guilt. Don’t get me wrong, eating healthy, working out more and losing weight can be good but if you have an eating disorder it is so important to prioritise your mental health and address these areas when you are in a more mentally healthy place. 

-Unfollow anyone that makes you angry, sad, uncomfortable, scared, insignificant, unsuccessful or any negative emotion really, even if you know them in real life. If they ask you why you unfollowed them (although I unfollowed a lot of people I know and this didn’t happen to me once) simply tell them the truth. If they don’t understand after you explain, then they don’t matter and you should probably unfollow them in real life too.

4.      Take Mental Health Days

      There seems to be a lot of shame surrounding mental health days and most people seem more comfortable telling their boss that they won’t be at work because they have the flu or a bug rather than telling them that they need to take care of their mental health.

This shows that, although it seems like mental health is talked about a lot more, there is still stigma surrounding mental illness. If you don’t recognise the importance of taking mental health days when you need them then you probably aren’t thinking about mental illnesses as illnesses, or you may be thinking that mental health isn’t as important as physical health which is completely untrue. You have just as much of a right to take a day off from work to look after your mental health so in the new year, let yourself put your mental health before work.

If you feel your mental health deteriorating or if you start recognising the signs of a relapse (for me this includes not wearing makeup, not showering, sleeping a lot more, not eating etc.) then you should definitely consider taking a mental health day to focus on your recovery. If you carry on working and push all of these signs and symptoms aside in an attempt to pretend like everything is fine, then your mental health will continue to deteriorate. You deserve time to focus on your health.

5.      Talk To Yourself Like You Would Talk To A Friend
This is such a helpful way to recognise when you are being overcritical. If your friend was ruminating, obsessing or being negative towards themselves, what would you say? This can help you gain a more rational perspective when you are being tormented with irrational thoughts. It can also help you challenge yourself and be gentle with yourself and you deserve your kindness just as much as any of your friends.

This is such a helpful way to recognise when you are being overcritical. If your friend was ruminating, obsessing or being negative towards themselves, what would you say? This can help you gain a more rational perspective when you are being tormented with irrational thoughts. It can also help you challenge yourself and be gentle with yourself and you deserve your kindness just as much as any of your friends.

6.      Try To Find A New Hobby

Or dedicate more time to the hobbies that you have and enjoy. Life can get chaotic and time can seem to disappear very quickly and very easily so in order to make sure that you have some time to dedicate to the things you enjoy it can be a good idea to physically schedule in a timeslot into your diary or phone – and stick to it. No swapping it in order to get more work done. No sacrificing pleasure simply because work is busier than usual.

Spending time doing the things you enjoy is so important, particularly if you struggle with your mental health, because it can give you a reason to get up and keep going, particularly if you don’t like your job or school life. Despite what the world may be telling us, work doesn’t have to be the main focus in life just because it takes up a lot of (or most of) your time. Prioritise what makes you happy - and don’t sacrifice this happiness.

7.      Go To Bed Earlier

Everything seems worse when you are tired and a lack of sleep can have devastating effects on your mental health. Obviously, the time you go to bed differs depending on who you are, what time you have to wake up at and how much sleep you personally need, so be honest and ask yourself, am I getting enough sleep? Is my lack of sleep negatively impacting my mental health? If yes, try to get to bed a little earlier every night and see if this helps at all.

Ideas:
-As mentioned above, try tracking your sleep (what time you went to bed, whether you woke up during the night, what time you got up) and see if it correlates with your mood and mental health.
-If you struggle with sleeping, this can be a result of or symptom of a larger mental health issue, if you think it could help perhaps consider making an appointment with your doctor about your sleeping difficulties.

8.      Journal

      The beginning of a new year is a perfect time to begin a journal and I have previously written about how writing can positively influence your mental health so of course this is going to be on my list. I think it is such a helpful tool for releasing your thoughts and feelings and can help you look at them from a distance.

Ideas:
-Set aside time every day or once a week to write all of your thoughts, feelings and worries without worrying about how neat your writing is or whether you should be using a colon or a semi-colon. This journal is for you, it doesn’t need to look good or make sense to anyone else.

9.      Learn To Say No

      One bad habit that a lot of people have is prioritising other’s needs before their own. Another issue that most people seem to have is taking on too much of what doesn’t fulfil you or make you happy. If saying yes to something doesn’t feel right, then you probably shouldn’t say yes. But be honest with yourself, recognise when you’re saying no because you have too much on your hands or because it’s simply not something you want or need to do, and saying no because you’re scared and holding yourself back. 

     10.  Learn To Say Yes

On the other hand, something that I am going to try and focus on in the new year is saying yes to more things that scare me. I have missed out on so many experiences and opportunities because I was too scared, whether I was afraid of having to talk to people, scared of failing or simply scared of having a bad time, not saying yes has led to me having no memories or experiences but a lot of regret and I think 2018 is the year I try to change that.

“Feel the fear and do it anyway!”
― Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

Make 2018 the year of self-care.
The year of prioritising your mental health.
You deserve it.

If you liked this post you may also like:
1. Depression: How Can I Help Myself?
2. Eating Disorders: How Can I Help Myself?
3. Social Anxiety: How Can I Help Myself?
4. 10 Tips for Taking Care of Your Mental Health at University