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Salisbury House, 2 Buddle Street, Wallsend, NE28 6EH

Staying Well

Mental wellness takes basic selfcare and routines, and often when people start to feel unwell it is these routines that fall by the wayside. Often, regaining control over basic self care routines can help us to regain control over our feelings and our lives. Its important not to underestimate how important it is to spend time with those basic tasks that we often take for granted when life is busy. 

Eating Well

One aspect of maintaining mental wellness as well as looking after your physical health is eating good food. Regular meals, shared with family or friends at the same time of the day each and every day is important to stay well. This can be challenging at times when you are caring for others, for example if you have just had a baby, have elderly relatives or you have other caring responsibilities. It can also be challenging if you work shifts or different work patterns.  Meal planning and shopping with a list can both help to ensure you stay on track with healthy eating at regular times. Batch cooking may also help so that at times when you are more busy you still have good food on hand to heat up from the freezer. 

Sleeping Well

There are many ways to ensure you have a good nights sleep, including regular bed times, regular waking patterns and good evening routines. Your evening routine may include having a bath to relax, reading a book or watching tv. Having less distractions in the bedroom and ensuring a relaxing, tidy space can also help. 

A comfortable bed is also beneficial to help you sleep more soundly. Some people find lavender helps them to fall asleep and you can buy lavender pillow spray to help you fall asleep. 

Alcohol and Drugs

If you are relying on alcohol or drugs to help you, this can have a negative affect on your mental wellness and can also impact your physical health. If you feel that your alcohol or drug intake is a problem, seek help to ensure you are able to regain control in this area of your life. 

Regular Exercise

Fresh air and movement helps you physically and well as mentally. Moving makes you feel better and getting out in the fresh air and into nature can help to shift your mood

Cleaning

Regular showers and baths and cleaning your teeth can help you feel better and more in control. Often when we don’t like ourselves we might not feel that we deserve to have clean clothes and a clean body but this is essential for our wellbeing. Having a clean and tidy house can also help our mental health. Sitting in a messy space can make us feel more stressed – even if you are not aware of this. 

Human Connection

Feeling connected can feel like a huge challenge when you are feeling really low. But connection to others is vitally important to staying mentally well. We are social creatures and talking to other people regularly is a positive step to a healthy mind. If feeling too overwhelmed to reach out a simple interaction on social media or a text message to someone you know and trust can break the cycle of negative thoughts. It doesn’t even have to be to share how you’re feeling. Often at these times this is the most difficult point that you could open up and disclose how you’re feeling. But interacting about something that is on safer emotional territory can really help. You could even make it about them rather than you, if that works best for you. 

 

Animals

If contacting humans is a step too far for you, animal connection is a good way of feeling better. Stroking a dog or cat and telling them all of your troubles is a great way of offloading to someone who won’t answer back, give you advice or tell you off for making a mess. They will listen and they will come to you without any judgement at all. 

Singing and Music

Singing is a great way of releasing pent up stress, anger, frustration or other emotion that needs to be expelled. Keeping those emotions inside is just not good for you. Music is another great way of changing your mood, just make sure you put something on that will help you feel better rather than make you feel worse!

Basics

Of course all of these points are very simple, but often when we aren’t feeling well we need to be reminded to take care of ourselves in these basic ways. We might need our friends or family to remind us to do these things, or to do these things for us if we are feeling unable to do them for ourselves. If you feel really down, doing them one step at a time can help to stop you from feeling overwhelmed. However, if you’re not managing these things know that this is very normal and quite common when people are unwell and try not to give yourself a hard time for not being able to cope with them.  You can find out more information from the NHS. During our initial assessment, one of our questions is relating to the basics – are you eating, sleeping, resting, drinking too much. Its the simple routines that we can forget about when we are feeling overwhelmed and we need a reminder that this is important and can really help us to get back on track. Contact us for further information about our therapy services.