A lot of us have experienced situations lately that have made us curious about what the top 3 self care tips for mental health would be! I have discovered over the last 30-something years that we just really have to take care of ourselves. If we don’t fill our own glass, we have nothing to pour from.
Long, hot, relaxing baths!
My #1 tip in the top 3 self care tips for mental health has got to be long, relaxing baths. If you haven’t had a really relaxing bath, maybe you’ve been doing it wrong. I like the get the water really hot but some people don’t love that. Don’t underestimate the value of “funness” of bubbles. I always use my bubble baths because it just feels more luxurious and like you’re not there just to bathe. Epsom salts are also wonderful because they benefit your skin and mood!
If you keep even a single candle in your bathroom, it really makes a difference for the mood or vibe of a relaxing bath. I love to read in the bath as well but you could also listen to an audio book on your phone! Imagine that, propping it up and just relaxing into the bubbles while enjoying the story!
I think the reason a bath can be so beneficial is because usually we unplug from technology. Also the dim lighting from having a candle lit and the main light off sends some kind of signal to your brain. Maybe it is reminding us of the calmer days before electricity or it reminds us of the darkness just after a sunset.
Also, warm water relaxes your blood vessels so this can actually allow blood pressure to drop. This creates a calming affect by either restoring you to a normal blood pressure or by reducing you to a lower blood pressure like you’d find when you meditate and everything slows down in your body.
Meditation
I could write an entire article on why meditation is wonderful for you so here I just want to sing it’s praises as a wonderful way for self care. In today’s modern fast paced world we all spend so much of our day plugged in, tuned in, talked to and at and we’re overloaded and over-stimulated. Meditation starts out solely beneficial as a moment to unplug and just sit and be with yourself and see what is happening in your brain.
Then it is even more beneficial when you learn how to calm your brain and make sense of the circling thoughts you find within. You can sit as pictured above or even just kicked back on your bed but the importance is what you hear. You either want to hear nothing, silence or use a specific meditation track.
Meditation tracks can have specific sound waves and frequencies to bring on specific moods or feelings of calmness, love, healing, etc.
By using this time to calm down and tap into ourselves, we can do a mental check in. As soon as you silence the outside world, your inside world will begin to yell at you. Before you know it you’re going over grocery order lists, what did you forget to do, who do you need to call, etc. Once you calm those thoughts you’re left with your own inner musings and questions to life.
This is where we can reach a calm space and begin to either dissect or just enjoy what we see, hear or feel inside ourselves. With more practice you learn to get calmer, deeper, faster. With more practice you learn whether you need to have a moment of peace within or if you want to seek the answer to a burning question…and how to do both.
The reason meditation is one of the 3 top self care tips for mental health is because it teaches us the control we have over our minds, our thoughts, how we talk to ourselves and even our unconscious thoughts and decisions. You learn how to take the power back from your most important organ.
And by learning how to tune out the outside world and tune into you, you learn to listen to what you need to relax and to feel recharged. It is completely mind mending relaxing when done properly and can be as efficient as a 15 minute complete mood reset, once you know what you’re doing.
Learning how to set healthy boundaries in relationships and enforce them.
This is a hard lesson for a lot of people and a good majority of people think that others having boundaries could be them being rude. Not only does it have to do with HOW you choose to enforce your boundaries but it also depends just how to interact with people.
If you have a lot of people in your life constantly asking for favors and you always say yes but you know you are being taken advantage of, you may start trying to say no. Which, if this is you, then saying no probably isn’t that easy for you. But so say you finally do it and those same users are going to think you’re being rude or mean all the sudden because your behavior pattern changed. It isn’t rude at all to stand up for yourself and refuse to do something you don’t want to do. But to someone who has never heard you say no, it can be taken as rude.
It is important we have healthy boundaries in our most intimate, close relationships because these are the ones who should love us enough to want to have healthy boundaries and not do things to hurt or use us in the first place.
For you setting a new healthy boundary in order to take better care of yourself may just be that from now on you’ll practice saying no when a friend invites you out when you’d rather stay home.
It could be that you have a co-worker always saying super rude things to you and you decide to finally bring it up with your boss and document it.
Or it could be that you have a really toxic relative who always manages to make you feel like crap for whatever reason and you choose to unfollow them on socials and just take a break from seeing or talking to them. I think social media breaks are super helpful because it gets us out of that same thought pattern about someone or something for a bit and helps us to refocus on things that matter more.
I hope these tips were helpful and you give them a try!
If you’d like to read my personal story, you can find it here!
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Xoxo, Elizabeth
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About the Author: Elizabeth Richey, living and thriving in rural Arkansas, Aquarian and iced coffee enthusiast. When she’s not writing, gardening, playing with her chocolate lab Maple or sharing videos on YouTube (Elizabeth’s Many Adventures) you can find her enjoying time with her family or traveling somewhere new! Most of the time she’s dreaming of being kicked back in her hammock in her cottage garden listening to the birds sing.
