Mental Fitness Regimes: Creating Your Self-Care Plan 

You are one of the courageous ones, you took the time to invest in your own mental health and did the work to learn about yourself and improve your well being, working with a mental health professional. It was well worth it, your heightened awareness let’s you manage, cope with and hopefully even avoid unfavourable situations that may trigger your anxiety or depressive feelings. As the days, months and years go by, you may find that the necessary immediate focus on your day-to-day life can leave you with lowered general awareness or defenses and you simply become overwhelmed once again. Losing track mainly happens over time with both typical and extraordinary challenges taking their toll. In the event these feelings return, committing to a mental fitness regime with manageable workouts may be all you need to practice self-care in these moments and get back to your healthier place.

Self-care may be a prevalent catch-all phrase, but it demonstrates a critical positive shift and a very public acceptance of the need to address our emotional well being. If we can empower ourselves even just to some extent, we raise the bar for more open conversation and support because even mild mental health challenges can have a detrimental impact. Self-care in the form of a mental fitness regime is one of the simplest, most manageable ways to check in with yourself.  Selecting from a series of different exercises, you can design your own plan that will help you manage your day-to- day to keep you going. Tracking your progress is also a way to gauge how challenged you are feeling and whether you are in need of professional support.

 

Taking Ownership and Taking Action

If you are surprised to find yourself challenged once again by circumstances or feelings that are affecting the quality of your life, it is important to take appropriate action and get back on track. You may decide the most appropriate course of action to take is to access a mental health care professional. If you have previous experience coping with mild to moderate anxiety or depression, you may know how well you can manage on your own to get back to full health. Whether you seek out support or know you’ve got this, there are some simple tactics you can use right away. Don’t let it slide!

 

Choosing the right mental fitness exercise for you

What can you do exactly to help ensure you sustain your level of mental health? Here is a list of tips and exercises to practice mental fitness:

1.     Work it out - Make a checklist

Celebrities have shared their own tools for self-checks. What has worked for them? Kristen Bell copes with anxiety and depression and has explained in an interview that if she is feeling low, her practice is to “make a checklist of good and bad things in my life to see if it’s my mental state or if we really have a problem.” The idea is that you get to see in one snapshot what is currently on your mind, but also how you are perceiving what is happening in your life. Once you have it laid out in front of you, perhaps you can go back to a refresh of your learned coping skills from previous therapy or perhaps it’s time to reach back out to your mental health professional for a more formal check in. Putting in the time to evaluate your own perceptions is a quick and worthwhile exercise.

2.     Keep track - Journaling

Ok, maybe developing that checklist or evaluating good from bad things in your life just isn’t enough to help right now. You need something more substantial… In that case, journaling and keeping track over time will better help you check in with yourself. Maybe it’s more of a process to identify and proclaim to yourself what is really going on. A journal is a great way to take notes and look back to pull ideas together and evaluate more objectively at a later time. Gathering your thoughts in a journal can also be a very helpful continuing resource if you do choose to go back to a mental healthcare professional.

3.     Take a Moment on your own terms - Create a ritual

Create your own wellness ritual. This may be something really quick you can do daily to get you through this new challenging time. At the very least and in its simplest form, this is something that gives you a moment of reprieve. It is just for you and you can incorporate a ritual right into your life that makes you feel better in that moment and hopefully just after. This can be as simple as a daily walk on your own. Celebrities Prince Harry and Jennifer Aniston, choose to practice meditation as another example. These rituals can be typical daily activities, like cooking or riding a bike, but they serve to put you at ease in the moment and give you an opportunity for some needed down time so you can refocus. 

4.     Take a Guided Moment - Use an app

For those who need to check out and not engage in order to feel better and get that much needed breather, there are countless apps that can help you manage. Mental health apps cover a broad range of services, including access to virtual professional care. For those apps that support self-care, these can help you maintain your mental fitness with exercises and programming to suit your own needs. Self-care apps cover numerous topics from guided meditation to classes that address specific challenges, like mindfulness or lack of sleep. Others offer trackers that help you record your mood and learn strategies to feel better. These are not too unlike the physical health apps that track your efforts. The purpose of these apps is to provide tools to make it easier and support the work you need to do in order to maintain your own mental health. They can be personalized and targeted to your specific goals and needs. Go to this 2022 list for examples and where to start!

5.     Get back to basics

Even when you have the tools to manage the down times, we can still become overwhelmed despite our best efforts. Sometimes coping with feelings of anxiety or depression means just knowing what you have energy to do that will help. When these extra exercises like rituals and journaling seem like too time consuming or unhelpful right now, maybe it’s the right time to just focus on the basics – like am I eating properly, am I able to exercise regularly or can I spend some time making a social connection? Sometimes just focusing on your day-to-day routines and doing your best to manage your most fundamental needs is enough to get through. Focusing on small accomplishments during your day, can help you keep up enough of momentum to get through a tough time. If you find you are unable to keep up your basic routines effectively, maybe it is time to check in with a mental health care for more support.

6.     Stay Connected - Have a check in buddy

We all need a social network. For some, you may just need to focus on something else other than yourself in order to take a break from your own feelings. Sometimes a good chat with a friend or family member gives you a chance to gain perspective. You might want to set up a buddy system and have someone in mind to reach out to when you need them, someone you trust and will be there for you. Taking the time to connect can provide a certain peace of mind and reprieve or even bolstered self-confidence when you need it most.

 

Know when it’s right for you to access professional care   

Remember to consider professional support when you need it. According to the Mayo Clinic, one’s own mental health is truly distinct from person to person. Generally, however, these are the signs and symptoms that indicate you may benefit from a qualified mental healthcare professional:

• Marked changes in personality, eating or sleeping patterns

• An inability to cope with problems or daily activities

• Feeling of disconnection or withdrawal from normal activities

• Unusual or "magical" thinking

• Excessive anxiety

• Prolonged sadness, depression or apathy

• Thoughts or statements about suicide or harming others

• Substance misuse

• Extreme mood swings

• Excessive anger, hostility or violent behavior
  
  

Practicing a mental fitness regime may be all you need for a reset or it could be the best way to figure out if you need of a mental health professional. While the insights and lessons you have learned from previous work with a mental healthcare worker will serve you, knowing when to reach back out for more structured support is also important.

For more reading on mental fitness, see:

CAMH’s mental fitness tips

Alberta Based Webinar Series on Mental Fitness Tactics

How celebrities practice self-care

Best mental health apps of 2022

 

Please note: This article is intended as a snapshot guide to self care practices for those coping with mild to moderate anxiety and depression and for anyone who is not in immediate need of professional health care. If you are in immediate crisis, call 911. For Indigenous peoples across Canada, contact the Hope for Wellness HelpLine for support in your preferred language. If you are managing more severe mental health illnesses, please refer to your dedicated health professional. Please contact Dr. Inverpal Braich to learn more about psychotherapy/psychological services and to see if they are right for you.