An Eagle’s View: My Four Key Strategies for Mental Health Wellness

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Daily Habits of Wellness

This important ingredient to my wellness is an obvious one and perhaps does not seem like much of an insight. Daily habits of wellness seem straightforward and practical. But it is a bit more layered than one thinks. First, you must find what specific wellness practices are essential to you. This is a process of learning, experimentation, and reflecting. This process can be fun, scary, profound, and/or frustrating. On top of this, mental health is shifting all the time as life shifts, so these tools change as your life changes.

Once you have your foundational tools, you must figure out how to fit them into your life. Daily habits only work if they are done daily. Most don’t provide instantaneous results but overtime they can be game changers. As I have mentioned before, I have had trouble keeping my routine in the past. Things that interfere with my routine are things like trips away, work, social time, forgetfulness, and exhaustion. But I know that sticking to these basics makes a big difference in my resilience, my ability to tolerate stress and change, and my overall mental health.

I remember recovering from long Covid which affected my breathing and lung capacity. Since there were no clear guidelines of how to recover from this at the time, I began walking as much as possible because this seemed like a good way to help my lungs become healthy again. My route had a big hill at the beginning and when I reached the top, I had trouble breathing. Not being winded from being out of shape but not being able to breathe – an experience I never had before. After 3 months it got easier and after about 6 months my breathing problems disappeared from this consistent strengthening of my lungs.

Recovery is much like this. Another example is that I have had very low iron over years, which affects sleep and mental health. I had been kind of forgetful and inconsistent about taking supplements until I realized the impact on my energy and wellbeing. So, I started to take the right supplement and after 3 months my ferritin levels jumped from roughly 6 to 56. I had hovered under 10 for quite a while which was impacting sleep and anxiety levels. Daily habits can have a large impact on mental health.

I am totally empathetic that many people with mental illness struggle with their self-care, myself included. There are barriers to being able to do one’s mental health habits daily. If you are ill or recovering from a recent episode, you may be struggling with mental health symptoms that make it difficult to look after yourself.

In this case, I recommend two things. First, create a very simple self-care routine, picking the most crucial habits that support your mental health. This can include things like sleep hygiene, exercise, diet, and social time. Second, have your supporters help you with your recovery habits. Have someone walk with you. Have someone remind you to take your medications or set an alarm. Each small, consistent step will build up over time. Don’t expect to be able to do everything you do when you are at your best. Be self-compassionate and reward yourself for small steps. Overtime, it gets easier.

In 2016, I was recovering from an episode. I focused on daily walks, healthy eating, and sleep. These were my foundational habits for six months before I returned to work. When I returned to work, I felt healthy in my body and grounded.

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Practice of Presence, the Power of Healthy Thinking, and Regulation

My spider plant flowered. One tiny flower which was gone in a day. It reminded me of the importance of presence. When you are in the moment, you release anxious, low, or paranoid thoughts. I was watching a video on Patricia Deegan, who was diagnosed with a mental illness as a young woman and given a poor prognosis on her schizophrenia. She talks about hearing voices and how she was able to recover by focusing as much as possible on the task at hand, especially when she was in collage studying. She has achieved many things, including being a pioneer of mental health recovery. It started with the discipline of taking the focus away from the hallucinations she was having and turning towards life. Her recovery all started with small steps that brought her out of her head and into the moment. Granted, many people still need medications to end psychosis and hallucinations. However, mindfulness is a powerful tool in wellness.

Mental illness is fueled by our thinking. I think back to my very first episode and I see how my fear, unchecked by rational and compassionate thinking, led to insomnia, panic, and eventually psychosis. But it started with fear (and exhaustion).

I think back to to my 2012 episode, where I felt such acute shame in my depression. My thoughts went a long the lines of…” I’ve failed.” “People are judging me…” “I’ll never work again.” This kind of thinking contributed to depression, shame, and panic. I remember having a painful panic attack when having tea with one of my longtime friends just because I felt so ashamed of my mental illness and felt so out of step with life. But through daily habits, and challenging myself to get back into life, I got well again.

I notice that many people with mental illness get caught in their minds so much so that it can become a form of dissociation. What I mean in this context of dissociation is not being present in one’s body because one is thinking all the time.

The antidote to this overthinking is developing presence, which sounds so much easier than it is. But there are many ways of healing unhelpful thoughts and being caught in thinking. Practices such as meditation is a way of training the mind to the present. However, any activity can bring you present. A physical activity. A creative activity. A social connection. Gardening. The list is practically endless.

At the same time, finding the source (or sources) of unhealthy thinking and challenging negative thinking are two immensely important tasks. Addressing trauma can be very helpful for breaking up old negative beliefs about self and life. Practicing aspects of Cognitive Behavioral approach can really help to understand and change one’s thinking patterns.

When negative thinking is impacting your mental health then its time to work with it. I use different tools in this area because it is one I struggle with. I try to fill my days with things that bring me present. I also find ways to challenge my thinking through creativity and journalling. I notice when I am spiraling into grief, fear, or frustration, I find something that feels good and nourishing to do, like yoga or writing a poem.

It’s also important to understand that creativity requires forays into the imagination. We are never going to be 100% present and that is okay. Although thinking can be one contributing factor to mental illness, I don’t think pathologizing our thinking is helpful either. Thinking can provide deep insight into life. Reflection is a beautiful function of the human mind. It’s about finding a balance.

Regulation is key when talking about our mind/body connection and mental health wellness. I’ve talked a lot about regulation practices, like deep breathing, so I am just going summarize regulation briefly. I use regulation for lowering stress, transitioning to sleep, calming big emotions, helping me be present in my body, and healing when trauma resurfaces. Regulation calms the mind/body, keeping the nervous system in what is called the window of tolerance. If your body is regulated, you are less likely to experience panic attacks, mania, deep depressions, or even psychosis. There are many YouTube videos that can teach you ways to regulate your nervous system. It takes a bit to find practices that work for you and to create space for them in your life. In a very dysregulated world, these practices can be a saving grace.

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Expressing and Processing Feelings

While it is important to challenge thoughts which contribute to distressing feelings, it is also important to recognize we have feelings, either with a proceeding thought or emerging spontaneously. I have found rationalizing feelings away is not helpful for my mental health. So often we either pretend we aren’t having a feeling or we dump it out to someone. There is significant research on the connection of suppression of emotion and illness.

We need to take space when we feel emotional to name what is happening and develop compassion for how we feel. This can be done alone or with another person depending on the situation and your preference.

I have made my home a safe space to feel my feelings. I also have people in my life who will hold space for my feelings and help me process them. But I used to repress a lot, a habit that still comes up sometimes. I remember as a preteen, feeling triggered in friendships, and just stuffing everything down and withdrawing, which create disconnection, anxiety and sadness. Part of my mental illness has been about patterns of repression. Knowing that I don’t have to feel happy all the time and knowing that I can be upset or hurt by people and that doesn’t make me a bad person are really important parts of my healing.

There is this general idea in our society that the goal is to be happy all the time and that adults should control their feelings (and not have them). These are damaging beliefs, and they impact mental health.

A great resource on feelings is a book by Brene Brown, called Atlas of the Heart. It goes over the nuances of each emotion, helping us understand the great variety of our feelings. We can explore with our creative practices how we feel, integrating complex emotions into our narratives.

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Rest

I have talked about the importance of rest. Our society is very much about doing. Part of this is the healthy enjoyment of our lives – doing things we love, and working hard. But rest is often pathologized. A person is called lazy, or unmotivated if they prioritize rest. But rest is can be crucial for mental health. Rest can help prevent an episode or it can help the brain recover from an episode.

My journey since 2020 and the escalating stress is an example of how stress without relief, without deep rest, can contribute to all sorts of health issues. I literally didn’t know what to take off my plate – everything seems inevitable and unyielding. I felt if I let one thing go, I would fail. It created a deep burnout and chronic muscle tension. It has been a long recovery of energy, regulating sleep, and finding balance.

If you include rest in your life, you can create a life pace that is manageable. For people with lived experience of mental illness this is important. Bipolar in my family was, in part, a reflection of pushing until an inevitable crash into depression.

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Okay, are you ready to dive into making art? 🎨

Therapeutic Arts Activity

Explore the basic structure of mental health wellness.

Instructions

Write a letter to yourself about what factors are crucial to your wellness. Answer the question: what do you need to do every day and/or every week for your mental health?

Materials Needed

• Pens and paper
• Envelope

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Once you’ve completed this activity, here are some questions as guidelines for your personal explorations:

1. How did it feel to write this letter? Was it easy? Was it difficult?

2. Does the letter reflect what your mental health wellness looks like now?

3. Did you gain new insight into what is essential for your mental health?

4. How could you use your letter writing as a therapeutic tool?

This post is like a letter to myself. This letter changes over time and by next year, it might look a bit different. While one might argue that figuring our your recovery right away might save you a lot of pain and suffering (and this is a valid point), I also see how mental health recovery and life growth are so closely joined. It’s through the learning and struggle, that we become stronger in our mental health wellness. My hope is that these struggles won’t be as challenging as some of mine have been. Part of this blogging journey is about learning tools and gaining insight to prevent the worst of mental illness and to strengthen recovery in a person with lived experience of mental illness.

❤️❤️❤️ With care and kindness, Meegan

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