Mind Your Mental Health in May

May is Mental Health Month. Have you done something for yourself and your kids to boost the focus on mental health yet? If not, there is still time! Here are 9 tips to make the last 9 days of May really count! 

9. Find a Reason to Celebrate 

Most kiddos are coming up on their last day of school for the year.  They may have end-of-year class parties with a few games and treats to celebrate all that they have acheived. This is a good time to celebrate your family too. As a SPHere, you helped guide your children through another milestone and that is something to celebrate!   

Remember that anticipation you yourself felt as a child as summer approached?  There was a sense of freedom and excitement about the adventures that lay ahead. Even if your own job doesn’t change between the school year and the summer, you will still be entering a fresh new time of year. The seasons will be different, maybe it’s finally warm outside after a long winter, or if you live in the south, you’ve now hit the 90+ degree period where visits to the pool or lake are a mainstay. Schedules will be more relaxed. Even if your kids still double as your alarm clock, at least there may not be the same rush to get out the door every morning at a specific time. Find the reasons to celebrate this coming transition and then actually celebrate it! Make a cake or some cookies. Play some games. Do something that you don’t do every day to mark this memorable transition.  

8. Take the Smallest Action on Something Hanging Over Your Head 

We procrastinate on things that often feel bigger than they are. Instead of looking for the BEST next step, find the SMALLEST next step that you can take to push that task even a tiny bit forward. Any momentum will give you a sense of accomplishment and may even spur you towards another small step. Progress of any kind can do wonders for your mental health and reverse the spiral of automatic negative thoughts.  To get started you can use Mel Robbins’ 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 tactic where you count down and when you hit one you move without thinking or hesitating.  

7. Create a Self-Care Kit 

Mindfulness is all the rage right now, but honestly it just makes me want to rage when I hear someone suggest it to me when I am anything but calm. I think in part it’s because it’s a little too out there or nebulous for me to really wrap my head around when stated in such a simple way. Then there are a whole slew of breathing patterns and techniques that are touted as ideal methods for calming the nervous system, but generally all it does is make me more anxious.  And don’t even get me started on meditation! I have heard meditation referred to as “repeatedly licking a rock” and that sounds more accurate in my opinion.  All that being said, what we tend to push back on most is often exactly what we need.  “Thou dost protest too much” ring a bell? 

So instead, I have been trying to find “my” version of mindfulness and meditation. This has culminated in a variety of tactics and products that help me feel calm. I will do a separate post on this, but here is a sneak peek. 

Instead of focusing on nothing, or trying to clear your mind, focus on something specific that engages one of your five senses. This may be a sound (such as a singing bowl or the sound of rain on the roof), a smell (such as essential oils or a candle), a sight (such as ocean waves moving on and offshore, or the flickering of a fireplace flame), a taste (such as holding something sweet in your mouth for several minutes), or a touch (the feel of caressing a dog or some soft fabric, or relax under a weighted blanket).  Even listening to an educational session on the Calm app can be helpful in focusing my mind enough to relax, without having to be in full on mantra or meditation mode.   

Another form of mindfulness for me is restorative yoga.  I am no longer a flexible person. I think that left my body after I stopped doing gymnastics as a kid. Therefore, regular types of yoga are anything but relaxing for me. I have to bend in weird ways and my flexibility limits how much I can “sink into the pose”.   Usually it’s more shaking, sweating and trying to not hold my breath until we can move on to a different position. Restorative yoga is something completely different. You use supportive devices such as yoga blocks, bolsters and blankets to put yourself into completely supported positions.  It’s like holding gentle, deep stretches and just focusing on letting the tension in your body go.  Hopefully that will help increase my flexibility over time and perhaps other forms of yoga will become more appealing in the future. It’s all about finding out what resonates with you in this moment right now. 

6. Seek Out Support (SOS) 

SOS is morse code for a distress signal. We ALL need support! There is nothing wrong with you, or unique about you for needing and wanting help from others. We are built to live in connection with others.  As children, some of us may not have received the heathy support we so rightly deserved. We may have internalized that our needs were not important or worthy of being met. We may have felt unseen, unloved or unworthy as the result of interactions with one or more people in our lives. If that describes you, I am so sorry that happened to you. You deserve to be truly seen. You deserve love. You are worthy just as you are and just because you exist.   

While we can’t change our past, we can realize that our old patterns of survival may not be serving us anymore. If you were a people pleaser all your life, you may not think it's okay to have needs or to ask for help, which could not be further from the truth. We just need to find people who are safe to ask and realize that if someone can’t support us in the way we need them to, it’s often more about them and their own issues and struggles, than it is about us. 

Support can come in many forms. Groups like what we are creating with SPHere We Go are a great place to find like-minded people who can really understand your inner world. Family and friends can also be a wonderful source of support, IF we feel safe in those relationships and can bring our true selves into those spaces. 

I am a huge proponent of therapy as well. Therapy can come in many forms. Most of us have some familiarity with individual therapy and what that looks like, but did you know that there are many many many different types of therapeutic models now? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Narrative Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), I could go on and on.  

Additionally, there is also a lesser-known form of therapy called group therapy.  When hearing the words group therapy, you may immediately think about support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, where everyone shares the same struggle or addiction; however, group therapy can be something quite different, particular if you seek out Relationship Skills groups, or Interpersonal Process Therapy Groups.  These groups typically include several group members (typically 15 or less) and one or two therapists that lead the group for an hour or two on a weekly basis. The group may be very diverse in terms of age, gender, race, challenges, etc., but ultimately there will be commonalities in the feelings around life experiences. This helps people to feel less alone or unique in their struggles. It also serves as a playground of sorts to try using your voice in new ways or asking for and receiving support. The therapist helps to guide and support those interpersonal interactions and any associated emotions that may come up for you or others. 

There are also different methods for how to engage in therapy. You can do in person therapy, but due to the pandemic shake up there are now more options for virtual interactions with a therapist or group that meets online. You can also educate yourself through reading self-help books or becoming a member on a site like MedCircle where you can listen to trusted therapists talk about different conditions, situations and forms of therapy. The more you understand and educate yourself, the more you can advocate for yourself and ensure you get the support you need.   

5. Snuggle Time 

Nuff said! Physical touch is so healing. Take some time to snuggle up with your kids, or if you have snarky teens that won’t go for that, snuggle up with a pet. Have teens and no pets? Bless you!!! Then you need to get creative to meet that need for physical touch and affection. One option is to go to a cat cafe and spend some time playing with or snuggling the kitties there.  If you prefer dogs, volunteer to walk dogs at your local animal rescue.  

Another option is to give loving touch to yourself. Something I learned about recently is called the Havening Touch. It is a type of self-touch that calms your nervous system.  I will do more posts about this in the future, but there is a good amount of information and videos available online regarding this somewhat newer technique. 

4. Ditch Digital for a Day 

Okay hear me out on this one! Maybe a day seems excessive. If so, pick a chunk of time that feels more reasonable to you. Grab a physical book or magazine, do a puzzle, dive into a coloring book – anything that doesn’t involve electronics or a screen. We are so inundated by blue light and the frenetic pace of what we see on screens.  

Pay attention the next time you watch a commercial. They change the shot almost every second or two to keep your brain interested and primed for more dopamine hits. The same is true when scrolling the internet. The text is sliding up or down the page, images are popping up and perhaps ads or other items are all making a bid for your attention. We often don’t realize how mentally draining this can be until we detox for a bit and revert to analog methods. 

3. Bask in Nature 

Feel the wind on your face, the sun on your skin, the crunch of leaves under your feet. Really be present in the moment and aware of everything your senses can tell you about your surroundings.  Think of how magical it is that nature exists in this incredible state. Can you hear the birds singing or do you see a squirrel scurrying off with a prized acorn? Do you smell the unique scent after a spring rain? These are all things we often take for granted. Slow down, even if it's just for a few minutes each day, to really notice all the beauty in the world.  Nature supports life, literally and figuratively. 

2. Notice and be Grateful for the Smallest Things 

I love photography. I find it is a way to capture a moment, a memory, a perfect description of a feeling that can be so hard to put into words. A particular type of photography that I have fallen in love with is macro photography. This is basically taking extremely close up pictures of the smallest details. It allows us to see the parts that make up the whole picture. For example, we see people’s eyes every day, but if you look really closely there are so many details and variations even within the colored part of a single individual’s eyes that we never notice. It’s a fascinating world that is all around us, but mostly goes unseen. 

You may have seen macro photography with a bee on a flower. You can see every fuzzy strand on the bee’s back and their eyes come to life when you really look at them in great detail. You can see the veining on the flower that carries nutrients and gives it life.  These small details help put things in perspective.     

1. Be a Tourist, Even if You Don’t go Far from Home 

We can all find something that is special about where we live or a nearby town.  Doing something new that we have never done before opens our mind to the possibilities in life.  Seeing possibilities helps to increase our sense of autonomy and control and fosters a sense of hope. If you love art, perhaps you visit a museum or go on a scavenger hunt for street art around town. If you love to move, maybe you check out a new trail or do an activity that you love but in a new location.  If you love nature and animals perhaps you check out a place where you can observe or engage with wildlife.  

Here in Austin, we have a unique place called Mayfield Park. This relaxing setting is home to several peacocks and peahens who roam freely around the area. It is fascinating to watch these large, majestic birds move around the land or hop up into trees or on the building’s roof. It is certainly not something I would see every day and visiting this park incorporates a lot of the other tips and tricks I noted in the prior suggestions, making it a great place to reset. 

What areas are near you that you haven’t explored yet, or have not visited for a while? Can you create a new shared experience with your kiddos by introducing them to this new location?   

Tell us in the comments what tips resonate with you and what other strategies you have tried for building and protecting your mental health and the mental health of your kids.