Fall brings us back to school, the harvest, and the start of a busy holiday season from October to the end of the year. While this time of year can be fun and full of wonderful memory-making moments, it can also be a time of stress and hectic schedules. Here are a few ways you can nurture your wellbeing while managing a packed schedule.
Get Back to Self-Care Basics
Pampering yourself is nice, and has its place, but when you’re in the throes of busy schedules, it’s helpful to get back to the basics. Sometimes we underestimate the value of these simple yet powerful things.
1. Prioritize Getting Plenty of Sleep
Sleep is a pinnacle of our health. Mentally, lack of sleep can negatively impact emotional regulation, increase our stress, decrease our ability to experience positive emotions, and reduce our cognitive functioning and memory.
Lack of sleep will also negatively impact you physically, by wreaking havoc on your hormones and your body’s ability to heal, making you more susceptible to illness.
To improve sleep, avoid caffeine, alcohol, and screens in the evenings before bed, as they can keep you awake. It’s helpful to maintain a consistent sleep and wake schedule and create a bedtime routine that emphasizes soothing, low-stimulation activities to signal your brain and body that you are ready for sleep. If you need help or are struggling with insomnia, you can discuss sleep hygiene with your therapist.
2. Eat Consistently & Hydrate
It’s no secret that nutrition has a big impact on our mental and physical health. While there are many ideas on what “eating well” means, it’s important to prioritize what eating well for you looks like. Eating regular, balanced meals can improve mood, cognitive functioning, and emotional regulation while lowering stress and risk of illness. It also gives us the energy we need to get through our busy days without crashing.
The holiday season for many is a time of connecting over food and eating some of our favorite seasonal treats and meals. This can lead to feelings of joy and connection, but also feelings of guilt or shame. To help find a balance, you can try mindful eating practices, maintain a consistent schedule of eating foods that make you feel good, while allowing yourself to enjoy your favorite items with no guilt. If you are struggling with finding the balance, you can work with a dietician and your therapist to help.
Hydration is another key part of nutrition. Studies found an increased association with dehydration and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Drinking enough water will help improve mood, absorb nutrients, and contribute to your overall health and well-being.
3. Move Your Body
Moving your body is a key to maintaining mental health. Getting regular exercise can help reduce stress by improving sleep, releasing endorphins, improving cognitive function, and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Regular movement can also help your body process emotions from a Somatic perspective, improving mood and emotional regulation. See more about somatic exercise on our blog.
The key to consistent movement is finding something you enjoy and can make time for, especially when time is limited. Some research-backed, mental health-improving exercises include Aerobic exercise, resistance training, yoga, and other mindfulness-based exercises like tai chi or qigong. You can find classes in your community, or even free classes online that you can do at home.
Take a walk. When all else fails, and it’s hard to get in a more structured exercise session, walking is enough. Walking has many benefits, including improved depression and anxiety symptoms, reduced stress, and more.
4. Mindfulness Practices & Principles to Help You Be Present & Regulate Your Emotions
Mindfulness is foundational in many mental health practices and has a plethora of benefits, including reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, improved sleep, focus, and memory. It can also increase emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and relationship satisfaction, leading to an overall happier, better-quality life. Here are a few ways you can incorporate mindfulness into your busy schedule.
Learning to be Present:
Being present in the moment without worrying about the past or the future allows us to connect and feel grounded. Ways you can practice being present include:
- Breathwork– start with simply taking a deep breath, or box breathing. We have a recording here to walk you through it.
- Guided meditation– Whether it’s a moving meditation, a visualization, or a body scan, learning to be with your thoughts and present in your environment is powerful. You can start with a few minutes and still see the benefits. Here are some resources you can try.
- Mindful eating– You can practice this by simply slowing down and engaging with your food through all your senses. This is a great exercise to try with chocolate!
- Grounding skills, such as 5-4-3-2-1 or any skill that helps get you in touch with your senses.
Gratitude Practice
Gratitude practices have been shown to help improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, encourage positive mood, reduce worry, and help create overall better mental health and greater satisfaction in life.
Starting a gratitude practice is easy and takes very little time. Simply start or end your day and reflect on a few things that you are grateful for. We encourage you to write 3-5 things down or put them in your phone so that you can go back and see the positive things you are grateful for in your life. This is especially beneficial when feeling stressed or down.
Take Time to Do Small Things Every Day
This is simple but often overlooked. Remember to do small things every day, simply because they bring you joy. It can be as little as five minutes, or more if you have the time. Engage in a hobby, connect with a friend, listen to your favorite song, watch an episode of your favorite show, or cook your favorite meal. Anything that feels comforting and soothing or fun.
5. Use a Variety of Techniques to Help You with Stress Management
Lastly, managing stress will help improve your mental health and well-being. We know that it is easier said than done, so here are a few quick tips.
Planning Ahead and Being Flexible
Try to have a plan for the things that you can. Having a shared calendar of events and appointments, a to-do list of items that need to be completed (bonus points for adding self-care to this!), and planning for things like meals during the week, gift lists, travel plans, etc. Having a plan can reduce stress. Also, invite some flexibility when things don’t go according to plan, or when things change, and practice accepting those things that we can’t control. The key is to focus on what’s important and the purpose of what you are doing all the things for. If the goal is to have a fun time, sometimes things might look different from what you planned for it to be fun.
Boundaries
Holidays provide an opportunity for connection and conflict. Many of us have conflicting priorities and obligations, and little time and resources to manage them all. Practice boundaries by first prioritizing what’s important to you, and learning how to communicate these with friends, family, and employers. Ask your therapist for tips and resources to practice and improve boundaries.
Connection and Support
One way to reduce stress is to make time for meaningful connections. We are social creatures, and social connections can reduce the challenges to mental and physical health.. Whether it’s a quick phone call or a longer meet-up, make the most by practicing mindfulness and being present.
Along with connection comes support. When you’re feeling stressed and pressured from the season, don’t be afraid to reach out for support. Contact trusted friends and family, make an appointment with your therapist, or reach out to other mental health resources in your area. You don’t have to do it alone.
We hope that you can try a few things on this list to improve your mental health and well-being through the busy season! Reach out to one of our therapists at Rooted Counseling and Wellness, at our Lehi clinic or our Draper clinic, if you would like more support in navigating mental health and wellness.
References:
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