Photo from Health Europa
Haley Meneses
As the school year rolls on, not everyone is feeling their best mentally. Statistically, there is an increased likelihood for a student to develop anxiety or depression due to academic stress. Research estimates that 1 in 5 students will experience a significant mental health issue, varying in severity. This is even more prevalent for students in high school.
However, not all hope is lost for those dealing with mental health issues. A variety of techniques can be used to help you or a friend who is going through a tough time.
INTERNAL TECHNIQUES:
Internal techniques do not necessarily require any outside sources. These are going to be used to help yourself mentally.
Quiet your Mind
This could be through a variety of methods, one of the most popular being meditation. Sit down, take a deep breath, and think of a blank scene. A white room, with nothing on the walls, a calm lake. Think of things that do not put a strain on your brain, because the main objective here is to not overthink.
Mindfulness is another big technique to quiet your mind. Rather than simply setting a few minutes aside to meditate, mindfulness becomes intertwined with your daily life. Mindfulness consists of catching when you say self-deprecating things to yourself, and twisting it into a positive, constructive phrase. For example, imagine you do poorly on a test you had expected to do well on.. You say something bad to yourself. After this, try and catch when you say these things, and turn it into something positive. It may seem silly, but as they say, ‘fake it till you make it.’ After a while, you won’t have to catch yourself saying negative things, rather you’ll unintentionally start out with the good ones.
Learn Healthy Coping Strategies
For this, look into what helps you personally. Is there a place where you always feel calm? Are there activities you enjoy doing where you always feel calm? A person you enjoy being with? All these strategies are typically referred to as ‘destressors.’ It’s specific to the individual, so you get to decide what to do. When you’re feeling stressed or anxious, or simply not in a good mindset, go to these things. Watch a video about it. However, make sure it’s a healthy strategy. Doing something unhealthy when you’re not feeling okay won’t ever make things better for yourself!
Treat Yourself the Way You would Treat Others
Would you judge others for a small mistake? Chances are, no, you wouldn’t. Let’s use an example. Imagine someone you know, but aren’t close with, slips and falls on ice while walking to their car. It may feel embarrassing to them for a while afterwards. However, when you saw that person slip, then fall, then get up, did you judge them at all? Would you think negatively of them for the rest of the day, or week, or the rest of your life? No! The same thing goes for yourself if you were to ever slip and fall. Nobody is going to judge you, so thinking that they will isn’t exactly a plausible outcome of the situation. This thinking can also be applied to almost any other situation that you feel you should be embarrassed about. You must be kind to yourself, and respect yourself, the same way you would towards others.
EXTERNAL TECHNIQUES:
External techniques are techniques that require extra material to be added or removed from your life in order to help yourself.
Take care of your everyday surroundings
Studies have shown that a cluttered environment can lead to a more cluttered mind. If you’re able, declutter your environment. That laundry pile sitting in the corner of your room? Throw it in the washing machine, it doesn’t take too long right now, and it will do you some good to see it out of your room. Even if that means you’ll have to fold it and put it away later, it can be done in little, quick spurts. Baby steps could be important with this, too. Don’t overload your brain with the additional stress of feeling like you must clean your bedroom entirely. Take it one step at a time!
Take care of your body
There’s a reason doctors say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It helps to stimulate the brain, and allows for less tiredness, and more focus. Even if you tell yourself you don’t have time in the morning, any sort of granola bar, handful of almonds, or toast is better than eating nothing in the morning. There is also a large amount of importance for other meals throughout the day. Lunch and dinner will help you to reach the amount of energy you need throughout the day. A person, on average, is suggested to consume approximately 2000 calories per day depending on their weight and size. Consuming too little gives you less energy than required for efficient functioning of the human body.
Not only food is important for your body, drinking lots of water, cutting out drugs or alcohol, (or simply staying away from them in the first place), taking showers/ baths, and keeping good hygiene in general is important if you want to feel your best throughout the day. Doing these things will greatly improve the function of your brain, and body as a whole. An efficiently functioning brain will help towards better decision making, rational thinking, and control over your emotions.
Surround yourself with good people
This one is thrown around all the time; however, not much thought is really given to it. Surrounding yourself with positive, uplifting people can do a lot more than you might think. As we walk through our teenage years, we are easily influenced by others. What you wear may be entirely influenced by one person saying they liked, or disliked, an article of your clothing. The same may go for how you feel about yourself. If one person constantly makes fun of your appearance, or tells you what you should be feeling, it can be detrimental to your mental health. If you instead distance yourself from these people, and begin to surround yourself with uplifting people, it can help to realize who judges you and dictates what you do with your life and who doesn’t.
Have a change in pace once in awhile
Sometimes, we can get ourselves stuck in a loop of going through the motions of life. We just wake up, get ready, go to school, go throughout the day there, go to after school activities, (or just go home) do our homework, then go to sleep. It doesn’t feel as though anything interesting, because it’s the same thing, every day. Instead of this, implement something every day that’s different than the last. It could be something small, such as going for a walk, taking your dog to a nearby dog park, going to a pet store just to look at the fish, or trying a new recipe at home. Whatever it is, try to make every day special!
Final note
As always, with all of these things, if the problem becomes too much to handle on your own, GET HELP. Talk with anyone who makes you feel safe. This may be a friend, a parent, a teacher, a school counselor, any religious leader if you have one, a coach, or any other person in your life. Your mental health is more important than anything, because it affects us EVERY DAY. Helping your mental health is the first step to feeling better in all areas in your life. Please don’t ever believe that there is no way out of your situation, because there always will be, no matter what.
