#59: 5 Powerful Tips for Better Mental Health

Are you wondering - how do I improve my mental health and wellbeing?

Maybe you are looking for guidance on the habits that foster good mental health?

Look no further - in this episode I describe my TOP 5 TIPS for good mental health.

From breaking out of autopilot mode to learning the art of self-compassion, I cover practical ways to enhance your well-being. Discover how to be more present in everyday life, manage your thoughts, and address the basics of self-care. This episode is a guide to understanding and nurturing your mental health, with tips and exercises you can start today.

Highlights include:
01:32 Shift Out of Autopilot
04:25 Learn to Defuse Your Thoughts
05:43 Take Care of the Basics
06:31 Cultivate Self-Awareness
09:13 Be a Friend to Yourself

Try these journal prompts:
1. How did I support myself today?
2. What small win did I experience this week?
3. What did I struggle with today?
4. What am I holding onto that isn’t serving me anymore?
5. How can I be a friend to myself this week?
6. What three small things did I appreciate about my day today?

WANT TO JOURNAL YOUR WAY TO BETTER MENTAL HEALTH? 

DOWNLOAD OUR 10 PROMPTS FOR GOOD MENTAL HEALTH HERE.

You can also watch the episode on YouTube. 

If overthinking and worry is draining you, start with my 30-minute mini course How to Stop Spiralling. It gives you the exact tools I teach clients to interrupt thought loops in real time.

 If you want something for the moments you’re already anxious or overwhelmed, the Spiral Rescue Kit has guided audios and a printable SOS plan you can use anywhere.

 → Get both HERE (get £5 off when you buy both or gift it to a friend!)

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The Hello Therapy podcast and the information provided by Dr Liz White (DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS, CSci, HCPC reg.), is solely intended for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute personalised advice. Please reach out to your GP or a mental health professional if you need support. 

Transcript

Welcome to Season 3

Dr Liz White 0:02

If you're looking to improve your mental health and well-being, then keep listening. I'm Dr Liz White, a consultant clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience. Whether you're a frazzled parent, a stressed out professional or finding your way through the challenges of midlife, you're in the right place. Through a mix of solo episodes and insightful conversations with expert psychologists and therapists, I'm bringing you evidence-based tools and strategies to help you navigate life's ups and downs with confidence, clarity and compassion. With confidence, clarity and compassion this is your space to feel seen, supported and empowered. Welcome to Hello Therapy. Welcome back to Season 3. We've been on a little break, but now we're feeling refreshed with so many amazing episodes lined up for you. Today, I'm sharing my top five tips for improving your mental health. So, whether you're feeling stuck in a rut of lethargy and lack of motivation, or you are spiraling in anxious thoughts and worries, or you're simply trying to find ways to give yourself a break, I have some ideas today that might just help, so let's dive in. So my first tip is actually three tips rolled into one Shift out of autopilot. Get present and learn the skill of appreciation we have become so used to going through the motions of life or being on autopilot, whether it's scrolling on our phones excessively or constantly ticking off things on our to-do lists, or maybe we're just so consumed in anxiety and the worries that we have day to day. And when I say we, I mean me as well. I'll give you an example from my own life. I walk my dog every day in our local woods. It's really beautiful there, especially seeing the seasons change. But I've really got into the habit of just plugging in my headphones and listening to podcasts, and when I'm plugged in in that way, I'm not really attending to where I'm walking, what I'm seeing. I'm not attending to my dog particularly. I'm not present because my attention is being taken by the podcasts, and I realised that when I would get back to my house I wouldn't really remember the walk that I had been on because I'd been stuck in autopilot.

Learn to Diffuse Your Thoughts

Dr Liz White 2:46

My point here is that I think a lot of us do end up being on autopilot a lot and we don't really realise it. But what that means for us is that we are missing out on the experiences that we're having, and this can really impact our mental health. There is lots of research these days that shows us that being more present, being more mindful, can have such a beneficial effect on our well-being. So if this resonates with you and you feel like you are just on autopilot a lot of the time whether that's through the busyness of life or you're experiencing anxiety, consumed by worry or feeling low in moods you can start today by just gently bringing your attention to the here and now. Use one of your five senses to help with this. So for me, that would mean putting my headphones away and actually listening to the sounds, to the birds, to the wind in the trees around me, or maybe paying attention to my feet and how that feels each time I take a step. And alongside getting more present, what can also help is appreciating the moment that you're in. So, for example, in the woods, when it's sunny, I am grateful for the warmth of the sun on my face. And just a note there with appreciation, it doesn't have to be big things, it be really, really tiny things. And if you do this several times a day, so noticing that you're on autopilot, getting present, using your five senses and turning your attention to something that you appreciate in that moment, that is going to make a difference to how you feel. So my next tip is learn to diffuse. I talk about this next tip all of the time because it's one of the best and it's really helped me in my life.

Take Care of the Basics

Dr Liz White 4:35

Diffusion is the opposite of fusion, and this is when we are consumed by our thoughts, believing them to be true 100%. Let's take the example of Anna. Anna is learning to drive and finding it really, really hard. She is getting fused with thoughts like I can't do this, I'm never going to be able to learn to drive, I'm such a bad driver, and this is making her feel really frustrated at herself. If she continues to fuse with the idea that she is a bad driver and can't learn to drive, she will probably give up, ie those thoughts will dictate her actions and she will then move away from the thing that's important to her, which is to learn to drive. Diffusion, on the other hand, is the ability to step back from your thoughts so they have less power over you and don't dictate what you do. So what's going to help Anna is stepping back from those very negative and very self-critical thoughts about her driving ability. Just because she has the thought that she can't learn to drive doesn't mean that she can't learn to drive.

Cultivate Self-Awareness

Dr Liz White 5:43

My next tip is take care of the basics. This is a super quick one, but it's so important and it needs to be in my top five best mental health tips. Get the basics right. So I'm talking about sleep, nutrition, hydration and exercise. These are the foundations of good mental health. Think of your mind like a car To run well, it needs things like fuel or good nutrition. It needs coolant in the engine so your hydration. It needs regular maintenance and services so that's your sleep. And it needs to be driven so that's our movement and our exercise. And if you skip one of these things for too long, the car starts to not work very well and our bodies and our minds are just the same. My fourth tip is awareness. Simply put, we can't heal or make things better for ourselves if we don't know or understand what's going on for us.

Dr Liz White 6:42

Take the example of Sam. Sam's girlfriend turns around one night and says to him you've been drinking a bit too much lately and you've been really irritable with me. Is everything okay? This is a surprise to Sam, because he didn't realize that was happening, but when he thought about it he was able to make the link between a difficult relationship with his boss at work and an increase in stress. He had had fleeting moments of wondering if he'd been stressed before, but had sort of dismissed it and just got on with things, because that's what he's always done. But the stress was showing in other ways. So he was starting to drink every time he got back from work.

Dr Liz White 7:22

But once Sam realised what was happening, he was able to reflect on what was really going on for him. What was it about his boss that was really getting to him? How was that impacting on his work and how he was feeling generally? Most importantly, what can he do about it? The first thing he identified was that the drinking in the evenings was not helping him. He would wake up grumpy and groggy in the mornings and it just didn't set his day up well. So he started to reduce his alcohol intake. He thought about other ways he could relieve stress and pressure and so he started running. He also opened up to his friends, which he found really helpful because they had also had the same experience previously and they were able to share what helped them. So we can see from this example that once Sam was able to really self-reflect and think about and explore what was really going on for him in terms of how he felt and what he was thinking. Then he was able to identify some really clear ways of helping his situation.

Be a Friend to Yourself

Dr Liz White 8:30

So if you want to start increasing your awareness of your own emotional inner world, then there are a couple of things that you can try. Firstly, I'm a big advocate of journaling, so having a process where you sit down and you write what's going on for you, your thoughts and your feelings, or using specific prompts and I'm going to put a few prompts in the description just to get you started. The second thing you can do is to simply do what I call a check-in. So once a day you just ask yourself how am I doing? Be careful not to just run through all of the things that you've done that day or the things that you have left to do, but rather reflect on what kind of thoughts have I been having today and how am I feeling, and try and identify some emotions. My last tip is be a friend to yourself. Being able to have your own back in the way that a really true friend would, especially in difficult times, is one of the best things that you can do for your mental health.

Episode Closing and Community Invitation

Dr Liz White 9:31

Research shows a clear association between well-being and self-compassion, ie the more warm and caring you are towards yourself, the better you feel. One way to start doing this and it's super simple is to speak to yourself in a warm, friendly tone. So not everyone has an internal voice, but if you do, it's that voice that kind of shows up, especially when you've made a mistake or you've messed up in some way. And if you have a tendency towards self-criticism, try dialing that down and adding in a little bit of warmth and friendliness to that tone of voice. And that brings us to the end of this episode. I hope that has been helpful.

Dr Liz White 10:17

You will find the link to the journal prompts in the show notes. See you next time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of hello therapy. We'd love for you to join our growing community over on substack. You can sign up for free or become a paid subscriber for access to exclusive perks like never before seen video interviews and downloadable guides designed to support your mental health. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new release. And if you got value from this episode, it would mean the world if you left a five-star review. As always, check the show notes for my full disclaimer. Thanks again for listening.