Are you having a tough time right now?
If you are, know that we’re cheering you on. Anyone who’s contending with rocky mental health on a daily basis is deserving of praise.
So, let us help you out by giving you a few inexpensive, simple, and practical ways to feel better. You can start implementing them as soon as today.
1. Feel Better Just By Feeling
Tara Brach is a psychologist who puts a heavy emphasis on Eastern practices.
A key component of her methods, Vipassana meditation, involves sitting and “watching” your thoughts and emotions as you experience them, without interruption.
From this practice, she coined a method for dealing with tough emotional storms called RAIN.
R: Recognize — You notice your painful emotion/maladaptive thought pattern/ negative thought loop and acknowledge it as what you are experiencing.
A: Allow — Let the feelings happen without trying to repress or numb them in any way.
I: Investigate — Start asking compassionate questions to yourself, such as “What’s got me feeling like this?” or “What do I need from myself right now?”
N: Nurture — Treat yourself in a loving, compassionate way in this moment. Find ways to give yourself what you need, be it a break, a few kind words, or even a little credit for a recent accomplishment.
RAIN operates under the principle that “the poison is the medicine.” All this means is that, oftentimes, painful emotions need to be felt before you can grow beyond them.
When you try to numb your feelings, they usually continue to linger in the background, so for now, try feeling what you’re feeling, and you’ll likely find some new personal insight on the other side of it.
2. Communicate With a Safe Person
Our anxieties often become exacerbated when we keep them in our heads for too long.
Repressed emotions, fears, and memories can lead to the growth of shame, which is, without a doubt, one of the most debilitating mind states one can be in.
But shame, according to psychologist Brené Brown, cannot survive when it is brought to the light.
What’s affecting you most deeply could be shame-based, and if it is, it might be time to talk to a safe person about it.
We say “safe person” because we’re specifying someone that you know and trust, and ideally, someone who would try to understand what you’re going through.
Opening up about something that you’ve kept under wraps for a long time takes real courage, but it could be exactly what you need to get out of your head.
Everyone, and we mean everyone, has rough edges and flaws and embarrassing moments that we would care to forget, but when we admit our worst moments to each other, we become closer, and once we feel understood by others, our shame dissolves, and we become free.
3. Pick Up a Pen
Journaling is often heralded for improving mental health, but why is that?
It’s because most people aren’t aware of how powerful writing is.
Even if you haven’t written anything since high school, try finding a blank journal or a piece of paper and write out everything you’re feeling, exactly as you feel it.
If you’re going through a depression, write out your despair. If you’re angry at someone, write out everything you’d like to say to them.
Write and write and write, and eventually you’ll find that you run out of things to say. You will have gotten all that energy out of your mind and onto paper.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll feel amazing afterward (although it could), but this is the process of getting something off your mind and onto paper. What will remain is clarity, and in that clarity, you can find productive ways to move forward.
4. Walk Out the Door
Henry David Thoreau and many other great minds throughout history swore by taking walks to stimulate ideas and calm the soul. It really is a genius activity.
If you’re able, take a long walk when you’re feeling upset. Fit it into your day somehow. Find a nice area, preferably around nature, and let your thoughts flow as you breathe and move.
It’s a free, low-impact, healthy activity that you can do almost any time, and it’s been proven to alleviate psychological suffering.
You could think through a problem as you walk, or you could simply enjoy the sights. As you walk, solutions to problems might also pop into your head spontaneously. This is proof that when you let your conscious mind rest, the subconscious takes over and does work of its own.
At the very least, the gentle activity of walking will let all the chaos in your mind shake out for a little while, and you’ll come back feeling different than when you started.
5. See Optimism as a Choice
This is not the kind of optimism we mean: Everything will just work out for the best, so all I have to do is wait, and everything will magically get better.
This is the kind of optimism we mean: I’ve gotten through everything up until this point in my life, and I’ll find a way through this, too. I’m going to keep fighting and doing as much as I possibly can.
This type of optimism is based on a willingness to fight and a faith in your ability to overcome obstacles like you have in the past.
If you’ve never faced a problem like the one you currently face, then all you can do is fight, or at least do what you can, even if it’s just small steps every day. This is an active optimism, not the rose colored glasses optimism that everything will turn out alright.
People like to say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Regardless of whether this is true in a literal sense, you can still approach life as if it were, meaning, you can choose to see the difficulties before you as tests.
They could be tests of your courage, your endurance, your wits, your compassion, your gratitude — regardless of what kind, life is calling you forth to be your best self, and to evolve into someone greater by the time your challenge is over.
You can always choose your attitude. If you’re in a rotten situation, then there are likely tons of things you can do that are positive for yourself and other people. You’re just not recognizing them because of how heavy everything might feel.
But remember that you have freedom, even when it hurts, even when it feels hopeless. Life will rarely be easy, but you can always decide how you approach it.
Use These Tools
You are likely far more powerful than you think.
So if you’re struggling, here are a few things you can do that don’t cost much, and are accessible to pretty much everyone.
- Feel your feelings. Watch them pass through you. Cry if you need to. After they pass, you’ll learn something new about yourself.
- Share your feelings with someone you love and trust. Take the courageous leap and describe what’s bothering you, and you’ll likely find that you were never alone, and that other people aren’t perfect either.
- Write like the wind. Get your thoughts on paper, and write until there’s simply nothing left, and you’ll find yourself more oriented toward productive action.
- Take a walk, like all great thinkers do. Let the calm, repetitive action shake the demons out of your mind. Despite the chaos in your life, nature is still there, doing what it always did.
- Become an optimist, not about the world or events that are out of your control, but about your own strength. Have faith in what you can do, and move forward.
We hope this post made you feel better, even before you’ve tried any of these techniques. You’ll get through it.
