Eight top tips for looking after your mental health

As a clinical psychologist working in Ukraine, Dr Hjördis Lorenz supported MSF’s mental healths team to provide care at a time when, with the ongoing war, the world felt bleak and overwhelming. For Mental Health Awareness month, these are some of Hjördis' top tips for looking after your mental health.

1.    Believe and acknowledge your feelings

The very basic thing to do when helping others with their mental health is to just believe them. When they say they're very distressed, believe them, and avoid invalidating their emotions about what’s happened.

But we don't always apply that advice to ourselves. If we say to ourselves, “you shouldn't feel angry now”, or “you shouldn't feel upset about this”, or “you should be over this already”, that would be invalidating, and we wouldn't do it to a friend.

Instead, we could actually believe our feelings and say, “it's okay”. We can still choose how to respond, but as a first step, just acknowledge our own feelings.
 

2.    Look for beauty and you’ll notice it everywhere

There’s a saying in psychology that I love: ‘whatever we pay attention to grows’. For me, it’s noticing the squirrels with their nuts in my garden. It grows my awareness of other little animals doing their autumnal activities. Take a moment to notice something that brings you joy. 
 

3.    Concentrate on your ‘right now’  

Our mental health can suffer when we’re pulled out of the present, such as when we’re worried about the future or dwelling on unhappy memories. We can spend a lot of time picking apart social situations or thinking about things that went poorly or people we've lost. So, whatever can bring us back into the here and now, can help our mental health enormously because while the future is uncertain and the past might have been bad, right now, I'm safe.

A great way to do this is by connecting with your senses of sight, smell, touch and taste to ground yourself in the present moment.

4.    Take control of something small

For our MSF patients in Ukraine, there is a lot out of their control: they don’t know where the next missile will land and what will happen to relatives who are missing or on the frontline. Even taking control of small things – choosing a new walking route, or a different colour to wear – can make a difference and give a small sense of control.
 

5.    Say it out loud, even to yourself

Social support is one of the most important protective factors for good mental health but it can sometimes be hard to talk about how you’re feeling with another person. Writing yourself a letter, praying or just saying your worries and words of encouragement out loud can also have a positive impact.  
 

6.    Use positive thoughts to re-wire your brain

What if instead of imagining all the bad things that might happen, we did the opposite? Professional ice skaters imagine the perfect twirl on ice to train their brain and help them achieve it. Have you got something at work coming up that you’re nervous about? A difficult conversation with a friend? Imagine it going well and that can make it more likely to actually go well. 

7.    Pay attention to how you talk to yourself

This is related to the first point, but it’s important to pay attention to how we talk to ourselves in general as this underlies a lot of mental health problems. We often talk to ourselves in a very critical way, and beat ourselves up: “That's pathetic”, “That was so embarrassing”, “Why did I say that?”, “ I should have done this better”. 

In many cases we would never speak to a friend or colleague that way. So even just spotting how we speak to ourselves can be useful in making us consider whether our inner voice helping or if it’s adding to feelings of sadness and anxiety.
 

8.    Rest in a way that is actually restorative

A popular piece of mental health advice is to take breaks, rest, and relax. That's all true, but it doesn’t always work. You can be in a bubble bath with a high heart rate, tension inside and worrying. On the surface it feels like you’re doing everything right and taking care of yourself, but what’s happening on the inside is more important.

Restorative rest is when the mind is able to focus on something calming, whether that's just the breath or a calm scenario. Sleep is often restorative rest because our mind is able to shut down. Sometimes even activities, such as swimming, can be restorative rest because our mind is so focused.