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0 By Patrick Bailey
Learning to practice healthy coping techniques can prepare you to tackle any mental health challenge that comes your way. Stress and being overwhelmed can sometimes drain your physical and mental energy or cause you to respond in unhealthy ways. This is normal behavior if you are not yet familiar with healthy coping skills. You can train your brain to respond with your new behaviors over time. Spend some time understanding your natural responses to stress. Then consider these healthy coping skills if you’d like to move towards healthy behavior.
Healthy coping skills
Exercise
Exercise is one of the most natural healthy ways to release large amounts of stress. The calories burned help your body reset its natural energy levels and release pent-up energy that may otherwise cause anxiety or burnout. Releasing endorphins is also a natural method of boosting your mood and regulating your brain activity without outside help. Stress can sometimes build up in your body without you realizing until it is too late. So enjoy regular exercise to prevent these crises and keep your normal energy levels healthy.
Cleaning
Cleaning is an easy and productive way to release your stress. Habitual, often ‘mindless’ tasks are meditative in nature and help you focus on activities that are good for your wellbeing. Clutter in the home can also lead to clutter in the mind. So let your environment be a reflection of the mental health you’d like to have. Being proactive and cleaning on a regular basis can count as physical activity. And you can even indulge in relaxing music or candles while you work. Allow yourself to prioritize cleaning time if you are someone who likes to multitask in a way that helps your mental health.
Journaling
Journaling is a powerful way to process your emotions in a healthy way. Frustration and the feeling of being ‘stuck’ can sometimes occur if you find it difficult to process your emotions effectively. Taking the time to vent or brainstorm the reasons you may feel a certain way can help you see your thoughts on paper and move forward from there. Journaling can also be used as a method of distraction if you enjoy writing stories or reflecting on things that bring you joy. Using journaling as a coping technique can also look like practicing visualization and deciding where you’d like to be in the future.
Meditation
Learning to meditate can help you cope with both positive and negative emotions. Your body has a natural balance, and the deep breathing involved in meditation can restore this balance in a natural way. Luckily, meditation can be done at home, at work, on the go, no matter where you are. Meditation allows you to move away from any negative or stressful emotions by quieting the mind and bringing all of your focus into your breath. If you are unsure where to begin, consider downloading meditation apps or listening to guided meditation videos online to help you familiarize with this free and positive coping technique.
Treatment
Asking for support and receiving treatment for serious mental health challenges is one of the most effective coping mechanisms possible. By allowing a professional to take an objective look at your needs and show you how to prevent emergencies when possible, you are eliminating problems before they affect you negatively. Consider holistic treatment centers or speaking with licensed psychologists for serious mental health concerns, which will save you time, stress, and good health in the long term. Learning to ask for the help you need will help you cope with negative feelings in the healthiest way possible with trained professionals available to help you through it.
Goal-Setting
Setting positive goals can help you see an optimistic future if you are struggling with your mental health. Depressing or negative thoughts may cause you to feel discouraged about the future or stuck in the situation you are in right now. Rather than dwelling on things you cannot control, goal-setting allows you to picture yourself making it past your challenge and take action to see it happen. Practice the idea of helping yourself past a challenge through easy, realistic goals. This is a coping mechanism you can use to make it through any stressful situation.
The right coping techniques for you depend on your personal goals and the severity of your mental health challenges. Do your best to learn what makes you feel you are moving past your problems in a healthy way. Then use these ideas to practice taking action. With healthy ways to manage your stress, you can feel optimistic about the future and supported when you need an extra hand. Practice these techniques to improve your responses to stress and protect your mental health for the future.
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
Agreed,but the stress and hostility created by the people sorrounding you can be overwhelming and when you live under such stressful areas for years together,then these techniques loses it’s potency.These techniques work only if there is a baseline mental health hygiene around you.Mental health issues can create physical problems as well then many of these coping techniques cannot be employed.
The seventh coping that I keep telling myself is to migrate to a place where the government and people are more sensitive to the needs of people suffering from mental health issues.And have good services provided to such people,instead of pestering and harassing them in many ways,which can be physical,psychological,violation of human rights,and denial of basic rights as the citizen of a nation.
DSM 4 TR mentions 9 areas of stress,which should be minimized.These 9 stress factors cannot be resolved through the 6 coping techniques mentioned above,because those 9 stressors are social stressors and has to be resolved at the social level.
Unfortunately,DSM 5 has removed these stressors that needs to be resolved at the social level,making the patients more susceptible to over drugging by the psychiatrists.