Author: fizur-philip@cooperhealth.edu

Stand Up for Mental Health

Today’s wellness post comes to us from NPR News, where columnist Cha Pornea notes “Of all the ways in which the pandemic has affected Americans’ well-being, perhaps the one we’ve noticed least is how much we’re sitting. And it’s not just bad for our waistlines — it’s hurting our mental health.”

“The sneaky effects of the pandemic that we might not even notice [is] that we’ve changed our sitting patterns,” says Jacob Meyer, director of the Wellbeing and Exercise lab at Iowa State University.

Though most people saw their mental health gradually improve as they adapted to a new reality, people who stayed mostly sedentary didn’t see get the same improvement, according to a follow-up study by Meyer. “People who continued to have really high levels of sitting, their depression didn’t improve” as much, says Meyer.

Does this hit home with you? If so, fear not! The trend is easily reversed and the benefits are usually noticed quickly. Any bit of movement helps, so start by setting small, achievable goals such as 5 minutes of walking per hour. Having a hard time staying focused on the walk? Get board easily? Try a mindful walking exercise.

You can read the full story and get more tips on how to get active over at NPR.org.

Mindfulness Monday: Letting Nature Nurture

Social psychologist Mathew White conducted a study at the European Centre for Environment & Human Health involving 20,000 people, the findings of which suggest that those who spent at least two hours a week in green spaces were substantially more likely to report good health and psychological well-being than those who did not. This was true regardless of variables such as gender, occupation, ethnic group, SES, area of residence, and regardless of whether they were living with chronic illnesses and disabilities at baseline. This is just one of many studies presenting such findings, and so the goal of today’s mindfulness exercise is to help bring our attention back to our connection with nature throughout the day, to let it nurture us.

Today’s background music is (Nothing but) Flowers by Talking Heads and is licensed under Section 107 of the US Copyright Act.

Languishing

If you’ve been feeling off—but can’t exactly call it depression—you could very well be languishing. Similar to burnout, more and more people are experiencing this phenomenon on a global scale. If you feel that this might be something you or someone you care about my experiencing, you can read the article “Languishing Is A Rising Mental Health Issue: 7 Signs You’re Experiencing It” by psychologist Kristina Hallett, Ph.D., ABPP. The findings of this article are summarized below, you can click on the image for a full size, printable handout.

Mindfulness Monday: Compassion

One topic that seems to keep coming up in recent weeks has been compassion. It is something that we would all benefit from giving more of to ourselves and to those around us. When Mindfulness Monday last covered this, we discussed the work of psychologist Kristin Neff, who studies compassion. She tells us “Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself as you would act toward other under the same circumstances. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?”

Find Your Why and Exercise

Psychologist that study health behavior change are increasingly verifying what many of us have known for a while, harsh approaches to health behavior change do not work. Quitting cigarettes cold turkey, completely eliminating treats from your diet, forcing yourself to run miles a day because someone else said it was good for you – all of these fail to produce sustained change.

Why tends to work better is finding the value in the change, figuring out why it would be personally meaningful, and keeping that goal in mind.

The folks at Healthline.com note that “fitting in exercise is hard for everyone, hearing what keeps other people going can help you find your “why” too.” It’s true, exploring all the values to a health behavior change like exercise, not just the ways measured on a scale, help people sustain change for the long haul.

They go on to say that fitness is about so much more than losing a few pounds, getting shredded, or trying to emulate a “perfectly” toned body. Fitness is about what you can gain. It’s about measuring success by how you feel, not by the scale. It’s about improving physical, mental, and emotional health. It’s about moving in a way that brings you joy so you’ll keep going for years. And it’s about meeting you where you’re at on your fitness journey.

To help kick-start your journey toward finding the “why,” they interviewed 12 trainers, yoga instructors, parents, and others about WHY they exercise, how they fit it in, what inspires them to keep going, and a favorite motivational phrase they share with others.

Read the reasons others have to keep up their health routines at https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/why-i-exercise, then pause today to consider what goals you have and the direct and indirect reasons they are important to you.

Mindfulness Monday – What the Nose Knows

When you see, hear, touch, or taste something, sensory information first heads to the thalamus, which then sends that information to the relevant brain areas including the hippocampus for memory-related tasks and the amygdala, home to a good deal of our emotional processing. But with smells, it’s different. When it comes to olfaction, scents bypass the thalamus and go straight to the olfactory bulb which is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus. This helps us understand why the smell of something can so immediately trigger a detailed memory or even intense emotion, and why we are focusing on this sense today.

Today’s background music is “We Know” by Ketsa and is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The Holes in Your Cup

One common metaphor in the world of wellness is that you cannot pour from an empty cup. It is a way that we encourage people to think about prioritizing their wellness. If you want to be a good health care provider, a good parent, a good partner it requires you to give of yourself, but you cannot do that if you have depleted your resources and have nothing to give. But often we put the emphasis on refilling the cup through exercise, mindfulness, and other acts of self-care without taking time to assess through what holes our water is draining in our cup that leave it near empty to begin with. 

Krissy Brady, noted health and wellness writer, recently reflected on 12 everyday phenomena that, despite being considered “normal” may be contributing to our sense of burnout. She notes that feeling drained has become the status quo which leaves us overexerting ourselves just to get through the necessities of the day.  We can take a step toward wellness by looking out for some of these common things that are emptying our cup, before taking time to refill it. These things include 

  • consuming emotionally charged television shows and news
  • waiting too long between meals
  • working at a messy desk
  • planning too far in advance
  • having too many tabs open
  • taking calls right away
  • leaving off in the wrong spot
  • slouching
  • shallowing breathing
  • letting little tasks pile up     
  • too much light at night
  • applying advice to yourself that does not apply

How many of these apply to you? Learn more about each problem and what you can do to fix them by reading Ms. Brady’s full article 12 Mindless Habits That Are Secretly Exhausting You.   

Mindfulness Monday: Appreciation

Today, our mindfulness exercises focuses our present-centered attention on the ordinary, to offer it our appreciation. As you listen along here, or as you go about your day, choose any 5 commonplace things in your life. The things that sustain you, that have become such a given that we rarely notice them, but without which our lives would be more difficult or less meaningful.

As you go about your day, keep tabs on these things. Take note of their inner workings, how they are benefit you and perhaps those around you, notice the finer, more minute details.

A Matter of Time

New research from the University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Los Angeles describes the need for us to strike a balance with our free time. When we have too much or too little, we start to feel distress and, in some cases, overwhelmed. The authors offer some insight and advice to manage this.

Specifically, they acknowledge that many people living in modern society feel like they do not have enough time and are constantly searching for more. They asks the questions of to what degree having limited discretionary time actually detrimental, and if there can there be downsides of having too much discretionary time?

In their large-scale data sets spanning 35,375 Americans and two experiments, they explored the relationship between the amount of discretionary time individuals have and their subjective well-being.

Findings suggest that, whereas having too little time is indeed linked to lower subjective well-being caused by stress, having more time does not continually translate to greater subjective well-being. Having an abundance of discretionary time is sometimes even linked to lower subjective well-being because of a lacking sense of productivity. In such cases, the negative effect of having too much discretionary time can be attenuated when people spend this time on productive activities.

While there is no single “best” way to manage one’s time, Forbes.com provides a good overview of many common strategies people can use to manage their time best. Just be sure that among that activities you plan going forward is self-care!

Mindfulness Monday: Mindful Immersion

Often times we find ourselves so focused on the next thing that we lose sight of what is right in front of us. The purpose of this exercise is to help you to cultivate contentment with the present moment.

Today, pick a chore or a routine task. One of those things you “have” to do, something you usually try to rush through to get done before moving onto the next thing. Today, challenge yourself to treat this is a completely new activity rather than the chore it has become.

A good example is washing the dishes, or simply washing your hands. While doing this, you can observe the job through your five senses. You can notice the feeling of the water on your skin, the sound it makes as it hits the sink. Perhaps you can observe the smell of the soap, and visually attending to the lather as it builds, and then as you wash it off, aiming for specific areas of your hands as you clear the later.

Get creative as you discover new experiences within the familiar!