In the hustle of everyday life, it's easy to forget the importance of maintaining our mental health. Yet, like a shadow, it follows us quietly, impacting every aspect of our daily living. The conversation around mental health has grown louder, thankfully, shedding light on its vital role in our overall well-being. Mental Health Awareness Month is the perfect time to make sure you have all the skills, strategies, and coping mechanisms you need to achieve a state of better mental health.
For mental health advocates, wellness enthusiasts, and CBD consumers, understanding how to nurture mental health becomes not just beneficial but essential. Of course, finding ways to cope with stress and develop strategies for better mental health can often be easier said than done – but it is possible. To help you out, we’ve created a comprehensive list of activities and strategies to help bolster your mental, physical, and emotional health, including:
- Spending some time to focus on self care
- Doing what you can to keep the stress from piling up
- Improving your resilience to build better mental health responses
- Using CBD to help you relax and decrease your stress levels
Tips for Finding Self Love Through Self Care
First and foremost: there is absolutely nothing selfish about putting your own mental health first. You can’t properly look after others or form meaningful relationships if your mental health is suffering. So when it comes to improving your mental health, there are a few items at the top of our list that you should take some time to focus on before tackling some of the “bigger” strategies.
Self care is the bedrock of better mental health. It's a practice that reminds us of our worth and encourages us to give ourselves the same compassion we extend to others.
Prioritize Your Needs
Begin by acknowledging your essential needs and prioritizing them in your daily routine. Whether it involves prioritizing sufficient sleep, nourishing your body with wholesome foods, or carving out time for relaxation and rejuvenation, recognizing and fulfilling your needs lays the foundation for optimal mental well-being. By honoring your needs, you affirm your self worth and cultivate a supportive environment conducive to your self care practices.
Establish Boundaries
Embrace the power of saying no and establishing boundaries in your interactions. By delineating what you can and cannot accommodate, you protect your energy reserves and reduce the risk of burnout. Setting boundaries communicates your limits to others, safeguarding your emotional and mental well-being. Prioritizing your own needs and boundaries fosters a healthier dynamic in relationships, promoting self-respect and mutual respect alike.
Remember that Your Mind Needs Sleep Too
Just like your body needs time to rest and recover from the day, so does your mind. Maybe even more so, since sleep is the time in which your brain processes your emotional and mental health. In and of itself, sleep deprivation can affect your mental health, not to mention what it can do if you’re already dealing with issues from the get-go. Without adequate sleep, especially REM sleep, your mood can plummet while your stress levels rise.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
This is one of the most important rules to remember as you go through your better mental health care journey: always make sure to set aside some time for fun. That could be going to see a comedy show, checking out a new movie, trying out a hobby or activity, or just spending time with the people who make you laugh. Because you deserve to be happy no matter where you’re at in your mental health journey.
Declutter Your Space
A cluttered and busy environment often leads to or exacerbates stress, which is why a decluttered space often leads to a calmer mental state. Knowing that cleaning can help and actually being able to do it can be two very different things, so if you’re struggling to declutter the space around you, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Take a deep breath and do what you need to do to make your environment less chaotic and find a better mental health state of mind.
Let Yourself Cry If You Need to Cry
As more research comes to light, we’re finding that by not allowing yourself to cry when you need to, you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good. Studies have shown that though crying may lower your mood in the moment, once you recover, you may find that your outlook is substantially less negative than it was before. So, let yourself have a good cry when you need to before drying off your tears and picking yourself back up.
Tips for Finding Outlets to Support Mental Health
Sitting still and letting your feelings stew can quickly cause additional issues. So rather than let your problems evolve until they overpower you, you can use a variety of techniques to let your feelings out and work through them (and hopefully even let them go one day). That can look like taking time to work on something you love, or it can come in the form of talking with someone who can help you through your experiences.
Whatever you choose to do, remember that there’s no pressure, and you can always try something else if it doesn’t feel like one method or another really works for you.
Choose a Form of Creative Expression
Exploring creative outlets like painting, crafting, dancing, or playing music can serve as a powerful means of emotional expression. These activities offer a channel for conveying feelings that may be challenging to put into words. By engaging in creative pursuits, you can tap into your innermost emotions and experiences, fostering a deeper understanding of yourself while simultaneously relieving everyday stress and tension.
Write to Help You to Clear Your Mind
A creative outlet like writing can be a great help in learning to take some time to clear your mind. Sometimes it can help you quiet racing thoughts or even focus on one particular problem at a time to achieve better mental health. A great exercise you can try is a Brain Dump, which consists of an unorganized list of thoughts or ideas. You might be quite surprised at how quiet your mind can feel once you’ve emptied all of your thoughts to a visual list.
Talk to Someone About Your Feelings
Be it a friend, family member, or a licensed mental health professional, research shows that talking about your feelings and your personal experience can disrupt your negative stimulus response. In other words, by vocalizing feelings, you can step back from the situation and view things in a more rational manner. If you decide to talk to someone, try to aim for a face-to-face interaction, as it can be easier to be vulnerable when there are no barriers.
Remember to Interview Your Therapist
That’s right. You are under no obligation to stick with the first, second, or even tenth therapist you find. Finding the right therapist is like finding your favorite restaurant – it might take you some trial and error to get the right fit, but not liking the first one you see is no reason to stop looking. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions to gauge their experience, behavior, and responses.
If Talking Doesn’t Help, Try Moving
As much as talking to someone can help, and it really can, that doesn’t mean that it’s always the right answer all of the time. Sometimes, you just have to move to create a better mental health outlook. It’s true that regular exercise can help lift your mood, so by doing whatever you can to move around and get yourself out of the physical or mental environment you’ve been sitting in, you might find yourself feeling a little less stressed afterward.
Practice Mindfulness and Meditation
Integrating mindfulness techniques and meditation into your daily regimen can yield profound benefits for your mental well-being. By practicing mindfulness, you cultivate a heightened awareness of the present moment, allowing you to observe thoughts and feelings without judgment. Meditation serves as a tool to quiet the mind, reduce everyday stress, and enhance mental clarity, fostering a sense of inner peace.
Tips for Building Resilience for Better Mental Health
Resilience is your ability to adapt and bounce back from difficult situations or setbacks without dwelling too long on your problems or allowing yourself to fall back on unhealthy coping mechanisms. A healthy level of resilience helps give you the stability and confidence you need to face your problems head on so you can get back to enjoying life. And yes, there are steps you can take to help build up your resilience.
Think of resilience as your psychological armor, and it can come in many forms, from inner reflection to community support. It doesn’t just help you survive the rough patches – it helps you thrive.
Find a Sense of Acceptance
Acknowledge that setbacks are an inevitable part of the human experience. By embracing this reality, you can cultivate a mindset that facilitates growth and resilience. Rather than resisting difficulties, accepting them empowers you to navigate life's ups and downs with grace, fostering personal development and emotional strength. Embracing acceptance enables you to forge ahead, equipped with the wisdom gained from overcoming adversity.
Establish Strong Connections & Community Support
It’s human nature that we’re drawn to make connections with others. Surround yourself with a supportive community that uplifts and encourages you. Connections can be a source of comfort and strength during tough times. It’s important to not just make connections, but to make healthy connections that boost your emotional and mental health, and provide you with the support you’ll need when going through challenging times.
Allow Yourself to Learn from Your Past Experiences
Instead of dwelling on the negative aspects of a tough situation, focus on what it taught you and how it has helped you grow. We’re not saying it’s easy, because it’s not, but if you’ve been through a particular experience before then it’s important to try to take what you learned and apply it to your current situation. You’ve coped with things in the past, so there’s nothing to keep you from healthily coping with them now.
Be Proactive About Your Mental Health
As much as it can suck to face mental health issues head on, ignoring them will only make the problems worse. If you need to, don’t be afraid to take a moment to step back, take a deeper look at your situation, and compare it to how you coped with your past experiences before taking action. Do what you need to do to care for yourself and find solutions that work. The most important step here is that you do take action as soon as you can.
Tips for Using CBD to Help Achieve Better Mental Health
CBD is not a treatment for specific mental health issues, but CBD products can help support a sense of calm and relaxation at any point during the day or night. Everyone expresses their stress in different ways, and because no two people are alike, neither are their everyday stress relief needs. When it comes to finding the right CBD products for you, you’ll want to take a few things into consideration:
- Understand Your Needs: Determine what you're looking to achieve with CBD, whether it's reducing everyday stress, finding peace of mind, or enhancing relaxation.
- Quality Matters: Opt for high-quality CBD products from reputable brands to ensure safety and efficacy with practices like third-party testing, COAs, and Good Manufacturing Practice registration.
- Start Low and Go Slow: Begin with a low amount of and gradually increase it until you find what works best for you, taking note of how your body responds. Daily use will yield the best results.
We’ve developed a range of CBD products to help you whenever you need it the most – be that during your busy day, at night for more restful sleep, or on the weekend for greater relaxation.
CBD Calming Gummies to Help Take the Edge Off
A combination of relaxing ingredients, our CBD calming gummies are made with 300 mg of ashwagandha and 25 mg of CBD in every single serving. But why ashwagandha? Ashwagandha has been widely recognized for its stress-relieving properties, in addition to a number of other benefits, including an increase in concentration and memory. When combined with CBD (which is also known to help reduce everyday stress levels), the two work together to make sure that you experience the sense of calm and relaxation you need throughout the day.
Finding Relaxation with CBD Sleep Products
At cbdMD, we offer a wide selection of CBD PM products that help foster a sense of relaxation so you can find what you need to unwind before bed. Our tried and true Deep Relax and CBD PM tinctures make a great addition to any mental health and self care regimen, and our CBD melatonin gummies pack 25 mg of CBD in every serving. These relaxing CBD products offer other ingredients and cannabinoids such as CBN, CBG, melatonin, valerian root, chamomile, and other calming herbs to help you relax at night, helping create a mental state that’s ready for sleep.
Enhancing the Benefits with Delta 9 Gummies
Joining the ranks of our other health and wellness products is our line of Delta 9 THC gummies and capsules, all of which are derived from hemp and federally compliant. By combining CBD and THC, we’ve created a “high-potency full spectrum formula” that produces a “heightened effect” – meaning it will provide greater benefits than either CBD or THC alone. This full hemp plant profile can help elevate your relaxation, improve your quality of sleep, and give a more well-rounded feeling of calm while creating a full-body balance.
Note: Despite the fact that our Delta 9 gummies are completely federally legal, many states and workplaces make their own rules concerning the use of Delta 9. Please make sure to check any rules and regulations that may apply to you before ordering and consuming Delta 9 THC products.
Taking the Journey Toward Better Mental Health
Improving mental health is a multifaceted endeavor, one that encompasses self care, emotional regulation, resilience, and sometimes, the support of natural supplements like CBD. By adopting these practices, you contribute to a stronger, more resilient version of yourself capable of facing life's challenges with grace. Remember, achieving better mental health is a personal journey, one that is unique and different for everyone.
To all mental health advocates, wellness enthusiasts, and CBD consumers alike, we hope these tips serve as a guide on your journey toward better mental health. Here's to living a life marked by emotional resilience, boundless self love, and an unshakeable peace of mind. Just as our fingerprint, our path to achieving mental health is distinct. Honor your pace, respect your process, and cherish every step forward.
If you're interested in exploring how CBD can support your mental health, consult with a healthcare professional to find a solution that suits your needs best.
For more information on strategies for achieving better mental health during Mental Health Awareness Month, keep an eye on our frequently updated blog. Interested in staying up to date on the latest supplement news and cbdMD’s upcoming special offers? Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and X, or chat with someone live today!
