May is Mental Health Month. Do You Have Time for Mental Health?
It’s easy to feel like you don’t. But if you have 5-7 minutes, our mental health experts can show you how to make those minutes count. Scroll down for a full month of ideas!
Neurodiversity affirming therapists explain how to make time for mental health, even at the busiest times of the year.
May can be mayhem. This is especially true if you are a parent. The calendar fills with special events as the school year draws to a close. There’s last minute planning for summer activities. Swim team signup. Finding out if you fit into your summer clothes.
Feelings flooding in? Try this grounding exercise from expert therapist Jessica Check.
Before you dive in, get grounded with expert therapist Jessica Check
Play the 5 minute video you see here. Can’t play audio where you are right now? Read the transcript at the bottom of this post to try it on your own.
Neurodiversity affirming self care
When you’re neurodivergent, it’s hard to make time to add things to your routine. You may feel like you’re constantly falling behind on other tasks. Or simply forget to do the new thing you meant to try.
Set an alarm on your smart watch or phone right now. Call the alarm “do something good” or anything else you’d like. When the alarm goes off, it’s time to try a strategy from this post.
It might also be helpful to print the image below and hang it on your mirror. Most of the tasks on this calendar are quick. Pair the task with something you always do so you’ll remember it better. For example “when I brush my teeth, I will do one thing from the calendar.” It is OK to the thing that feels best to you in the moment, instead of the one listed on today’s date.
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Boost your mental health in the month of May with these neurodivergence friendly ideas.
If you’re having trouble finding time for these activities, there’s one thing you can do. Practice self compassion. Just be kind to yourself about it, and Voila! You’ve done something from the list.
There are plenty of ways to boost your mental health that aren’t on this list, too. Perhaps you’re already doing some of them. Finding time to hang out with friends is good for your mental health. Taking a shower or cooking a meal can be done mindfully, if you resist the temptation to multi-task. A moment of exercise helps fight depression.
Try this 54321 grounding technique with adult ADHD expert Jessica Check
This is the transcript of the video above. Read through it on your own, or scroll up to watch Jessica walk you through it.
“I'm going to share with you today a coping tool that I really love using with clients and in my own life. It's a very simple 54321 grounding technique. It's often used first and foremost as a tool for emotional dysregulation, which is just a therapeutic term for when your emotions are all over the place. (If you’re experiencing shut down. If you are completely feeling all the feelings all at once).
While we want to get to a point where we can interact with those feelings and thoughts in a healthier way… in that moment one of the most useful things you can do is to ground yourself. So that you can approach it with a clearer and calmer mind. Often times after you've done the grounding, the things that you thought were such huge issues don't seem so big anymore either. So this activity has a great dual function.
Fitting mental wellness into everyday life
This is something that is really easy to apply in your everyday life. I love to do this when I'm out for walks. You can adapt it slightly by making the numbers different. Or making the noticing different, which I'll talk about a little bit below. First let me just demonstrate it.
Five things you can see
Okay so we're going to start with five and you're just going to notice five things that you can see. So you do this inside your mind. Or you can say it out loud if you prefer. I see a squishy ball. I see a crayon. I see glue. I see a chair. I see a humidifier.
Four things you can hear
I can hear the traffic outside. I can hear the air from the vent. I can hear a very light footstep above me. And I can hear some kind of tapping in the ceiling.
Three, two, one… blastoff to better mental health.
Three things I can touch. I can touch the couch and touch my jacket. I can touch this squishy.
Two things I can smell. I can smell a little bit of the lavender essential oil that's in the hall. And I can smell a tiny bit of a lemon cleaning product.
And finally one deep breath in through your nose out through your mouth.
How grounding techniques fight anxiety and support emotional regulation
The way this grounding technique works is really to distract your mind. It focuses your senses, all of your senses, on your current moment. So if you are lost in a cycle of anxiety for example. And you are struggling with rumination. You can't get these thoughts to stop being so intrusive. Really forcing yourself to do something that uses your other senses that grounds you in this present moment away from those thoughts is very valuable.
Make it your own: your mental health is for YOU!
The other thing I love about this tool is that it can be adapted. I like to change it up and maybe do
10 things I can see
9 things I can hear
8 colors that I know
7 people who I love in my life
6 emotions that I feel
5 people who I can depend on in my life
4 things I can touch
3 different kinds of birds I can see
2 deep breaths and
1 wonderful message to my heart
So you can adapt it. You can get creative with it. But the core part of this tool is just allowing yourself to feel grounded. To bring yourself back into the present moment. It allows you to feel really connected.
I love doing it on walks because you can notice all the things that maybe you wouldn't notice regularly (when you're kind of lost in your thoughts or you're just kind of everyday functioning). So it's a really wonderful way to bring some calm. To center yourself when you're upset.
A parenting tool and a self care tool you can really use
It's a great tool to use with kids. It's a great tool to use yourself. And you can use it anywhere and anytime. So I hope this has been helpful for you and I hope that it works well for you.”