Your mental health is the lifeline of your overall health, and you should take care of it just like you do your physical health. A decline in mental health will lead to a poor standard of life and health. Mental disorders usually place a big burden socially and economically to you as an individual, your family and eventually to the government. As such protecting your mental capability is key to a productive life.
In this article, you are going to learn the bad habits that affect your mental health adversely. These might be everyday things that you indulge in not knowing they impact on your health negatively. A stop to these habits will see your mental health flourish and even reverse some of the effects already caused.
Lack of exercise
Studies have shown that lack of physical activity can cause dementia and depression. There is a clear link between exercise and mental health and your risk of becoming sick are twice as high if you don’t exercise. You should therefore exercise because when you do the chemicals serotonin and endorphins which improve your mood are released. Exercising regularly will have the most benefits for your mental wellness.
Being overly stressed
Stress is a normal part of life, but excess and uncontrolled stress will harm your brain. This is because when you are stressed, your brain releases the hormone cortisol which when secreted in large amounts hinders the brain from functioning well. It also leads to a shrunken brain inhibiting learning and memory.
Overusing technology
I bet you thought being obsessed with your phone and social media makes you more informed. This may be right, but everything has a limit. Endlessly being on your phone has detrimental effects on your mental health. A study conducted recently showed that using several social media platforms will make you depressed.
Trying to be perfect
There is negative and positive perfectionism. Positive perfection is what you should live on, and it means setting goals you can meet and being ok with things not being perfect. Negative perfection is what affects your mental health, and it’s when you set goals that are above your reach, wanting perfection in everything and overly ruminating over failure. You should learn that perfection does not exist and you should aim to do what is humanly possible in every area of your life since beyond that you are harming your brain.
Anger
Is anger your second nature and you have always assumed that it’s just your temperament after all? That’s it’s just the way you are wired? Well, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Studies show that uncontrolled anger leads to mental fog where you don’t think straight. Anger is a normal emotion, but bottled anger is a vice that you should work to control and get completely rid of. It doesn’t just make you look bad and say things you might regret forever but it upsets your mental health as well. Speaking out when you are angry releases the tension that’s in your body and alleviates anxiety.
Not sleeping enough
You may feel like a ninja when you narrate how you sleep for only 4 hours a night, but what you are doing is slowly compromising your mental health. Lack of sleep makes it hard for your brain cells to communicate as they should. Lack of enough sleep also dulls the brain cells giving you mental pauses. You should get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep every day to preserve your mental health.
Procrastination
Procrastination is the avoidance of tasks that are stressful but important and instead doing the ones that are pleasant and not so important. This habit that seems innocent and does not do much harm but make you a last-minute person is quite harmful to your mental health. Procrastination will make you stressed because you feel the burden of the thing that you haven’t done, but you must do. Procrastination, therefore, leads to anxiety and stress and resultant poor mental health.
You maintain toxic relationships
Relationships that drain you are a slow poison that will eventually see your mental wellbeing get compromised. A toxic relationship will affect your emotions which will, in turn, lead to anxiety and depression. You should quit any alliance that no longer serves you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship with family or friends since they all have the same negative consequences. So instead of writing down smart questions to ask your boyfriend in order to salvage your unhealthy relationship, just call it quits and preserve your mental wellbeing.
The main takeaway
Browsing on your phone every spare minute you have might seem harmless and a way to keep you up-to-date but in reality its wreaking havoc on your brain. Evaluate the things that you do in your life to enable you to steer clear of habits that affect you. Come on now and stop being a perfectionist, work on your anger issues, cut out toxic people from your life and get enough sleep. Similarly, stop procrastination and get off your butt and exercise.
You cannot eradicate all these bad habits at the same time, so the key is to choose one and start with it. The progressive results you get will be the driving force for you to drop another harmful habit. Do not postpone because if you do, all you will get is a declined mental capability over time.