Mental health is not the mystery that it once was
although there's a lot of things we don't know about how the brain works
or why people feel certain things or what makes it better,
there also is a lot that we have figured out since the days
of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and those early pioneers of psychology.
There are many things that we can definitively say:
"If you do this thing you will see some amount of improvement ."
The problem is that a lot of these proven strategies
for improving mental health are difficult,
uncomfortable or unpleasant to implement;
and a trap I see people get sucked into all the time is they keep looking
for new solutions, new answers, new ideas,
not because they don't have any solutions
but because they don't like the solutions they have.
They don't want to implement the things that they already know
and so they spend hours and hours reading books listening to podcasts
watching YouTube videos to try to find an easier faster or more convenient way
to make the changes they already know they should be making.
The thing about this is it's at best this is procrastination
at worst it's avoidance.
Sometimes we need to stop acquiring new information, and focus
on applying the information we already have.
And rather than looking for that magic bullet, so to speak,
work on creating a foundation combined with all of the things
we already know are definitely going to help us if we could get them going.
When I hear somebody in therapy say: "I've tried everything",
what they usually mean is: I've tried everything that I want to try".
So that's why today instead of presenting a new concept,
I'm going to review some things that you probably already know,
but what I am hoping to do is maybe present them in a new or novel way
that will make them feel more accessible, more attainable
or more applicable than they previously did.
So, without further ado here are seven things
that you probably already know you should be doing
but might be struggling to implement into your life.
And the first is doing things that you are scared to do,
in other words exposure therapy, facing your fears.
Your comfort zone only grows when you are not in it.
This is critical for you to understand.
And engaging in activities that cause you anxiety or that cause you discomfort
is a lot ... it's kind of like stretching your emotional range
in the same way that something like yoga or calisthenics
is like stretching your movement range.
It doesn't necessarily feel great while you are doing it.
In fact it can often be an unpleasant experience while you're doing it.
But if you do it regularly, navigating the world
becomes more enjoyable and less painful.
And you're less likely to get hurt:
if you stretch regularly, you are less likely to hurt your body
when you're out and about moving around
and there's fewer situations that you're unable to physically navigate, right?
When you practice regular exposure therapy
and work on in a sort of a planned strategic manner
facing, and hopefully eventually conquering the things you are afraid of,
the world starts to open up to you.
It becomes more accessible and less scary because there are fewer situations
you can imagine that you would find yourself in that overwhelm your anxiety.
This is a huge part of why I used to be so isolated when I was younger,
it's because I was terrified of doing literally everything
other than playing video games in my room, to be honest with you.
And so I avoided people I avoided opportunity, I avoided school,
I avoided work because I felt like I had so few skills
and so little coping ability that it was only a matter of time
before I'd encounter a situation that would completely overwhelm me,
so I didn't enter situations like literally I just didn't
The more confidence you have about your ability to navigate
these stressful situations the less scary life becomes
and the more opportunities you have.
The second thing that you probably already know you should be doing
but might be struggling to do is taking good care of your living space.
Unless you are an absurdly wealthy person, you are going to spend
the vast majority of your life in two environments:
the place that you work and the place that you live.
Now the place you live: you might own your entire home,
you might rent, you might have a room, you might have a condo.
Whatever you have you have an environment that you call home.
And so these two environments, your work and your home,
they have a tremendous impact on your mental health
if for no reason, no other reason, I should say, than volume.
They're where you spend the majority of your time
and so the way they look, the way they feel, the way they function,
is critical to your emotional well-being.
We know that the environments that you spend your time in
have a huge impact on your mental health.
And basically, what it comes down to for me, my phrasing is,
if you're your home doesn't feel comfortable to you,
you basically never feel like your home, it's like you don't have a home,
you don't have a space: you have a home
but what you don't have is a space in this world that feels right to you:
that's what you're missing and we all need that
and I believe we all deserve that.
But you will not have one unless you make one
you're the one that has to create and maintain it;
and I don't always like that either but I don't make the rules,
I just report on them and this is the way we work
Taking good care of your environment can be a very time-consuming task
especially if you've neglected it for a long time
but remember that you don't have to do it all at once, right?
Start small do a little bit each day and before you know it
maybe your heart will have a home again
and that's something that can be invaluable for our mental health journey.
The third thing you probably already know you should be doing
but might be struggling to do
is to actually Implement sleep hygiene techniques.
There are two types of insomnia:
there's clinical insomnia and there's behavioral insomnia.
Clinical insomnia is when, for the most part,
you are doing things right:
your day is structured in a way that should allow you to fall asleep
and stay asleep reasonably well but you are unable to do so
and it takes hours to fall asleep.
Behavioral insomnia is when you have a double shot at 300 p.m.,
you get into bed at 11:00 p.m., you scroll on your phone till midnight,
then you toss and turn until 3 in the morning.
In other words, you have insomnia but it's because of choices you're making,
it's not because your brain doesn't know how to go to sleep,
it's because you're not letting it go to sleep
and you've set up your life in a way that simply does not support sleep.
Most people who struggle with sleep
have behavioral insomnia, not clinical insomnia
Clinical insomnia is actually relatively rare and it's usually a matter
of lifestyle and habits that are primarily facilitating
the experience of insomnia.
So my question to you would be:
"Are you actually practicing sleep hygiene
and suffering clinical insomnia as a result
or are you self-sabotaging and then complaining about it?"
Because -- not to put too fine a point on it --
but that's basically what behavioral insomnia is:
you are -- unintentionally I know, I'm oversimplifying things a little bit --
you're making it as difficult as possible for your brain to fall asleep
and then being, like: "Brain, why didn't you fall asleep?"
I mean you're you're kind of gaslighting your sleep cycle in a sense.
It's a weird way to think of it. I know, but that's kind of what you're doing.
If you struggle with insomnia, take a real honest inventory
of your nighttime routine and ask yourself:
"Do I think it's reasonable that I should be able to fall asleep pretty quickly
or am I basically taking everything I know about sleep,
throwing it out the window
and thinking that's still going to work?"
Because it won't.
You're -- you have a brain and you have a nervous system
and we know a lot about how these factors affect our ability to fall asleep
and stay asleep.
And so sleep is not really a mystery,
it's just that most people aren't doing it right
and that's really what I want you to consider
if you're struggling with insomnia:
"Am I am I doing it right or am I just gaslighting my own sleep cycle?"
The 4th thing that you probably already know you should be doing
but might be having trouble with
is minimizing or eliminating drug and alcohol use
Now this one's a little bit different, I know, because this one is harder
for a person to control directly than some of the other topics
we're going to discuss here and believe me, I am understanding of that.
Most people who use drugs and alcohol use them because they want to feel
anything other than what it is like to be themselves
and it seems like nothing could possibly worse than just waking up today
and feeling like me -- and frankly I know what that feeling is like.
Substances put you on a physical and mental roller coaster, though,
where instead of changing what it feels like to be you,
which is ultimately the reality that you are struggling with
you are temporarily escaping what it feels like to be you
and when the escape wears up off you often feel even worse than before
and therefore you feel an even stronger desire to escape from yourself,
which manifests as increased substance use
and creates a downward spiral that the longer it goes on
becomes harder and harder to extricate yourself from.
So if this is you, and I have a little bit of a different idea for you here,
because everything else in this video has been about "here's what you can do".
If you're struggling with drug and alcohol use
and the pattern I just described kind of sounds like you,
maybe it's time to admit that you cannot do this alone
and that you need some help with this problem
Substance misuse is probably the hardest mental health condition
to treat without support, maybe tied with eating disorders
because they're very similar neurologically
and I think that's mainly because it's so easy to lie to yourself.
And, you know, most people aren't deceiving themselves
about their depression or their anxiety so, like, well, it's not that bad.
Usually you face those things pretty head on
you're like no this is awful and I need help
but when it comes to things that produce a momentary sense of reward
like eating disorders and substance misuse
you tend to rationalize, you tend to explain,
you tend to minimize, you tend to make excuses.
And if you've had several unsuccessful attempts at changing those habits
for yourself, maybe it's time to stop putting so much pressure on yourself,
to accept some help and to accept some support in this domain.
There is no shame in that: this is typically not a solo endeavor
and it might be time to think about asking for for help
The fifth thing that you probably already know you should be doing
but might be having a hard time doing
is being physically active every day.
So I mean, this one is no mystery right?
You probably had a million people tell you this already,
including your doctor every time you see him
and every other medical professional you interact with.
You've probably heard it so many times that you're sick of hearing it
and you have an innate automatic defensive response
when someone says this to you.
So sorry about that, because I probably just triggered it, but here's the thing:
your brain needs blood your brain does not work very well
if it does not have healthy accessible blood flow.
It's literally one of the resources your brain runs on,
it's like gasoline for your brain and most of us have very sedentary lifestyles
which negatively impact our cardiovascular health.
I mean, that's that's just the way society is, it's not your fault.
That's the way society has gone: most jobs don't use our bodies.
If you have a very physically active job
you probably don't need to worry about this because
you are physically active every day, it doesn't have to be extra,
it doesn't have to be prescribed exercise
if you get this in from your job or from your kids or whatever: fine.
But if you're like me
and you literally just sit on your butt for nine hours a day at work,
you need to add this if your predefined life doesn't have enough of it.
I'm not a fan of how society has made us so sedentary but it is what it is.
Since your brain needs blood to work right.
Cardiovascular health is brain health.
if you constantly feel foggy, forgetful, distracted or moody,
it might be because your brain doesn't have enough blood flow
it might be because your brain doesn't have one of the resources
that it needs to keep your prefrontal cortex powered on.
Because all the things that I just said live there
and when your brain is lacking in any essential resource
-- blood, oxygen, rest or caloric energy --
it enters a low power mode, much like what's on your phone
or your tablet or your laptop,
and certain processes don't work as well as they normally do.
The first part of the brain that takes the hit
when we're low on resources is the prefrontal cortex:
it's executive functioning, it's emotion regulation
it's social engagement.
So, if those are things you're struggling with,
it's probably because your brain doesn't have
all the resources it needs to do its job properly.
The one thing I always try to emphasize with physical activity too
is the way you do it really doesn't matter:
if you want to lift weights, lift weights;
if you want to run, run;
if you want to do team sports, do team sports;
if you hate some certain type of exercise, don't do it.
it's not it's not hugely critical how you do it
it's just critical that you do it.
So find something that you either like, ideally.
If there's nothing, like literally nothing,
find the thing you hate the least.
It can be some weird obscure thing:
maybe you want to get into hobby horsing,
and if you don't know what that is, you should look it up on social media.
It's a fascinating world if you do know what it is.
I appreciate the people who understand my obscure references
because there are many of them.
Just do something to get that blood going to your brain.
You might be amazed how much it helps, you really might be amazed.
The sixth and final thing that you probably -- asterisk to this one --
probably know you should be doing but are probably having trouble doing
is to stop beating yourself up about how long it is taking
to get your life in order.
Now I realize that you might have been doing that
throughout this video already because as I'm saying things
that you probably already knew you should be doing,
you might have been beating yourself up, guilt tripping yourself, shaming yourself,
and if you were, knock it off right now.
Sorry I had to say it that way,
but seriously you're not doing yourself any favors.
We all have enough pressure on us already, probably more than enough pressure
probably a maladaptive amount of pressure,
and change is hard.
Our brains actively resist it because they're wired for homeostasis
We associate familiarity with safety and with security
and on a very basic survival level,
we fight back against our own attempts to change.
Putting too much pressure on yourself tends to keep you stuck
So try patience and gentleness instead and see what happens.
It is amazing what people can do when they finally feel understood
and are treated with respect and compassion.
And it is very possible that the person most standing in your way
of feeling those things and experiencing those things
is you.