Mental Health Awareness Week

Its mental health awareness week and a good chance for Total Body Orthotics to show their support towards better mental health for everyone.

Mental health problems can affect anyone, any day of the year. But this week is a great time to have a chat with a friend, family member or colleague and have think about your own wellbeing too. You could even join one of our campaigns to help make sure no one experiences a mental health problem.

If you are looking for counselling, Total Body Orthotics offers a clinical counselling service.

Mental wellbeing describes your mental state- how you are feeling in yourself and how you cope with day-to-day life.

If you have GOOD mental wellbeing then you will be able to;

  • Feel relatively confident in yourself and have good self esteem.
  • Feel and express a range of emotions
  • Build and maintain good relationships with others
  • Feel engaged with the world around you
  • Live and work productively
  • Cope with the stresses of daily life
  • Adapt and manage in times of change and uncertainty

Mental wellbeing is essential to function and be happy.

Evidence suggests there are 5 steps we can all take to improve our mental wellbeing.

If you give them a try, you may feel happier, more positive and able to get the most from life.

  • Connect – connect with the people around you: your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. Spend time developing these relationships.
  • Be active – you don’t have to go to the gym. Take a walk, go cycling or play a game of football. Find an activity that you enjoy and make it a part of your life.
  • Food and Mood- changes in your blood sugar levels are linked to changes in mood and energy. Eating regularly maintains blood sugar levels. Not eating regularly can make you tired, irritable, anxious and cause poor concentration. Good tips include eating breakfast, eating every 3-4hours, avoiding junk foods, eating plenty of fruit and veg and drinking lots of water.
  • Drink sensibly- Alcohol can cause depressive feelings, heightened anxiety, or feeling out of control in away that feels unpleasant. It can also increase risk taking behaviours, so you need to know what your reactions might be.Remember to make your own decisions about what is right for you and not bend to peer pressure around drinking.
  • Keep learning – learning new skills can give you a sense of achievement and a new confidence. So why not sign up for that cooking course, start learning to play a musical instrument, or figure out how to fix your bike?
  • Learn to take time out and relax- People have lots of different ways of relaxing or having down time from the stresses of life. These can be the things that you stop doing when you start to fellow in mood, or stressed, as you forget to be kind to yourself. A hot bath, listening to music, watching a film, keeping social arrangements and hobbies going, whatever it is, think about the things that help keep you calm or more content, and make sure they are still in your routine. 
  • Give to others – even the smallest act can count, whether it’s a smile, a thank you or a kind word. Larger acts, such as volunteering at your local community centre, can improve your mental wellbeing and help you build new social networks.
  • Distract yourself- When you are feeling immersed in a problem, let yourself switch off from it and go to do something completely different. When you return to it at a different time it may seem more manageable. Distracting yourself is not a cop-out, but can be a reliable way to stop overthinking a problem when you are feeling stuck.
  • Be mindful – be more aware of the present moment, including your thoughts and feelings, your body and the world around you. Some people call this awareness “mindfulness”. It can positively change the way you feel about life and how you approach challenges.
  • Remember your good points-We all have them, and none of us is perfect either. It can be easy to think that others are more talented, more successful, have more opportunity than us, when you are feeling low in mood. but it is impossible to know how someone else is feeling inside, whatever they seem like on the surface. remind yourself about the things you do well, and looking for evidence of this can help to balance out critical thoughts about yourself, which tend to increase when we are stressed.  
  • Ask for help- How would you feel if a friend asked for help, advice or just wanted to talk things through? Many of us would be pleased to be chosen to confide in, it might make us feel valued. When you are feeling low in mood, or anxious, it is easy to think negatively about yourself and be less likely to seek support from others. Try and beat this feeling and approach people that you trust to talk to. You may be surprised at how much better you might feel and how they have responded positive to you, as you would if the situation were reversed.

If you are looking for counselling, Total Body Orthotics offers a clinical counselling service. Counselling can bring calm and balance back to our lives and can provide us with vital tools to improve our emotional wellbeing. It can give us the necessary tools to help us evaluate our problems and create innovations to make positive changes in the future. Painful thoughts and emotions can often get stuck in our minds which can cause depression, anxiety, stress, and other serious issues and physical ailments.

Email counselling involves typing your feelings, problems and concerns. Our fully qualified senior counsellor takes time to read and respond with an in-depth therapeutic reply. With email counselling you can take your time with what you want to say and write at a time which works for you. You can manage the exchange at your own pace and access your email reply whenever you like. With email counselling you can send your email at anytime of the day you like.

Email counselling is easily accessible, all you need is a personal email address to send and receive your emails. At Total Body Orthotics we believe in strengthening the client/counsellor bond, you will be supported by the same counsellor throughout your time with us. Our clinical will spend at least 1 hour on your therapeutic response and use an encrypted email account.

Have a look at this short  video from the charity ‘Mind’ that talks about what mental health problems are.

Thankyou for reading our blog!

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