How To Look After Your Mental Health In The 21st Century

*Please note, I am not a medical expert of any kind but I am an expert in experiencing the issues caused by low mood, anxiety and depression. This is just my advice to those who may be feeling in the midst of things and is from my own experience.*

In an age where it seems as if more and more people are becoming anxious and depressed, it’s never been more important to learn how to look after your mental health. My own mental health has taken a battering over the last fifteen years at least and so I’ve had a lot of time to learn what things trigger off a depressive or anxious spell.

A lot of information out there is great but I feel like a lot of it is very similar and doesn’t touch on the things that I have been through and experienced. A lot of information out there runs along the same lines…talk to people (which is vital) and eat a healthy diet etc.

In my experience, there is more to learning how to look after your mental health then these things that get repeated every day in every article. A lot of the information out there assumes that there is something wrong with you and wants to help keep you going. Whilst I don’t want to seem like I am bashing the solid advice out there, what if you are perfectly fine? What if your brain is actually okay and has the right amount of each chemical inside of it?

Most of the information about how to look after your mental health tells you that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain. Are we just expected to believe that one day our brains stop creating as much serotonin as they used to? I don’t think it is as black and white as that. I think that can certainly play a role in some individuals but what if your anxiety and depression are caused by the way you live your life?

This is a scary idea for some people because it puts all the responsibility on them to fix their situation. I went to the doctor when I was feeling extremely anxious and he prescribed me anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds when I was seventeen. Whilst I felt relief because I thought I was going to feel much better after I took them, I also felt as if I had to accept that I’d have to take them for the rest of my life.

I’d have to go to the pharmacy every week and spend £8 each time because there was something wrong with me that I just needed to keep level. The experience left me feeling very confused. As a teenager I’d have to keep taking them for the next however many years instead of finding the core root of why I felt that way.

And after a few years of taking them and feeling like a vacant zombie, I finally had a revelation – I would have to figure it out myself. That is why I am now writing this article. I didn’t start writing it with the intention of debating whether depression and anxiety are 90% of the time caused by a bad balance of chemicals in the brain but I think it is something that needs to be addressed.

For example, how many people do you know right now who take antidepressants every day? I know countless amounts. And do you really think that all of a sudden their brains became unbalanced? I don’t think that this is the case at all.

In fact, those that I know on medication all had some kind of stress in their lives right before being prescribed them. Some didn’t, but I’ll get into that too..

So, it seems to me that it would be ridiculous that all of a sudden all of these people suddenly had something wrong with them. It makes more sense that the situations in their lives made them feel that way, not their brains for no reason.

For example, I know someone that split up with their partner after many years of being with them, they lost their job and went on to lose more and more jobs because they didn’t show up for work. They had been on drugs for many years and they finally had it all blow up in their face. They went on to be prescribed medication because they were feeling depressed.

Wouldn’t all that make you feel down and depressed?

After being depressed myself, I know that it was caused by situations in my life, not my brain. Now, please note that I am talking about depression, not clinical depression, which is a totally different, much harder thing to go through. Please also note that I can only talk from my experience because I know that medication can help some people push through tough times.

But for me, it does beg the question; “what if we took some of the responsibility took look after our mental health ourselves just like we do our physical health?”

If we brake an ankle we go and see our doctor to get it fixed but in the meantime, we spend our waking hours making sure we look after our ankles so they don’t brake to begin with. So what if our mental health is just as fragile and we need to learn how to look after it better in our day to day? Can we do things to make ourselves more emotionally robust just like we would train our bodies in the gym?

I would say yes and from my own experience, I would also argue that we do this by looking after the different areas in our lives with care.

My own depression has been caused by different things, most notably finances. Being a young dad and needing to provide for my family I have reached a point where it felt like I was going under. Bills were mounting and I couldn’t see how to get out of the pit that I was in. There didn’t seem to be enough money to cover the basics let alone buy new clothes for myself or take a day out somewhere.

I fell into a spiralling pit of depression at that point. I worked a job that I hated at the same time but I had to drag myself out of bed if I was ever going to pay the rent and my bills each month. I felt trapped and as if I had no control. That is why I’m starting this article about how to look after your mental health with the subject of money.

1. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it.

As mentioned above, the pain and suffering that can come from money can be unbearable. Being the resentful type I was, I was angry that I was never taught about managing money or bills at school. In my own place, I felt as if I was way out of my depth and didn’t know how to manage my money properly in a way that would let me avoid charges and debt.

If you do not respect money (and you don’t have a lot of it as I didn’t) it can creep up on you and kick you in the butt. I had a job that barely covered all of my rent, bills and food each month. I was living to my means but I wasn’t thinking about every bill in the way that I should have been. I wasn’t paying attention until I had so many bills and no way out.

I was twenty-three and in a way, still living like a teenager, ignoring the money coming out of my account and not planning for the month ahead. After a very tricky time, I learnt to have some respect for money and not see it as something that can just be thrown away on silly little purchases.

I was very down about not having enough money for a long time. I still make a huge effort to make sure there is enough throughout the month because I don’t want to go back into a stressful spell. It’s no secret that we live in a world of borrowing money. Student loans, credit cards and store cards can all build up into hefty bills that haunt us.

Not to mention all the subscriptions that can get way out of hand. There’s almost too much to sign up for now which leads to a hurricane of direct debits. All the small change that goes out of your account looks small but combined they add up and can leave you very short at the end of the month.

We all like fancy things but if you can keep your expenses down then you’ll also keep your stress and anxiety levels down at the same time.

2. Looking after your mental health by keeping the bullshit to a minimum

Western culture is complicated but it can be made more complicated by having a multitude of meaningless attachments that influence our emotional state. For example, it’s fun to talk online to your friends but it’s also possible that pointless arguments and petty squabbles can cause you a great deal of stress.

Seeking out these kinds of distractions can cause a lot of unnecessary anxiety. But there’s plenty more bullshit in everyday life that can weigh us down and cause us pain like leaving arguments on bad terms. The unfinished business of such things can have a bigger effect on your mental well being than you realise.

If I fall out with my partner in the morning then I know I’m going to be worked up about it all day until I come home and make up with her. It seems like there is so much we can sort out but we put these things off. There is a lot of relief that can be experienced once we deal with the emotional strains we put on ourselves.

I feel as if I used to have a big ego. I used to feel as if I was owed a lot. More money, more love and more respect. But it wasn’t until I got rid of my expectations that I felt freer to just live and not expect anything from anyone.

My state of mind felt not only calmer but also more confident. I try not to seek out bullshit and instead stay on my own path, living my life quietly rather than feeling as if I need to put myself in front of others so that they notice me.

For me it seems, focusing on myself and what I enjoy helps to balance my mood and my emotional state. I’m not a religious person but I do enjoy the teachings of Buddha, mainly because many of them seem to be realistic and actionable in real life, even in this day and age.

“The root of suffering is attachment.”

Buddha

Whilst I agree with this statement largely, really what he is saying is “don’t let your attachments own you instead of you owning them.” For example, a house is a material attachment but heck, you gotta live somewhere. And a car is a material attachment but you probably need to move around a lot.

The idea is to not allow these things to own you. This is equally important in other more emotional terms. For example, letting go of what other people think of you or feeling as if you need to be liked by someone because we cannot control the material world as it shifts and morphs around us.

What we can control is how we view it and live in it. This does not mean we become completely stoic but what I like about this teaching is that it seems to be the complete opposite idea to that which we are normally bombarded by.

For example, all adverts tell us how much better our lives will be if we buy the advertisers product. It’s easy to eventually believe that this is true and so we can become attached to the things they are selling us. These things start to own us instead of us remembering that we don’t really need them at all.

3. Never stop learning

I hated school. It just wasn’t for me. Whilst the things being taught at school were important to me so that I could have a good baseline of education, I wasn’t really interested. Once I’d finished school and college I was finally happy that I didn’t have to keep learning.

I didn’t read anything for a very long time. I just wanted to get a job and earn some money for myself. I had this idea that I wouldn’t need to learn much else and I’d just drift through life with my own beliefs and rigid thoughts.

However, this was simply my own crazy idea because I never enjoyed what was being taught at school. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I naturally began learning about the things that I was interested in and I realised that learning would be a constant thing throughout my life. That was when I started to enjoy learning.

I started reading again (not so many books but online information) I learnt how to make a YouTube channel, set up websites and write articles. I jumped straight into the online world and learned a ton in a short time. There is a lot to say about self-education if you’re willing to spend a little time exploring what you naturally feel interested in.

Self-education not only gave me a lot of confidence but it made my mind feel sharper and gave me a feeling that there was something meaningful in life for me to pursue as an individual.

I have to admit that even though I didn’t enjoy school, English was the one subject that I was naturally good at. I can’t say that I really tried to do well but for some reason, I did well at it. I sometimes think that it’s funny how I ended up writing on this blog when I never really tried in class to write or even try and excel.

But that is my point, for some reason, we all have something we’re instinctively good at. Even if you don’t think you’re good at anything, it’s going to be because you haven’t crossed paths with that thing yet that you don’t even know you’re good at.

Some of us ignore the things we’re good at (like I did with English and writing for years) and I believe that that can cause us emotional stress without us even realising it. When we do the things we’re naturally good at we go into a flow state which gives us a ton of satisfaction and makes us feel as if we’re doing exactly what we were meant to be doing. And if we keep doing and learning about those things we naturally become more satisfied and more confident in our own abilities.

‘Having a calling’ is a cheesy statement but there’s something true in it.

It wasn’t just educating myself about the things I was interested in that I learned.

I also learned that it was important to have an open mind. I figured out that even though we have these core beliefs within ourselves, it’s vital to allow people to speak their opinion and keep your ears open. Not just because it’s polite to but also because you might learn something new that will also change your view on something.

The world can become polarised easily because people aren’t willing to have their minds changed!

Learning never stops but I believe that if you focus your learning on the things that naturally excite you, you can become extremely fulfilled.

4. Keep your perspective up to date

One of the best ways that has helped me to look after my mental health and my outlook has been keeping my perspective up to date. The bullshit I mentioned earlier clutters your mind and steers you away from the bigger picture. This is not helped by feeling constantly anxious or depressed.

I mean, just look at that picture. If you live somewhere that’s lucky enough to have clear skies you can see the number of stars in the sky, and that’s just in your range of sight. All of those stars have their own planets orbiting them. Isn’t that crazy?

Sometimes I remind myself of this when I feel as if the world is swallowing me whole. It reminds me that there is still this overarching mystery all around us that we still don’t understand and I find that comforting. And, it also reminds me that so much of what we do is so small and unique to us. Looking up widens the world again.

So even if you feel like you’re all alone and can’t face the world, we’re all in this together. None of us knows what we’re doing or where we’re going and that is exciting and scary at the same time to me. The grind of everyday life can be alleviated, even just a little by looking up and resetting your perspective.

I find it humbling to know that the stress I feel is usually caused by bullshit in the grand scheme of things. This is the existence of mystery. I’m guilty of allowing myself to get wrapped up in bullshit most of the time. It’s normal after all, you have to go to work and take care of things. However, staying in that mind frame for too long can make you miserable, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, it usually takes something bad happening for people to change their perspective and realise what is truly important to them so why not try and do it every now and again intentionally?

Looking after your mental health summary

I hope you enjoyed this post and took away something new. There’s much more to the day to day of looking after your mental health but these are the key things that I remember each day. They have helped to level my mood and keep me on a straight path.

Of course, this is an ongoing thing so let me know in the comments what you do to look after your mental health.