Rachel’s Room🛋️: Routines For Mental Health

Catching my live streams. The last few weeks, I've been traveling quite a bit for work, which has been a blessing. And it also creates some challenges when it comes to my mental health. Being away from home, being outside my routine, not having control over my schedule or my time is something I have learned, definitely creates challenges with my anxiety, with my eating disorder. And so I have noticed that there has been a massive shift. Hi, Carissa. A massive shift in my ability to manage some of my mental health symptoms as easily as I normally do.

Hi, Jules. And so I've been thinking a lot about routine, and I'm thinking a lot about routine and mental health and how having a really good routine is so beneficial for our mental health and mental well being. And I trying to navigate how do I build a routine for myself that is something that I can maintain even when I'm not home. Right. And so I think the idea of this is, how do I maintain a routine that I don't feel like is actually me trying to take complete control over my life? Cause I know in times for myself, I have felt like I'm well.

And that's kind of because I've had complete control over everything, which is not entirely mentally healthy. Because needing to be in control of everything means I'm not flexible, which means it's difficult for me to say yes to things, enjoy things, adapt to things. And we need to have adaptability and flexibility in our lives in order to really enjoy being alive and being social. And so I've been thinking a lot about mental health and routine. And I've sort of come up with these three ideas on how to build a routine for mental health that is actually going to be supportive for you without it feeling constricting.

And there are three components to that. The first one, consistency, the second one, effectiveness, and the third one, flexibility. So I'll kind of break these down. So the first one is, is my routine something that I can do consistently? So an example of a routine that might be good for our mental health is some people do, like a morning routine. So I used to be a big morning routine person. Every morning, before I started working, before I answered texts or emails, I would pour myself a cup of coffee, I would turn on some nice meals, light a candle, and I would journal for about 15 minutes, and then I would pull a tarot card.

And this took me about a half an hour total. And this morning, routine became a consistent daily practice that I would do and included all of those things. Right. So each of those components was a part of that routine. And what that did was create a sense of, like, in the beginning of the day, I'm setting aside some time to connect with myself and fill my cup before I go out and give and interact with the world. And just that simple practice of doing that daily, that consistency provided me with a sense of stability, and that stability provided me with a sense of security.

And those that foundation supported me throughout the rest of the day. High speak wonder. And the thing about that is it was something I could do consistently because it was brief. It was something I could do pretty much anywhere. I was like, if I'm traveling, I can pretty easily have a cup of coffee, play some music on my phone and my headphones. I might not be able to light an incense or a candle, but I can find a place to sit and I can bring my journal and journal, right? So is my routine something I can do consistently, and is it something that's flexible?

Meaning can I do it in multiple places? Right. So can I do this when I'm not at home? Sometimes I used to. Part of my routine would be like going to the gym or going to a specific fitness class. And while there was ability for me to be consistent with that, I wasn't able to always do that if I was traveling, which meant if I was not at home, even if I'm like visiting my family for the weekend, I can't go to my gym and do my fitness class. But if my routine is getting movement, if that's how I classify that part of my movement, part of my routine, then that becomes more flexible because I can take myself for a walk, right?

As I think it's about having these mental shifts around. What constitutes part of my routine? Is my routine that I go to this exact class and I do this exact workout? Or is it that I move my body once a day for like a half an hour? And so when we can kind of like, define our routine as being something that is then flexible, it makes it easier for us to maintain that routine and have some mental wraparound with that routine that we're engaging in it, so we don't feel like we're lost or not tethered to this thing that's helping us or supporting us.

And then thirdly, is it effective? Right? So sometimes we try out. We try out new things for our mental health or our well being, but we have to ask ourselves, does doing this thing actually make me feel better when I do it? Right, so I could try, let's say I tried meditating every morning because I've heard that that's helpful and effective for a lot of people. But after practicing meditation for a couple weeks, if after each practice of meditation I'm not feeling an improvement in my mood, in my state of being, in my levels of anxiety, if after two weeks of doing it, I'm not noticing a difference in myself, it might not mean I'm doing it wrong.

It might just mean it's not effective for me. So we also have to ask ourselves, like, is my routine something I'm doing because I think I'm supposed to do it, or because it's actually making me feel better? Is it actually improving my livelihood? Is it improving my mental health? And so ask yourself, you know, those questions, too, of like, is this thing that's in my routine effective? Is it something that I, even if sometimes, like, I don't want to sit down and journal because it sounds hard or it sounds painful, I always feel better after I do it.

It is always effective. It's effective at turning my mood around and calming me down, helping me check in. And so, even though sometimes I don't want to engage with the activity in my routine, sometimes I don't want to go outside and move my body, sometimes I don't want to call a friend, whatever that thing might be, if it's effective, I know it's a good thing to include in my routine. And so the idea too is like, once we sort of built a routine for ourselves, it's not necessarily like, here's my schedule all day, right?

It's not necessarily every single day. I do this from the moment I wake up till I go to bed. It's more about what's something or a few things that I can, that I do each day that contribute to my mental health, that are flexible enough for me to do in multiple situations or scenarios, and that I can do consistently, that I can actually reasonably do on a daily or every other daily basis, and that actually improve my life. And having these routines allows us to. When in times where we don't have as much stability, right.

This is a great thing to have in our toolbox if we're going through transition. So anytime I've had to move, like move apartments or move cities or if I'm starting a new job or going back to school, those are big transition times where our Yden schedules will change quite a bit. So the routines of our lives are completely uprooted. So having these other routines that are. That we can do regardless of what's happening outside of, that allows us to maintain a sense of stability and calm and feels like we can find some grounding amidst all the rest of the change, which is really good for our mental health.

So I have been trying to reincorporate a routine back into my life after having moved around quite a bit and not implementing my routines while I was away and noticing how much that impacted my mental health. And so it was a good reminder for me that these routines are really, really important. Okay, I'm gonna check the comments. Okay. Jewel says, I wake up 30 minutes earlier than my household and have a cup of coffee and look over the lake and reflect on things. I love that. Oh, having a view of the lake sounds so magical.

My dream is to one day live somewhere where I have like a porch or a patio that overlooks some body of water. Like, that would be the ultimate dream because I am a big. I'm a water gazer. I love sitting with like a hot drink and looking out over water and just contemplating things, maybe writing, reading, like listening to music. That is so lovely. I love that very much. I also, if anyone is curious, just because it's summer and I know a lot of folks do tend to take more trips during summer and vacation, so there is a lot more uprooting and removal of our normal schedule for folks that are in school.

We're not in school, or anyone who's a teacher not teaching. You know, summertime can be. Or parents who've got kiddos who are not in school. Like, summertime can be a time where our routine is disrupted a lot. So I just have. I just posted a video on my profile about navigating your mental health while on vacation, but also returning back home. So transition times of returning back after a period of being away and how to kind of reset into our day to day lives. So if that's of any support, then that video is on my profile.

Next week I will be traveling again for work and then I hope that I will be done for a while and I can just be home and stabilized. So next week, my live live video will not be on Wednesday. I have to check in with Cadre to see what day they want me to go live on. But just stay tuned. I'll make a post about it in the community about which day I'll be going live next week because I will be on a plane next Wednesday. So, yeah, I'm going to Chicago for one day to go to a mental health summit. All of these trips I've been doing for work have been very cool.

Maybe I'll go live one week and tell you about the event I went to in Amsterdam, it was a crisis summit to kind of talk about how we can better create crisis care for people with mental health crises globally. It was pretty, so very excited to be a part of all these opportunities and talking to people about how we can improve mental health care worldwide and also learn from other countries what they're doing. It's really, it's quite fascinating. So. So, yeah. So I will make a post about what day I'm going live next week and I hope you all have a lovely rest of your Wednesday, and I will see you next time.

Toodaloo.