Five Mental Health Hacks I Wish I Knew When I Was Younger

As a mental health therapist with 15 years of experience, I have learned many tools along the way to help cope with everyday stress, improve confidence, and cope with  symptoms of depression and anxiety. I wanted to compile a short list to help others with some simple skills you can implement in your everyday life.

1. Improve confidence with power poses

There is research to support that certain body positions can actually help boost your self-esteem. Often times, people with low confidence (many times women) may unknowingly use body language to make themselves smaller and not take up much space. These poses are for you!

Use poses to take up space! You can implement these poses prior to an event that may make you nervous, perhaps prior to a presentation, an interview, or a hard conversation where you need to stand your ground. Try one out for about 30 seconds or longer and see how you feel.

• Pretend you are your favorite superhero with your hands on your hips and with a wide leg stance. I’m picturing Wonder Woman. What about you?
• Warrior 2 yoga pose. Start with your feet wider than your hips parallel to one another. Then position your right foot to be perpendicular to your left foot and lunge into your right leg. Spread your arms out straight so your right hand extends forward, in the direction of your right foot. Your left hand will extend out toward your left foot.
• Sitting in a chair, clasp your hands behind your head, bend 1 leg over your other to look like the number 4, and lean back. Do any movie scenes of confident CEOs come to mind?

2. Boost mood with smiling & laughter

When you smile, the muscles in your face send signals to your brain to release dopamine and serotonin, the hormones that help you feel good. The same is true for laughter. The interesting part is, your brain can’t tell the difference between genuine smiling and laughter and fake smiling and laughter! Seriously. There’s a study that showed people who had botox injections felt happier than those who didn’t because they were unable to frown.

There is a whole movement called Laughter Yoga and it is created on this premise by Dr. Madan Kataria. As a class, you do voluntary laughter exercises together. You may end up feeling so silly that your fake laughter turns into genuine laughter. It’s used all over the world to help improve mental and physical health. You can find an online class at laughteryoga.org.

I’m not suggesting you fake a smile all day every day. This may make you feel and appear disingenuous. But maybe try fake smiling for about 20-30 seconds next time you’re in a stressful situation, like driving in rush hour traffic.

3. Change your mood with aromatherapy

Remember that essential oil craze a few years ago? There really is something to how essential oils can be beneficial. They can be used for aromatherapy purposes to affect how you feel.

• Lavender and chamomile, for example, can be used to promote relaxation when you’re feeling stressed or anxious.
• Citrus such as orange, tangerine, lemon and lime can all be used to boost your mood when you’re feeling down or sluggish.
• Take some deep breaths when smelling aromatherapy products. Breathe in through your nose and exhale out your mouth. Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale.

You could add essential oils to a diffuser to make your room smell good. Or if you’re feeling crafty, you could use essential oils to make your own products such as candles, sugar scrubs, bath salts or aromatherapy spritzers. Alternatively, you could support a local business such as an apothecary to purchase products made with essential oils. Make sure to never consume essential oils or apply straight essential oils to your skin due to how potent they are.

4. Be active when you feel depressed

Often when people feel down or depressed, they want to isolate, stay home, stay in their pajamas and just lay in bed. But the reality is that these behaviors can make you feel more depressed.

Try doing the opposite.

• If you feel isolated, connect with a supportive person or therapist.
• If you just want to stay in your PJ’s in bed, get up, shower, and get dressed.
• If you just want to stay home for too many days on end, get out of the house.
• If you don’t want to do anything, get your body moving. Even walking a couple blocks or dancing to your favorite song may help.

5. You don’t have to believe all of your thoughts

Not everything we think is true. And we are often our own worst critics and can be way harder on ourselves than anyone else is.

It can be both helpful and entertaining to create a character for your inner critic so this can be someone separate from yourself. What would they look like? What would they wear? What would their voice sound like? What would you name them?

This way you can tell your inner Voldemort or Darth Vader to shut up when you’ve had enough of his negativity. Who is your inner critic character?

Next Steps

Next time you’re feeling stressed, anxious, or in a funk, remember you have some new tools in your toolbox you can use to help you feel better.

If you found any of these tips helpful and think they could help someone else, feel free to share this blog with others. You can find out more about me and how I can help you as a mental health therapist by getting in touch.

Resources

(2015). Stressed out? Aromatherapy can help you feel calmer. Cleveland Clinic.

(2023). Laughter Yoga International.  Cuddy, A. (2016). My overview of the state of the science on postural feedback (“power posing”) and some comments on civilized scientific discourse. LinkedIn.

Scipioni, J. (2020). Simple tactic that ‘trick’ your brain into feeling happier, researchers say. CNBC.