The Little Things I Do To Take Care of My Mental Health

Over the past year I have become more and more conscious and diligent about how my daily routines effect my mental health. I’ve made it my number one priority to take care of my mental health and be more aware of it, because the year prior I wasn’t nearly as diligent and it suffered as a result. For a bit of backstory, I have suffered with anxiety and depression ever since I was a young teen, and luckily it has been pretty manageable for the majority of the time. I’m also incredibly lucky to have an amazing support system of friends and family who I can talk to about my mental health without feeling shame or like their’s a stigma around my condition.

After I graduated college two and a half years ago, I was going through a particularly rocky transition of not knowing what I wanted to do, which for someone like me, who is a planner and a high-achiever was an incredibly hard pill to swallow and my mental health plummeted as a result. About 8 months after graduation I realized I couldn’t deal with this all on my own and I needed to seek professional help to manage my stress and anxiety. Going to therapy has been the best thing I have done for my mental health by a long-shot, however, if there’s one thing my therapist has taught me, it’s that doing the hard work in therapy is ultimately on YOU not your therapist. That means that the in-between time between sessions are the periods where you will progress and see the most change because you are putting all of those tools from therapy into practice in your real life.

While therapy has been such an integral role in my mental health improving, there are so many small adjustments I’ve made in my day-to-day life that have improved my mental health and the consistency of me feeling well emotionally. Here’s a list of some of those things, it is by no means exhaustive and these aren’t necessarily things I do every single day, but I do them as frequently as possible.

~ Spend quality time completely by myself - I am an introvert by nature and that means I need a good chunk of time during the week to be on my own but also have that time be spent in a productive and present way (i.e. not vegging out on the couch watching Netflix all day).

~ Journaling regularly - This is something I need to do more often and I’m thinking about committing to journaling every day to some degree in the new year. Journalling is such a great tool for consciously checking in with your emotions on a daily basis and especially when paired with a daily gratitude reminder or affirmation it can really help to lift my mood during stressful periods.

~ Getting enough sleep & waking up early - I can pretty much track my stress levels by my quality of sleep. If I had it my way, I’d be in bed by 8:30 most nights and then up around 5:30, what can I say I’m a granny! Ever since I was little I’ve always needed a lot of sleep, but I’ve also always preferred to be early to bed and early to rise. When I go to bed too late and don’t get enough hours of sleep in a night it negatively affects my mood and my handle on my anxiety. Luckily I have a job that I don’t take home too much so I can be quite strict with myself about not responding to emails or doing other work-related tasks and I don’t have to stay up at all hours of the night finishing up work.

~ Exercising & playing outdoors - Being outside I think is the number one thing that will instantly lift my mood if I’m in the midst of a particularly anxious period. Incorporating activities like hiking and rock climbing into my weekly routine have been such game changers with my mental health

~ Making plans with the people I love - As much as I am an introvert, sometimes when I’m feeling my worst mental health-wise and I want to just be on my own, are the times that I need to reach out and be with my friends and family most. I’m lucky enough to have the most amazing fiancé (omg that’s the first time I’m referring to Brad as my fiancé in writing!), friends, and family to support me and lift me up when I’m feeling like garbage. Something my therapist told me early on, that has really stuck with me, is that even when I’m feeling my most introverted and want to spend time on my own, spending time with loved ones won’t pull from my social stores as much as I think it will. Being with other people and talking with others is such a good distraction from whatever is going on in my head and can serve as a good dose of perspective.

Let me know what you do to take care of your mental health in the comments below!

Exciting Life Updates

I did have another post planned for today but some exciting life events came up over the weekend and I’d thought I’d share them with you all! Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Brad (my boyfriend of three years) and I got engaged! It still feels completely surreal saying and/or writing those words but I could not be more thrilled. A lot of the details of the engagement I want to keep private, but I will say that it was the most perfect proposal and it really felt so true to us as a couple. We were out on a hike with my sister and her boyfriend and at the end of the hike, as we were taking pictures he got down on one knee and popped the question! I’m incredibly grateful that Brad got my sister and her boyfriend involved in the whole plan to document the entire proposal, I now have a video and pictures I will cherish and look back on for the rest of my life.

Because Brad and I have been together for quite awhile, getting married was something we had talked about for a little while now. As prepared as I thought I was, once Brad got down on one knee, I completely blacked out, something I’ve heard a lot of people talk about in regards to getting proposed to. I almost immediately started crying and was so excited and emotional that I didn’t say the word “yes” out loud immediately, just a quick “mhmmm”! Of course as soon as I regained my control over my emotions I said yes and Brad put the ring on my finger! I am so incredibly excited and happy and while I didn’t think being engaged would feel that different from us dating, it definitely does, and in the best ways possible. It’s been so exciting to spend the last week telling all of our friends and family the news and seeing them get just as excited as us. I am so lucky to have found my person and I cannot wait to see what this next chapter holds.

Of course the next logical question I’m sure all of you have on your minds is: “When’s the wedding?!”, a question I have fielded A LOT in the last week! Simply put: we’re not totally sure! We know that we aren’t in a rush have a wedding, however these things do take quite a bit of time to plan and organize so we will probably start the very basics of planning in the new year. Of course I will be sharing some of the planning along the way but it definitely won’t be the sole focus of my content in 2020.

Sustainability: Wanting Less & Being Content With What I Have

Sustainability is quite the buzzword in the blogging community as of late. I am so glad that this is the case, and we are hopefully, as a community, moving on from the excessive content about hauls and spending and purging our closets every few months. I felt a pretty monumental shift within myself in the last year and a half of being much more intentional and mindful about what I am purchasing and most importantly, why I feel the need to purchase it. A little background here, I have always been a spender over a saver, I loved shopping ever since I was a kid. In fact, my dad loves to tell the story of when he would take me to Home Depot with him (a regular Sunday event in our household) I would somehow find something I wanted to buy, usually it was a bright pink roll of tape, or a cute colored flash light. Although I’ve always been a lover of shopping, I do know my limits and my parents were not the type of people to just buy me whatever I wanted, in short, they taught me the value of a dollar.

After I left college and got a job, I had the privilege of living at home and had more disposable income than I would have had I been renting an apartment. During this period of newfound financial freedom, I shopped far too often and bought things I definitely did not need. However, I am also a relatively organized person and bringing this much stuff in your life at once inevitably will bring clutter, so I found myself constantly purging my closet of clothing I just wasn’t wearing.

Part of my mental shift over the last year and a half has been influenced greatly by the surge in the public consciousness around the fashion industry and the toll that fashion consumption takes on the environment. I’ve never been hugely into fast fashion and I never was the type to buy masses of cheap clothes, but even so, buying clothes without an intentionality or awareness behind why you are buying them leads to a slippery slope of over-consumption. I am far from perfect and I am definitely still learning when it comes to being a more conscious and sustainable consumer. However, having a deeper awareness, overall has made my need and want for more things wane. I’ve stopped myself countless times to ask myself, “is this purchase really necessary” and nine times out of ten the answer is no.

I am by no means going to solely dedicate my blog to sustainability, although I commend and love blogs that do, but it is a topic I want to dive deeper into in the coming months.

Simple Joys | Summer 2019

~ Long walks in Golden Gate Park on a hot day

~ Random trips to get ice cream at night

~ Seeing our plants sprout new leaves

~ Listening to records early in the morning on the weekends

~ Drinking a strong cup of coffee with oat milk in bed

~ Looking out our living room window to a wall of greenery

~ Finishing a book a week, three weeks straight

~ Foggy, early morning walks

~ Spending a Sunday afternoon cooking dinner

~ Getting multiple rolls of film back from the developer

~ Writing in my journal with zero expectations

~ Looking forward and planning for our trips this Fall

Living with a Partner | What We've Learned

Almost exactly a year ago, Brad and I signed a lease for our first apartment together and within a couple of weeks we were completely moved in! Prior to moving in together we had been dating for almost two years, our first year of dating was in college and then after graduation we moved back to the Bay Area, which is my hometown, but it was a new place to Brad. We decided well before we moved to San Francisco, that we would not move in together right away. I moved back in to my parents house to save money and Brad moved in with one of his friends from college and it worked out great for us. In hindsight, I’m so glad we waited quite awhile to move in together, because for both of us it felt like a big step for us as a couple and I know we moved in for all the right reasons, rather than out of convenience.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect from moving in together. I have heard so many people say that moving in together fundamentally changes the dynamic of a relationship and I don’t know if I would necessarily agree or disagree with that statement. When it comes down to, I think it really depends on the couple, since every relationship is unique. For us, and for me as an individual, living together hasn’t changed mine and Brad’s relationship, so much as it has just made me more aware of things I wasn’t aware of prior to cohabiting. I’m going to share two of the things I’ve learned, and two things Brad has learned from moving in together.

Hannah

Time By Yourself Really Is Important ~ I am just about as quintessentially introverted as you can get. I love my friends and family, but I need time by myself to recharge and feel like I can put my best foot forward when I am with others. Besides being an introvert, I genuinely love having time to myself and I feel very comfortable in my own company, which is something I’ve worked really hard at over the years. When you live with a partner it can be tempting to spend all your time together, however I found it really important to advocate for when I needed some time to be on my own, in order to be a good partner. Spending time by myself also makes me feel like when Brad and I are spending time together we are putting more effort and being more present with one another.

Prioritize Being A Couple First and Foremost ~ This one sounds pretty obvious but I think the easiest trap to fall into when moving in with a significant other is becoming complacent, and that can definitely change the dynamic of the relationship for the worst. Before Brad and I moved in together we spent far less time together just by default and because of that when we did spend time together we made the most of it. Once you move in with a partner, it’s so easy to put off doing things like date night because you have so much time to spend together built into your everyday lives. This definitely took some adjusting for us, because we are both so busy, but, to me, it was one of the most important things to come to grips with after we moved in.

Brad

Always Being Aware of Your Impact On Your Shared Space ~ After living with four guys (and a dog) in college, cleanliness was not always the priority in our household. However, moving in with a partner made me realize how much keeping up on housework regularly not only helps in the long run, in terms of not having to do hours-long cleaning sessions later, but it also is a nice thing to do to show your partner that you care about your space together. Because we live in a one-bedroom apartment, there literally is not a lot of room for messiness, and when the place gets messy we both feel it. Doing the little things like cleaning up after yourself or making a little extra effort to keep our shared space in good condition has such a tremendous effect on the relationship and keeping household chores equal and manageable. It also saves us a lot from bickering about things that are really not worth bickering over!

Delegation is Key ~ One of the things that Hannah and I worked on before moving in together was getting on the same page about expectations of how we would manage the more mundane parts of life, such as cleaning, finances, food shopping, etc. Again, having the discussion before you’re in the stressful parts of moving in kept us from getting in unnecessary arguments. Luckily, we are on the same page about most things like finances, which are the root cause for most relationship problems, so there wasn’t much to work out but having the conversation ahead of time made both of us feel a lot more at ease in the midst of moving. Instead of splitting every little thing, we decided to delegate both expenses and chores to each other to make things as even as possible and so we always know what we’re responsible for.