Usually, we listen to podcasts to get some sort of information. It might be the news, entertainment, or education, but whatever kinds of podcasts you listen to (if you do listen to them), you probably do so with the intention of paying attention so you can get something out of it.
Because of this, podcasts aren’t often our first reference for something to relax to. It might be for some – you might not even pay attention to podcasts, instead using them to have voices in the background while you focus on something else, for example. However, podcasts likely include multiple, louder voices having a conversation, which doesn’t necessarily create the most relaxing atmosphere.
That being said, meditation podcasts are still a thing. We’ve covered a ton of meditation apps before, which usually do include some sort of guided voice narrating you through breathing exercises or a mindfulness activity. The podcasts that we’ve gathered below for you to check out perform the same or similar sessions, but don’t require any external downloading. Some also provide information about mental health and mindfulness. Mindfulness done through podcasts episodes also means that new episodes are always being released so that there’s always something new to meditate on.
Participating in causes to help make a difference and support the underprivileged can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Social media has made activism that much easier too – think of the hashtags and fundraisers people post about or how simple it is to repost other people’s posts on your story about important issues and how to get more information about the topic. Social media can also help you learn about issues that you may have not heard of otherwise (think of the current situations in Yemen and the Philippines, for example), and just exposure to campaigns can lead to a significant increase in support of the people being affected.
This accessibility is incredibly helpful and can still make a difference, even if it’s just providing the smallest bit of support, but it can also be taxing and overwhelming. Self-care and maintaining one’s mental health has become an important topic for activists, especially since the subject matter is most likely going to be painful on some level. Even if social media puts you in a physical safe space to talk about these issues, you can still feel a secondhand effect (known as compassion fatigue) and can lead to burnout. People who participate in activism online are more likely to have a tendency to gravitate towards issues that are related to their identity (i.e. their race, gender, or religion), and having that personal connection can lead to heightened anxiety and depression effects.
Just the exposure to these issues on social media can have an effect on your mental health, even if you’re not participating in online activism. There might be guilty feelings involved because you aren’t doing anything, and some of the wording on some of the posts can almost feel accusatory if you don’t get involved, which can further those feelings of guilt. Looking at posts can not just be upsetting, but can also make you angry and the bad things going on, and you can feel overwhelmed thinking about how nothing you do will be enough.
Both participating in and witnessing online activism can be hard and triggering, especially for people of color and other marginalized groups. It can be tough figuring out how much you want to and can support, and sometimes you might really care about an effort, but it can hit too close to home or be too mentally exhausting for you to get involved in. Your level of comfort with what you engage in online – activism or not – is for you alone to understand and defend, whether it’s on deciding who you want to follow or if you need filters on posts.. Whether the social justice content is too triggering or it’s something you make sure to talk about and participate in, your mental health should be one of your top priorities.
Do you participate in activism on social media? What causes do you post about? Are there times where this feels overwhelming for you? If so, what do you do?
Try to think of the memories you have of last summer, the summer before that, and the summer before that. Think of the fun, cliche summer memories you have had throughout your life, whether it be in the car listening to the radio, hanging out by the pool, or watching fireworks and lighting sparklers during the muggy nights. Do you have songs attached to them?
Music plays a huge role in our memory. There is evidence to show that music can evoke incredibly strong memories due to its role in activating many psychological functions such as imagery and attention. That’s why if you hear a song after a long time – even if you don’t have any attachment to it – you’re likely to recall some sort of event with it and get some sense of nostalgia.
If you follow pop culture at all, you may have heard of something called the “Song of the Summer.” While we all have our own music tastes and preferences with certain genres, the summer memories you recalled earlier likely have some sort of earworm, pop hit that was everywhere at the time associated with it. Traditionally, these songs are meant to be fun, upbeat, and something you can play at barbecues, at the beach, and generally out loud with people you enjoy being around (even if you can get sick of these songs really easily). These fun songs, because of the way they sound, are there to invoke happy summer memories later on, because that’s what summer is meant to be, fun!
Recently, just like everything else in our lives, the “Song of the Summer” is completely different this year, if one exists at all. Despite some continuing with summer activities, we’re still less likely to and discouraged from gathering in large groups to do the more cliche summer activities. Because many of us are continuing to socially distance and spend most of our time limiting our social interactions and staying at home, summer feels like it shouldn’t even be celebrated this year. Is there even a 2020 “Song of the Summer” that we can reminisce about years down the line?
The “Song of the Summer” can still exist though, even if it’s not used in the typical fun-in-the-sun way. Fun music can encourage a more positive mood, and no matter where you are, we encourage you to explore summer playlists, whether curated by music streaming platforms, your friends, or even influencers, to see if there are any upbeat songs that you find yourself enjoying. You may not be going to the beach every weekend and playing these songs on repeat on the way there, but even listening to these kinds of songs can almost recreate that feeling and help you feel better when everything going on can make you feel sad, lonely, and helpless.
You can still blast these songs at home, in the car, or even in virtual hangouts with your friends, and although it’s not the same, it’s still a way to get your mood to improve in a time when it’s likely to feel more down than not.
Do you enjoy mainstream pop music? What have been your songs of the summer in the past? What songs are you enjoying now?
As we discussed earlier this week, staying hydrated is not just important for your physical health, but can have substantial benefits for your mental health and your mood too. This is especially important now during the summer, where the heat and humidity can make it even easier to get dehydrated. The sluggishness of the summertime along with the lack of motivation that can come with mental illness symptoms can make it difficult to get enough water throughout the day, making the dehydration effects even worse.
If you’re someone who enjoys organizing and keeping track of your goals and habits, you may find yourself benefiting from apps that help you monitor your water-drinking habits too. There are a variety out there, such is the case of the endless app market. Some include cute animations and graphics to make the app more enjoyable, while some are more straightforward so you can log the amount you have drank and close it right away. Most apps are customizable in some sort of way too. Whatever you choose, we hope that it might help you build and sustain a new habit.
That may sound a tad overdramatic, but if you’ve ever logged onto one of your social media accounts and have seen even just one fewer follower, you likely have had a million questions begin running through your head:
Who was it?
Was it because of a recent post?
Was it because they were annoyed with my entire account?
Should I also unfollow them?
Are other people going to unfollow me too?
These questions are completely natural to have. But for those who have symptoms of social anxiety, these questions can feel that much more daunting and can even be debilitating as they question not just why one person stopped following them, but if others will too. This kind of snowball thinking can have them question if they need to change their content, if they should post more or less, and so on.
Even those who find themselves overanalyzing and getting caught up in an unfollow may feel that this seems a little silly. But in an age where social media is an incredibly common form of communication and way to connect with others, it’s okay to feel upset, and even worried that this is some sort of marker for your relationship with someone. Many platforms have ways to track your followers too, which doesn’t help with these anxieties.
Obviously not all unfollows are treated the same either. If you do choose to find out who unfollowed you, and it’s someone you either don’t know or barely know, it shouldn’t be an unfollow worth missing. This person’s opinion shouldn’t matter to you, because you don’t have any sort of significant relationship with them. If they’re someone you wouldn’t want to have a long conversation with online or offline, pay them no mind. If it’s someone you consider yourself closer with however, it’s really up to you to question why they might have done so. Depending on the relationship, you might feel comfortable just bluntly asking them, but you might have to be prepared to have a conversation about the content you post or about your relationship as a whole. On the other hand, it might not even be that significant and may have even been a mistake!
Navigating relationships is always difficult and stressful, and social media adds a whole new layer to it. Overall, unfollowing, “breaking the mutual,” and a decrease in statistics should have little to no impact on you and how you view yourself, but social anxiety can make it seem much more important than it actually is. Unfollows from people you do care about can understandably make you upset, but it can lead to a conversation that may need to be had about where you two stand with each other and can come out stronger. In the end however, social media is not real life and should not define your relationships with someone, as easy as it is to believe that it is.
Have you ever unfollowed someone you’re close to? Do you keep track of your followers? Why do you think we place a huge emphasis on numbers on social media?
As we hit the halfway point of summer (how did that even happen?), the temperatures are likely getting even higher, if they’re not high enough already. If you live in an area with high humidity, it can feel even hotter than whatever temperature is displayed on your watch or phone.
While often associated as a time for relaxation and fun outdoor activities, heat and humidity can have a significantly negative impact on our mood. This can range from feeling cranky to angry, and unfortunately, even violent.
This summer is significantly different than previous ones too. The onslaught of continuously bad news, most of the time caused by COVID, can not just have us feeling sad and hopeless, but also angry and frustrated. The combination of both this and the summer heat can have you even more on edge compared to maybe even a few weeks ago too. Anger is also likely to occur in those with depression and/or anxiety, and these external factors can trigger that even more.
Unfortunately, the heat and the pandemic are clearly things that are out of our control, and waiting for them to go away is just not a possible solution. There are still ways to keep your cool both literally and figuratively, and definitely tons of quick solutions if you have the right tools on you.
You’re probably trying to keep cool right now, whether it be through air conditioners, fans, or even grabbing a nearby magazine or book and waving it back and forth. However, the best recommendation we suggest to both ground yourself and reduce the heat is to keep yourself hydrated. It’s quick, accessible, and the relief of taking a cold sip of water when you’re not feeling that great can almost feel like a miracle. Dehydration can contribute to other negative effects like headaches and fatigue – things that can also negatively impact your mood – so it’s important to stay hydrated as much as possible too. Keeping a reusable water bottle nearby or on you can make a huge difference, and there’s so many different kinds that are available so you can choose one that functions best for you and that is also aesthetically pleasing. We recommend having an insulated one so the water stays colder for longer.
Of course, while keeping yourself hydrated is incredibly important, it’s not the only way you can stay cool. Hopefully however, as this summer sluggishly continues, you can find other creative ways to cool yourself down as well.
What ways do you keep cool during the summer? Does the heat impact your mood? How’s your mood been recently?
Sometimes, we need a physical, tangible option to help us accomplish our goals and put the things that we want to work on into words instead of having them just floating around our heads. One way to visually organize our minds is through checklists. You may associate checklists with to-do lists and things that you want to accomplish, but they can also be used as a tool to see your progress about something or help you understand how you’re feeling.
We’ve collected a few mental health checklists that you can explore and maybe even print out and use. These are not meant to be screening checklists, which professionals often use when diagnosing mental illnesses, but are instead used by you to check in on yourself. The ones we’ve listed below are all designed by mental health experts and organizations and serve different purposes, and you can see which one of them suits you the best. You may want a checklist of items for you to measure how you’re feeling on a certain day if you feel like your symptoms are more prevalent than usual, or you may want to have a list of wellness ideas and tips so you can feel your best.
Obviously, these aren’t the only mental health checklists available online, but we hope that they’re useful or give you some inspiration to find others online – or even create your own!
It could be a notification about anything: a text from your best friend, an email, or a DM on Instagram. No matter what it is, getting that alert via vibration and/or ding! can send a wave of brief panic through your body, even if it’s a trivial random news notification about five new recipes to try this week.
If you ever feel those anxious symptoms when you get a notification, you’re not alone. Although people are already constantly checking their phones and usually waiting for some sort of notification, actually receiving one can send the mind spiraling. There are tons of reasons that notifications can trigger these anxious feelings. For example, you might think that an incoming text means that you did something wrong and the person texting you is calling you out on something. An email could potentially be from a professor telling you you flunked an assignment or a rejection letter from somewhere that you had applied to. You might even get anxious over the fact that a notification could be your crush liking your recent Instagram post and what that implies.
Then there’s the other side to receiving notifications. Now that someone’s reached out to you, your mind may start worrying about how to respond. If it’s not someone you don’t talk to frequently, it can be even more stressful thinking about how you respond in order to maintain whatever relationship you want to have with them. What about timing? Now that you have received the notification, would it make sense to respond right away? What if that person responded to you hours after you reached out? What does that mean about your relationship?
These moments of panic that come with receiving notifications can be triggers ofsocial anxiety and can cause catastrophic thinking. We worry about what someone potentially has to say to us, we worry about how to respond, we fear ruining a relationship, and so on, just because of a simple bubble that appears on our lock screen.
One easy solution to avoid these feelings can be to completely disable notifications. This is definitely a possibility – it’s been tried and studied before in a “Do Not Disturb” challenge where 30 people turned off alerts for a full 24 hours. While those who participated felt less distracted and checked their phones less often, they still felt some sort of anxiety about not just missing out on communicating with others, but also felt anxiety that they were missing important or urgent information.
Not unlike temporarily deactivating apps as a way of doing a mini social media cleanse, you can turn off notifications for certain apps. If you’re in a group chat that overwhelms you, you can put them on do not disturb and check it periodically. This doesn’t mean that you’re not receiving notifications, but what it does is gives you the power to look at, respond to, and process notifications at your own pace versus feeling rushed to do so all within that millisecond that you receive a push notification.
Notifications can be fun to receive, but they can not only cause stress, but keep you glued to your phone with the hopes that you’ll receive one. Disabling them, or even some, can help ease your mind and give you more control over your phone and social media usage.
Do you have notifications disabled for any of the major social media accounts that you use? How often do you check your phone? Do you feel anxious when you receive a notification, and if so, what do you get anxious about?
Now is a sensitive time more than ever. Current events such as COVID, Black Lives Matter, and discussions over trans rights are revealing the issues with the systems that have been in place in our society for not just the past few years, but for decades and centuries, and how these issues have been affecting certain groups more than others. The Internet and social media giving platforms to experts and those who have been affected have made it easier for them to educate and tell others why things are so difficult and how drastic the effects are for minority groups. You most likely have seen these kinds of posts on Instagram and twitter presented in colorful graphics with easy and simple to read text and pictures.
Despite how well-presented these posts are though, taking in all this information can be a lot to handle. As a result, emotions can get very intense and high too. These emotions could depend on who you are: if you are someone from a marginalized group, you may find yourself triggered and getting understandably angry at the posts telling you things that you already know and live through. For those who are educating themselves and learning about these issues, you may find yourself feeling guilty for not knowing about it before, and unsure about how to acknowledge the privilege you have and your own problematic behaviors in the past. All of this doesn’t even consider the retaliating posts by trolls or those who either ignore or promote harmful behaviors at the expense of others. Seeing these can heighten emotions even further, most likely leading to anger and wanting to fight back.
Like we discussed with doomscrolling, it’s so easy to stay on your device when things are bad, and when they affect you directly, you may feel like you have to stay on because it concerns you. However, engaging with negative emotions isn’t just bad for your mental health at that moment, but can even affect how you feel and interact with others offline as these feelings linger. So how do you know when to put the device away, or at least change what app you’re on when these feelings occur?
We’ve given several tips already about asking yourself questions about your social media habits and how they make you feel, but during those moments when you can start feeling those intense emotions surface, asking these questions may not be the most accessible thing to do. If you’re itching to fight back to someone’s post or comment or feel yourself physically reacting with something like a clenched fist or chest, the quickest thing you can try doing is just closing the app. By either hitting control-W it on your computer or swiping it away on your phone, immediately withdrawing yourself from the situation can give you some sort of space to breathe. If you’re in a place that’s safe to do so, even just physically letting go of your phone or throwing it (gently) somewhere soft like your bed can get that immediate aggression out. Having accounts or apps that are positive and that make you feel good on hand can also help, and you can switch over to them as well. For example, Instagram allows you to bookmark posts to save in an archive that you can then organize – you could save things you enjoy looking at there and see those instead.
Although things are constantly stressful now, it’s still possible to have some sort of control over just how stressful these things can make you. The way we engage and look at things online is just one step in doing that.
What kind of content have you been seeing online recently? Do you follow positive accounts on your social media platforms? What advice do you have for when you feel yourself getting upset or angry with things online?
As temperatures begin to rise and summer has officially begun, the temptation and need to go outside can feel even higher than usual. You’ve probably seen tons of advice (including on here) about how spending just a few minutes outdoors, especially during quarantine, can have a huge impact on mental health, but right now, the sunlight and summer as a whole can cause some mixed emotions.
Sunlight itself can play a powerful role on our moods. Studies have continuously shown that natural light can help increaseserotonin, which is a chemical in our brains that put us in a good mood. It’s why people are more likely to experience seasonal affective disorder in the winter, when skies are more grey and there’s less sunlight, and why light therapy is often recommended as a result. And as we’ve spent the past few months indoors in the same place, the reduced amount of sunlight we may have otherwise have gotten from waiting at bus stops, being out in parks, and even running errands may have contributed to symptoms similar to SAD.
That’s why it’s incredibly tempting to want to spend more time outdoors now that the sun is flourishing and the days are longer. However, even as places are opening up to take advantage of that, the pandemic is still around and it’s still important to stay inside and socially distance as much as possible. But spending even more time indoors, especially as it continues to be bright and as even more sunlight flourishes throughout the summer, can worsen our mood. Missing out on otherwise normal summer activities can spark feelings of loneliness and nostalgia. For some, the sunlight might not be good for us, but make us sad instead for the things that we long for and miss.
The tips that we and other places have shared about finding ways to spend time outside during quarantine still apply, however. In fact, you can spend even more time outside because of the summertime too! It’s still possible to sit outside if you have a deck or backyard and do some work there, and if you live in an area that has trails or is walkable, putting some headphones in and walking around while listening to a funny podcast or your favorite songs beneath the summer sun can make a huge difference. Summer might be different this year, but that means that this can be an opportunity to find new ways to make it positively memorable by trying outdoor activities that you may not have considered before.
How do you feel about the summer? Are you still looking forward to the warmer weather and longer days? What are plans that you’re looking forward to?
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