Right off the bat, I know I’m not a professional in any way, and I’m not claiming to be. Take what I say entirely with a grain of salt. I’m merely sharing from a student perspective and what has personally worked for me. I hope to share this with you for the sole purpose of a student to student mental health perspective.

Without further ado, let’s get started with some mental health tips that have helped me, and hopefully will help you as well.

Tip #1: Journal Your Thoughts

The good, the bad, and the boring. You should always set aside time to write down your thoughts, because it helps you to release emotions or write down things worth remembering in the future. Whether you’re having a mental breakdown or it’s the best day you’ve had in the past month, it’s important to document that feeling. It’s helpful to do this to remind yourself of either the feeling you had that you want to recreate, or something you may want to avoid in the future for the better.

Tip #2: Set Realistic Goals

You can’t set unrealistic mental health goals that are overgeneralized. Saying that you are going to be happy, calm, and sociable always is setting yourself up for failure. You need to make minor adjustments that can build up over time. Maybe starting off by setting a much simpler goal, like spending time doing something you enjoy for an hour each day. Don’t ever overwork or overwhelm yourself with the task in front of you. Always break it up into smaller parts before you create a situation that puts you in a worse place than you started in.

Tip #3: Seek Help

Always seek help or solace in others. Just because you’ve been managing the mental illness on your own doesn’t mean you can’t rely on others to help you. Talking about what’s been going on with you with someone you trust is always important, because they can help give new perspectives and/or just listen to what you have to say. No one wants to watch a person they hold close suffer. They may not entirely know how to help fix the problem, but just talking about what you’re dealing with can help lift some of that weight of isolation off of your shoulders.

Tip #4: Take Breaks

If you feel yourself getting stressed out or you’re having a hard time with something in particular, take a break. Even if that thing is something you enjoy doing, you should always take a break from it to do something else. You can’t keep doing one thing forever, it will get tiring and frustrate your brain eventually due to its lack of new stimulus. To prevent burnout, don’t ever force yourself to do something for too long. If you’re working on something and you’re getting frustrated or you’ve been working on it for a particularly long time, take fifteen minutes to just breathe and calm your stress or refresh your brain to get back to work.

Tip #5: Spruce Up Your Space

It can be very hard to say you’re cleaning up because it feels like a chore. It’s equally as awful to have a space that makes you feel like garbage. Taking a short amount of time to just move some things and spruce up your workspace or your personal space could help refresh your mind if your work becomes tiring. If it helps, just pick one surface or corner and clear that area out. Cleaning up can make you feel like you accomplished something.

Hopefully at least one of these tips will help you. If not, that’s okay too! Everyone has their own methods of tackling situations that work best for them. I’m not claiming to have all the answers, though I hope that at least reading this helps someone.