Bad habits damaging your mental health

Written By Nik & Eva Speakman

Who hasn’t heard of pop star sensation Ed Sheeran?! One of Ed’s singles of recent years “Bad Habits” is an absolute earworm. It got us to thinking that the song itself would be the perfect background music to help visualise some of our views in a TikTok  video.

For further context, here are the bad habits that you need to consider and overcome – with some tips to help. There could be some on this list that you might be doing every day; you may not even realise that they are taking a real toll and having a detrimental effect on your mental health – harbouring potential feelings of anxiety, low mood or depression.

Lack of sleep

Whether it’s the early commute to work, cramming in an extra hour of study time for that next exam, or wanting to steal away as much time in the evening as possible to finish the next episode on the latest TV show that you’re hooked on – a lot of us have this bad habit of going to bed very late and getting up very early to accommodate our lives.

It’s super important to work on getting at least 7 hours of sleep a day, which will help combat feelings of grumpiness in the day and feel more like yourself. To gain energy on less sleep, we find that many of us will likely eat more, which will knock your self-esteem and confidence.

  • Don’t drink caffeinated drinks too late – it’s a stimulant

  • Don’t be on your phone, tablet, or blue screen too late – the blue light in our devices affects the hormone that make us sleepy

  • Don’t engage in stressful situations too late in the evening

Not enough time for yourself

Despite all of us recently being in lockdown and enjoying our own company more, people still struggle to find time on their own, doing something that they enjoy themselves. Finding that “me-time” can help improve concentration in many other aspects of life and also increase creativity – effectively giving your brain a reboot.

  • Make time to get some daylight every day – particularly between the hours of 12pm and 2pm

  • Do something just for you, even if it’s only for just 15 minutes a day

Keeping toxic people out of your life

We all need to consider the relationships we have, because if there are any toxic individuals in your life, they are bound to rub off on you. We can’t help but acquire the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of the people we spend the most time with. Consider the mobile phone test – is the caller’s name “a dragger”, making you sigh and feeling fearful to pick up the phone and speak to them?

  • Keep them at arm’s length *or further*

Bottling things up

There is so much to be said about a problem shared and offloading a burden on the people you love and trust the most. We often fester worries and negative sentiment in our mind, and like a pressure cooker – the more things you put in there and the longer it’s in there, the pressure builds.

  • Speak out to feel better

  • Note things down on paper to give a feeling of relief

Procrastination

Let’s be honest – we have all been guilty of this at some time in our lives! Ultimately the main reason why we should all avoid procrastinating is the effect it has on our mental health – it can potentially make us feel guilty, worthless, or useless. Moreover, the longer we leave what we have to do, the more overwhelmed we feel and the further we retreat into the background and isolate ourselves from our friends and the world.

  • Write just three tasks a day on a to-do list – and maybe two more that you hope to complete – however just aim for completion on only three tasks a day. Make sure you tick what you complete. It feels amazing!

Too much time on social media

We all understand the importance of social media, especially in this day and age – in order to ensure we connect and keep in touch with long-lost friends and family. However, spending too much time on your socials can make you feel low and even inadequate, garnering feelings of loneliness.

  • Don’t check our social media accounts first thing in the morning when you wake up – allow time to engage in a few other things before you enter the virtual world

  • Be mindful and more selective of who you’re following – who you allow to be present in your thoughts and your world

No exercise

We should all create the habit of movement. Exercise doesn’t have to be going to the gym or engaging in some relentless class – it can be anything you would like it to be, as long as you’re on your feet (or hands)! Feel-good hormones will surge, it’ll help you to sleep more – it’s also a brilliant distraction.

  • Find a bit of time to be active anywhere you can, even in the unlikeliest of places. Eva’s example – vacuuming around the house!

For a little more help and encouragement to make a few more positive changes to your life, listen to our podcast Making The Change.

 

Nik & Eva Speakman

We have studied and worked together since 1992. Between us we have studied human behaviour and psychology for seven decades. We both share an uncontainable passion to offer hope and to help people lead happier and less inhibited lives.

After many remarkable breakthroughs we created our own behavioural change therapy, ‘Schema Conditioning.’® Subsequent work with trauma victims and their related symptoms, led to the creation of two further trauma-based therapies.

‘Schema Conditioning Psychotherapy.’®

‘Visual Schema Displacement Therapy (VSDT)’®

‘Visual Schema Detachment & Restructuring (VSDR)’®

Qualifications from the creation of our therapies, resulted in training psychology professors, doctors and masters students at Universities in Amsterdam and Utrecht. In 2015, this training produced the two sets of scientific studies conducted into the workings of our therapy; the first two study papers highlighting the remarkable efficacy, was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in June 2019. A further third study was then published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in April 2021, with a fourth clinical study with hospital patients is currently underway and will be completed by the end of 2022.

In addition to members of the public, we work with, and have treated many high-profile clients and ‘A’ list clients around the world, having had prodigious successes. We are resident therapists on ITV’s multi award-winning ‘This Morning’ and have been for over a decade, we have also had own television shows, one of which, ‘The Speakmans’, also aired on ITV and several countries worldwide. Over the last two decades we have appeared on numerous other television shows as experts, such as the multi award-winning Saturday Night Takeaway.

Our mission is to illuminate that there is ALWAYS HOPE and that overcoming trauma and improving quality of life is entirely possible. Many people have either never been given hope, or worse had hope taken away from them, our aim is to correct that by sharing our message in any way we possibly can, including live workshops, theatre tours, books, podcasts, radio, television, social media and YouTube.

At the heart of all we do, is our relentless mission to offer HOPE to as many people as we possibly can.

https://nikandeva.com
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