The Canadian Mental Health Association hosts Mental Health Week annually during the first week of May. As a therapist, I have witnessed an undeniable transformation occur when people actively pour into their wellness. Here are five key ways you can enrich your mental health.
1. Make Intentional Time for Yourself
We often pay close attention to the needs of our friends, family, partners, and our careers, but rarely do we cultivate that same intentional space for ourselves. Creating intentional time is a key ingredient to pouring into your well-being. With a life filled with so many demands, it offers the space to deepen self-discovery, intimacy, rest and balance for replenishment. Lastly, it becomes an opportunity to give yourself the joys you often put in the hands of others.
2. Self-compassion
One of the most freeing gifts you can offer to yourself is the gift of self-compassion. Even if you were given ‘tough love’ as a child, the reality is that negative self-talk creates more harm than good. Where there can be an easy path, it is often ridden by hardship due to how we treat and speak to ourselves. You are with you every single day! You owe it to yourself to be gentle, compassionate and kind. Whether it be in your personal or professional life, consider what would it look like to create self-compassion in each moment of struggle? These changes will free you from the prison and harshness of negative self-talk.
3. Boundaries
Your boundaries are a guide of protection. They restore your energy and allow you to honour yourself. Without asserting our needs, we suffer in silence and begin to be drained, resentful and burnout. To live a life filled with wellness, you need emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, personal and professional boundaries. Ask yourself what is standing in the way between the boundaries you need to create and the consequence of you continuing to operate on empty? Hint: the answer should propel you to invest and care for yourself.
4. Community Care
People who have deep and significant connections to their community receive a space of affirmation and care that cannot be bought or created through achievements or any other means. We need community. We are wired for connection and the embrace of our community; our tribes and villages nurture our mental health in times of joy and sadness. I encourage you to tap into the communities you are connected to as part of your mental well-being.
5. Healing Through Therapy
Therapy is a beautiful, transformative space that allows you to redefine yourself, thoughts and actions to live a truly aligned life. A lifelong investment, it offers you skills, tools and a sacred haven to examine life through a new lens. Healing through therapy is an undeniable way to care for yourself and your wellness and will profoundly reshape all of your relationships in ways you cannot measure.
Amma Gyamfowa is a Ghanaian-Canadian mental health therapist and registered social worker. As Founder and Lead Clinical Therapist of Womanist Healing, Amma is determined to create empowering holistic resources that strengthen individuals abilities to heal, thrive and connect.
Great article! I love when women achieve nationwide recognition in Canada!
Mental health as well as emotional intelligence are extremely important nowadays regarding of the industry you are in. Amazing article!