It’s been a tough couple of years for mental health. (And, of course, it’s always a tough time for people with underlying mental health issues.) One of the challenges though is that good emotional hygiene seems to be one of the first things to drop when things get busy or things go wrong.
If you aren’t familiar with the term, emotional hygiene is kind of like self-care plus psychology. It’s doing things to take care of your needs, but also processing your feelings. Talking with trusted friends, journaling, spending time alone, exercising and mulling things over, working through what you want, practicing hard conversations you might need to have.
For me, a lot of my emotional hygiene was happening while I was hiking during the pandemic. There was nothing better than spending time with my thoughts in the woods, frequently talking aloud to myself and clamming up if I saw anyone else on the trail.
Since I’m an external thinker…this works for me.
But then, I broke my foot and hiking was suddenly not an option. On top of being stuck at home, I was stuck now in just a few rooms of my house. I floundered. I was sad. I spent a lot more time online. I had to find other ways to work on my emotional hygiene. I talked to my friends, in person, and online. And, talked to my therapist online. (Hooray that this is an…