One activity you can try to improve your mental health is practicing gratitude. Do you practice it? Lots of people don’t do so, and you’re missing out on some wonderful benefits.
Gratitude involves being happy with what you have in your life. Being grateful isn’t to say you can’t strive to improve your life, but sitting down and practicing gratitude, it can do wonders for your mental health.
Let’s look at what gratitude entails and why it’s essential for your mental health.
Gratitude Helps You Unlearn Toxic Emotions
By practicing gratitude, you can replace it with emotions that can be toxic. Negative, unhelpful emotions make our lives much worse. However, more positive emotions can help us succeed. The power of positivity is quite natural, and gratitude can help you unlock it.
It’s a Slow Burn
If you take out a sheet of paper or open a Word document and write something down, it won’t help you overnight.
However, it can help you over time. When you keep practicing gratitude, it can have positive effects on the brain. These effects can separate your brain from the feelings of guilt and other negative emotions you may have.
It May Help With Mental Health Issues
While not a cure, gratitude has been linked with treating anxiety, depression, and similar mental health problems.
When you are depressed or anxious, repeating happy thoughts can pep your mood and allow you to be less stressed.
This, along with positive lifestyle changes, can help your depression and anxiety. Of course, for severe cases, therapy is also essential.
Anyone Can Be Grateful
Many people believe that their lives have nothing to be grateful for, but that’s not the case. If you have a roof over your head, food to eat, and are in a safe place, that’s something to be grateful for. Small needs that we meet tend to go overlooked, but when you’re mindful of what you should be thankful for, you may realize that you have more than you think.
How to Practice Gratitude
The best method to practice gratitude is to treat it like one of your hobbies. Practice it daily, either before or after bed, and keep doing it.
One good way to commit to gratitude is to take out a journal and keep writing in it daily. Write down something that happened that you are grateful for. It doesn’t have to be a long list or anything. Just the little things can add up for you.
To get the most benefits, writing it by hand may benefit you the most. It can help you remember what you’ve written better than typing.
Of course, writing it down digitally can work as well if you don’t have a book handy on you.
Using grateful language is also essential for practicing gratitude. Do not be afraid to go to someone and thank the person for what they’ve done.
Also, having conversations with yourself about gratitude can help. Ask what you can do to help yourself and to help others. Ask yourself what the best part of today was. By pressing yourself and being grateful, it does help quite a bit.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with also realizing that not everything is perfect. Being grateful does not have to mean you bottle up any emotions you are feeling.
Allow yourself to experience the emotions. Let them pass through you, and then realize there are ways for you to be able to improve yourself and your situation.
Seek Help
With that said, it can sometimes be a challenge to be grateful all the time. Life is filled with challenges from beginning to end, and sometimes, those challenges can seem impossible.
One way to improve your mental state is to talk to a therapist or a counselor about your problems.
If you want to get help from your home, you can talk to a therapist online and help you with any problems you face.
Online therapy can assist you when you feel like the world is against you or have trouble practicing gratitude.
For more information, please click the link below.
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/what-is-continuity-psychology/
We hope you find things in life to be grateful for. Good luck!
AUTHOR PROFILE
Marie Miguel has been a writing and research expert for nearly a decade, covering a variety of health-related topics. Currently, she is contributing to the expansion and growth of a free online mental health resource with BetterHelp.com. With an interest and dedication to addressing stigmas associated with mental health, she continues to specifically target subjects related to anxiety and depression.
