5 Ways To Reduce Depression + Anxiety Symptoms: Holistic Therapy Tips

There’s so many ways to cope and manage depression and anxiety symptoms. This of course is great, but there are also benefits to trying coping methods that have been specifically documented as result-based (consistently effective and studied via scientific research). It’s always a good idea to have some basic tools in your tool kit where you can feel equipped with increased odds of taking care of yourself when you need relief.

It’s tricky because each of the coping recommendations will work in different ways to support and maintain health mental health but for some of the recommendations, timing and preventative practice (practice when symptoms are low) will help support mental health stability and maintenance outcomes best. Below, I’m going to share 5 coping methods that can help you reduce, maintain, or prevent anxiety or depression symptoms.

1. Journaling Can Reduce Depression & Anxiety Symptoms

Let’s begin by looking into journaling as a mental wellness practice that has big payoff. The action of journaling about your thoughts and emotions helps to create distance between yourself and your thoughts. This method helps your mental health in a couple of different ways. One, you gain physical distance from your emotional thoughts by physically writing them down on paper. You also secondarily get the benefit of seeing your thoughts outside of the emotional experience that happens (inside our heads) when we think emotionally. There’s something about writing your feelings or irrational emotional thoughts down that can trigger logical thought to come in and stabilize you emotionally when you write or journal.

2. Talking With Supports Can Help Your Symptoms

There’s great power in talking with supports about your depression or anxiety symptoms. It’s worthy to determine an approach to managing your mental health by

Speaking about your feelings, which in turn will increase emotional validation and self-connection. When you are able to speak about your feelings in a safe space you can additionally create distance from your emotions and decide how you want to make meaning of your feelings. Talking about your emotions will also at times increase your decision-making response where you decide what you want to do about how you feel. Talking about your feelings can increase empowerment to change in small ways that eventually or immediately add up to symptom reversal.

3. Eating More Veggies Can Reduce Symptoms

There’s a popular saying “you are what you eat” and there’s actually a grain of truth to the old saying. Our mental health is impacted by what we eat. Nutritional deficiency is a cause that can trigger symptoms. Just think of not having enough water, eating processed sugars and starchy simple carbs. Your mind and body will not be able to do it’s daily functions of digestion, metabolism, circulation, and so on if your body is running to problem solve how your energy resources need to be allotted based on your internal health needs or delays. For example if you don’t eat enough veggies and drink enough water you may find that constipation is more likely. When constipated our body has a response of energy drain from stool being held to long in our bodies that you simply won’t have the same energy as someone who is “regular”. Our body is smart enough to focus on taking care of us and figuring out how to keep us going but will also conserve our resources if we are under supported nutritionally.

4. Routine Exercise Gives You Energy + Mood Management

Routine exercise is wonderful for your health and wellness. When you spend time getting your heart rate up your heart and circulatory system is strengthened. Exercise also helps our brains receive more oxygen, which triggers chemical endorphin release, which is similar to taking medication to reduce symptoms for depression, anxiety, ADHD, Stress, and confidence. Consider working out at least 4x per week with moderate exertion for dependable symptom relief.

5. Connecting With Your Interests Helps You Heal

The power of having a hobby is more real than many people realize. When we have personal interests that place us in a state of learning we also gain deeper sensations of self-connection and joy. It’s important that when picking up hobbies or returning to hobbies for increasing happiness that you focus on habits that feel possible without years of practice to enjoy. Utilizing hobbies also allows for focused practice on tasks, which increase feelings of being in a state of flow where you may even feel calm, peace, and engagement similar to mediation. Hobbies are great for disconnecting with consumption via social media or seeing what others are doing but instead to focus on your craft and feel increased enjoyment and down time.

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I hope you enjoyed learning about some of my tips to improve your wellness and health journey. Be sure to share your real life wellness questions below!

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Holistic Therapy Tips: How To Celebrate Yourself More Often

When you work hard to get things done it can be exciting just to think, “Yay, I’m glad it worked out and I got it done” and next pivot our attention and start looking at the next task to be done. In society there’s a not so subtle push to rush, run, and sprint to get things done, and then take on even more things to work on. The pace of following a moving target of goals also creates a feeling of being on a continued hamster wheel with little to down time or time to reflect in-between. When we feel as though we’re on a revolving hamster wheel in our lives, it can also make us feel a sensation of emptiness emotionally. Without making space to feel more connection to our wins, obstacles, and growth opportunities we can miss out on the beauty of feeling more present and presence in our day to day lives.

In the paragraphs below, I’m going to walk you through 2 methods to increasingly celebrate yourself more often. This will help you stay anchored in self-connection, which ultimately makes us feel more centered and confident.

Stop and Savor The Small Victories

When you decide to work on your goals it’s worthy to also celebrate your small victories on your way to task or goal completion. It may seem odd to stop and celebrate completing another day of effort placed towards your goal but, trust me it’s a great way to nurture your practice.

Imagine if we celebrated all of the small efforts that create the end results of growth, increased knowledge, or success and accomplishment. It’s like enjoying a long beautiful scenic car ride without having to wait until you get to the final destination on your road trip. You’ll naturally get more from your experience and efforts. Remember to stop and enjoy the view on your journey to success, not just when you get to the top of the mountain as they say.

Create A Celebration Ritual

If you don’t normally practice celebrating your small victories you may not have a celebration ritual worked out just yet. That’s okay, let’s start thinking of different ways you can celebrate, smile, and savor your small wins. Sometimes we attach a large celebration to the completion of a goal like going out to a nice dinner, getting a new outfit, inviting all of our besties over to have wine and dish about the job well done. This is fine to celebrate the whole experience but you can decide how to celebrate based on what feels right and best.

Sometimes we don’t go big-party mode at the end of the goal, we might just opt to rest or have a drink, or shift in to downtime mode so we can rest a while post goal completion.

But if we focus on the journey instead of the end result you get a bunch of milestones that will be within your view for celebration. Some simple ways to celebrate the journey while on the journey may be to smile and verbally commend your own progress. You can say “great job on x, y, z” as though you are talking to a friend (you’re the friend). You can break into a mini- journal session to process and savor your win, aim for a single paragraph or go for a whole page just to feel more present and celebratory. You can also talk with a friend or support about your recent win and of course please be open to remember that our loved one’s may not be as engaged or happy (as we would be) about our play by plays so they may be supportive in their own ways but your happiness is not reliant on how much your loved one demonstrates enthusiasm for your updates and successes. That’s our job for our goals, we are the one’s who need/ will be excited at 100%+ percent.

MY #1 HOPE: