Mental health can feel so big and overpowering that it’s difficult to believe that you could do something in a single hour that would make any difference. At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health, in Charleston, West Virginia, we want to give you some ideas for ways you can use a single hour to enhance your well-being.
If you have an hour that can recur week after week, then the most obvious solution would be to use it for therapy. If you’re attending in-person, driving back and forth could cause this to be a longer commitment, but it’s very possible to do a virtual session in one hour. Therapy can allow you to:
- Build a trusting relationship with another person
- Increase your coping skills
- Help you to learn new ways of thinking about yourself and the world around you
- Explore challenges that you are facing from a different perspective
Self-Care in an Hour
If you are already engaging in therapy or your free hour tends to happen with limited notice, another great way to use some free time is on self-care. This can take many different forms, such as:
- Sleep tight by installing blackout drapes, getting more sunshine first thing in the morning, eating a diet that is high in fiber, vitamins, and nutrients, but not caffeine, sugar, or fat, making your home quieter and darker in the hour or two before bed, and investing in a comfortable mattress and pillows.
- Exercise. When you move your body, you cause your brain to release more of the chemicals that make you feel happy and less of the chemicals that make you feel stressed. Your current physical health should be taken into consideration when choosing how much and what type of exercise would be best for you. Work out for at least two to three hours before you want to fall asleep.
- Getting outside by spending time in a park, garden, forest, or other green space will boost your mood, a blue space, such as a pond, lake, river, or ocean, can be even better. Adequate sunlight can help your body to produce more Vitamin D, which can improve your mood
- Love on your fur baby for a mood boost, companionship, stress reduction, and a more structured daily routine
- Phone or text a loved one to catch up or schedule a get-together
- Clean up by choosing an area to declutter, setting a timer for a short period of time, such as 15 or 20 minutes, and when the timer goes off, notice if you feel any different.
Mental Health Symptoms in an Hour
If you want to address your mental health specifically and directly, you can also try the following:
Try Grounding Exercises
These techniques are great for managing anxiety, panic attacks, and other forms of distress. They are also subtle enough to use at work, in your car, or other public places, without drawing unwanted attention.
Create a Sensory Kit
Gather items together that you find comforting to each of your five senses, and when you feel stressed, pull them out and use them to calm yourself. For example: Touch: stress ball, stuffed animal, smooth rock
- Smell: candle, favorite perfume, essential oil
- Taste: a high-quality piece of chocolate, a stick of cinnamon gum, sour candy
- Sound: nature sounds or a playlist of your favorite songs
- Sight: a picture of your favorite place or person, something that reminds you of a happy memory.
Call a Crisis Line
988 is a number you can call or text from anywhere in the United States to reach a trained crisis counselor who can help you manage suicidal thoughts, grief and loss, severe emotional distress, and big life changes.
You can also get connected with mobile crisis or long-term treatment for addiction or mental health.
We Can Help
At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health, we offer inpatient behavioral health treatment for adolescents and adults. We offer addiction treatment, several types of mental health therapy, a structured environment, care coordination, family support, medication management, and other services that align with our patients’ individual treatment plans.
