Congratulations everyone. We all made it through the New Year celebrations. Everyone practiced their “letting go” rituals before they rang in the New Year. Now it is time to focus on what mental wellness in the New Year means to you.
Step into Mental Wellness in the New Year
Here are a few suggestions to ease your step into mental wellness in the New Year:
- Set a firm schedule to ensure that you are getting enough sleep each day. Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time each morning. Consistency will reward the effort with a stress-free body.
- To get enough rest each day, schedule periods of intentional quiet with deep breathing exercises or guided imagery exercises to relieve stress and increase concentration.
- For those who enjoy journaling, make sure to integrate mindfulness and gratitude into your daily writings. The nonwriters out there may simply want to take a mindfulness walk in the woods and practice being present in the moment.
- As always, practice self-care with at least 30 minutes of daily physical exercise. Setting a daily exercise schedule with set movement routines will not only tone the muscles but also calm the mind. Self-care can also include walks outside in the sunshine and fresh air to recharge your body and your mind.
- To avoid social isolation, connect with other people who enjoy the same hobbies you do. Sign up for an art class, dance class, music lessons, or sewing or knitting classes.
- Join a strong support group or rejoin your faith community. Support groups are available online or in person from organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) for people suffering mood disorders. Support groups like these are often led by community members themselves (known as peer-to-peer led) who have similar experiences in a particular area. These groups offer safe spaces to share experiences, learn coping mechanisms, and provide social contacts.
- Limit screen time and social media contact for yourself as well as the members of your family. That is advice parents often give to children, but the same warning applies to adults. Research has shown that too much screen time results in anxiety, depression, and trouble sleeping.
- Set a goal to improve self-compassion efforts aimed at reducing negative thoughts, boosting self-image, and disputing self-criticism. Self-compassion means treating oneself with kindness and empathy during adversity.
- Practicing meeting new people in new settings.
- Work toward better communication between current associates.
Setting Mental Health Goals
The first step in setting mental health goals is to put a name to the changes you contemplate. For example, do you want to reduce stress, get better sleep, or empower yourself? Once you recognize what you need to change in your mental health journey, you move on to defining the goals.
To set mental health goals, first review the prior year’s goals to see what worked and what did not. Whether you decide to modify a prior goal or change a behavior, it is important to set specific goals with measurable outcomes. Make sure the goal is achievable within a reasonable time limit of your choosing. Many mental health goals fail because they are not achievable within a reasonable time, causing people to give up on the task. But it was not the goal that was impossible; it was the time limit chosen to complete the goal. It is understood that mental health goals should be relevant to your journey’s preferences.
When setting goals, break them into smaller phases. Also, fold them into your daily life by developing a systematic strategy for completing each phase. Reducing the steps to writing is important so you stay motivated to complete the steps and work toward the larger goal. Keep a chart to track your progress. A journal, an app, or a spreadsheet is a good choice for tracking goals. What matters is that the tracking process makes you comfortable and one that you will use. Celebrate milestone victories (remember the teacher’s gold stars in elementary school were great motivators) and modify the goals when necessary.
Make Emotional Renewal Efforts in the New Year
Emotional renewal means taking steps to reinvigorate a person’s temperament. A person accomplishes this feat by releasing negativity and replacing those negative feelings with positive feelings. This exchange creates resilience. Emotional renewal requires the person to heal old hurts.
Emotional renewal means using self-awareness and activities like mindfulness and journaling to achieve peace and balance. Emotional renewal is a lifelong adventure that includes processing difficult emotions and nurturing positive feelings. The process may involve making changes to the environment to improve mood. For example, adding aroma therapy to a bedroom to elevate mood or banning cell phones from the dinner table to eliminate stress.
A key component of emotional renewal is asking for help if needed, especially professional support or from healthy relationships.
New Year Intentions
When the new year rolls around, everyone can choose whether to create New Year’s Resolutions or new year intentions. The two topics are not the same.
New Year’s Resolutions are the way to go if you want to create goals that highlight specific actions and will create measurable and specific outcomes. Resolutions are not flexible, are quantitative in design, and are often negative in tone when it comes to the existing personality traits. They leave no tolerance for mistakes and are characterized by a definite determination to do or not to do something specific. A New Year’s Resolution example is the plan to exercise five times a week.
On the other hand, new year intentions line up with personal values rather than trying to fix something. Intentions lay out how the person wants to appear. Intentions are flexible, and they emphasize the mental health journey rather than something to fix. In addition, new year intentions can reset every day. They are broad, positive statements, not negative ones. They focus on the qualitative rather than the quantitative. For example, an intention would be to concentrate on self-compassion as an element of the journey. As you can see, an intention does not suggest anything wrong with the way the person currently lives.
Intentions tend to work out as created. Resolutions tend to fail because the changes they aspire to fix are impossible to complete in the period allotted.
Choosing the Therapist That Is Right for You
It is crucial to feel comfortable with the therapist and the firm you choose. Refinery Counseling Services, LLC (RCS) is a premier, private mental health and consulting firm located in Georgia. We are proud that our firm is woman-owned, veteran-owned, and minority-owned. Our therapists are licensed with years of clinical experience; they bring that knowledge to bear on each client’s behalf. The firm’s name is Refinery Counseling because we aim to refine the mental health of all our clients. Our services:
- Restore well-being
- Empower individuals, families, and communities
- Foster personal growth
- Inspire change
- Nurture healthy relationships
- Enhance and encourage individuals and communities to strive toward abundant lives.
We Are a Firm with a Difference
The firm also provides therapy with a faith foundation for those clients who want a firm that acknowledges their Christian worldview. Using scripture, prayer, and Christian values as part of the therapy process leads to in-depth self-awareness. Faith in counseling helps heal spiritual trauma or church hurt. Our therapists understand that addressing emotional and spiritual needs together leads to healing that looks at the person as a total of their parts, not just their mental health. Our firm supports each client’s spiritual autonomy. Faith is never forced upon any client.
RCS provides a wide selection of services that will meet client needs. Our services include:
- Individual psychotherapy – one-on-one sessions with your therapist
- Group psychotherapy – sessions with multiple clients who share their experiences on a particular topic, guided by a therapist
- Family therapy – sessions with a therapist to bring family members back into harmony
- Couples therapy – sessions with partners, guided by a therapist to resolve relationship issues
- Child and adolescent therapy – sessions to help children or adolescents heal from childhood trauma.
- Grief counseling – sessions that help clients deal with loss from the death of a loved one, loss of a job, or divorce by learning how to express uncomfortable feelings, learning how to cope with the loss, and adjusting to life without the person.
The Mental Health Issues We Treat
If you or someone you know suffers from anxiety, depression, anger management, grief, or trauma, please contact us today. Our friendly staff will be happy to schedule a free initial consultation with one of our licensed therapists who has years of clinical experience to help you on your mental health journey.
Your therapist will assess your current situation, ask questions about your mental health history, and ask you what your needs and goals are. Then, your therapist will recommend a treatment plan for you and tailor that treatment plan to meet those needs and goals.
