Nowadays, people have tried everything to improve their mental health. Some people have found solutions to their problems, while others are still stuck.
The truth is: everyone is different and solutions work differently. Just because a particular solution has worked for someone, doesn’t mean that it will work for you.
So what do you think is the best solution for you?
Therapy exercises are great in helping you improve your current situation. Most of these therapy exercises are well-known, but I’ve thought of some really important modifications to them. These modifications will make the exercises more effective for you in the long run. Here are 6 therapy methods you can try at home to improve your mental health.
1. Scheduling
I’ve talked about scheduling in a previous post, so I will talk about it very briefly.
Scheduling is a way for you to prioritize your life and organize everything, so life isn’t so stressful. An easy way for you to start scheduling is with Google Calendar, a schedule app, or by hand.
What you’ll want to do is put in all of your errands like work, school, and fun into the calendar. I highly advise you not to do this daily, but weekly. If you do this daily, scheduling will feel more of a task than anything else. You want to do this weekly, so you can forget about it for the rest of the week.
Schedule your week every Sunday in order to maintain consistency. Doing this allows you to be prepared if you get any unexpected meetings or tasks that come up. If you can, try to automate this as best as you can to make things much easier for you.
Scheduling makes your life much easier and allows you to take control of your life instead of letting life take control of you.
2. Prioritization Chart
This one is very similar to scheduling, but I’ve modified this therapy exercise for you. Scheduling is great for prioritization, but you’ll realize that you still experience stress in your life.
You’ve got your priorities straight and you have everything planned, but things still feel a bit off. That’s because you have too many things in your schedule. There’s essentially no time for you to relax and recharge your batteries.
For this chart, I want you to leave your schedule empty. It doesn’t matter how much you have to do for each day, make it blank! Now grab a piece of paper or open up your notepad and put down your top 5 priorities or tasks for each day.
Those 5 tasks on your notepad are what you are going to focus on each day. When you are done with those things, take a break and relax. You did what you needed to do for the day.
If you must get other things done, then do those things. If they can wait for another day, then make them wait.
When I say this, I don’t mean procrastinate either. That is what creates stress for you and we don’t want that. We want you to have the energy to do things outside of business and enjoy your life the way it was meant to be.
For better clarification, my prioritization chart involves:
- Work
- School
- Blog
- Social media promotion
- Goals
If I had a sixth one it would be playing my saxophone for fun. Most of the time I would push it aside for another day because I have more important things to do.
Also, don’t prioritize things based on which one you enjoy doing the most or things that can wait a while.
Prioritize your tasks based on how long it takes you to do them or how much you want to be done that day. The first choice is usually the best one to choose for the best results.
If you want to accomplish a lot of things that day, you would put all of your small tasks for one day and leave the rest for another day. The same would be for the opposite as well.
3. Thought Records
This is one of many therapy exercises for those that specialize in CBT and REBT. About every mental health professional knows about this, but not a lot of people follow through with it.
This is because it takes longer for it to have a positive effect on you. What people don’t know is that thought records typically work best for people more than other therapy methods.
It’s like people that love writing. How would you know if you’re good at writing? You would make a story or write about things and see for yourself. The same thing is with thought records.
Thought records allow you to look at your thoughts to see how your mental health status is. If you notice that the thoughts that you have are generally negative and irrational, you’re not doing so well mentally. It’s one of the few ways to accurately measure your current mental health externally.
Those all sound like great points, but how do I make one for myself?
First, you would make 6 columns and label each accordingly:
- Event
- Thought of the event
- Interpretation of thought (positive, negative)
- Was it Rational or Irrational?
- How did it make me feel? (1-10)
- Alternative Thought
With these columns, you would write down every thought that you have throughout the day. You don’t have to write it down exactly when you have the thought either. Just make sure you remember it and how it made you feel.
The most important columns are your initial thought and your alternative thought. You will see how you thought in the beginning and how it can be changed. You’ll be amazed at the different ways you can think about an event.
You will get to the point where you have very few bad thoughts that make you feel worse about yourself.
I just want to make a quick note and say that you don’t have to write down the positive thoughts you have because there would be no alternative thoughts.
Positive thoughts could be used as a reference for improvement if that’s something that you’d like to see as well, but make sure you separate them from your negative thoughts.
4. Cognitive Distortion Record
This one is another modification of a thought record. Some people put cognitive distortions in their thought records, which is good. Note that I said it is good, not great. It’s better for you to make a completely different chart for your cognitive distortions.
A simple definition of cognitive distortions is “negative and irrational thought patterns”. It’s as simple as that. I want you to focus on 8 specific cognitive distortions, so your chart will have 10 columns.
- Event
- Initial Thought
- Overgeneralization
- Magnification
- All-or-nothing thinking
- Filtering
- Jumping To Conclusions
- Blaming
- Shoulds
- Alternative Thought
What do these cognitive distortions mean? Well, let me explain.
Cognitive Distortions
Overgeneralization is a cognitive distortion where you make a conclusion based on one event something that happened to you. For example, say you forgot your lines for a school play. You believe that you’re terrible and forget your lines for every play that you do for the school.
Magnification is a cognitive distortion is where you expect something terrible is going to happen to you at all times. For example, say you made a mistake on your paper and got a point off for it. You believe that you’re a terrible person and that the point you missed is going to ruin your grade for the class.
All-or-Nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion where you believe that you have to be perfect or completely terrible with no feeling in the middle. For example, you have to get 100% in your class or else you’re completely useless.
Filtering is a cognitive distortion where you filter out any positive things that happen to you and only focus on the negative. It doesn’t matter if 100 good things happened to you, you’re only gonna dwell on the 1 negative.
Jumping To Conclusions is a cognitive distortion where you believe you know exactly what someone else is thinking about you. For example, you believe that someone is talking behind your back about something you did when they are not.
Blaming is a cognitive distortion where you blame another person for something that’s your fault. For example, you blame the bus driver for being late to class when you could have left your house earlier.
Shoulds is a cognitive distortion where you believe you have to do something or else you’re a failure. For example, you say to yourself “I should have gone to that party yesterday. Now people will think I’m a loser for not going.”
If you want more information about cognitive distortions, check out this article.
Now that you have your chart ready, you can fill it out with thoughts that you had throughout the day. Also, if you feel like having 10 columns is too much, you can make a simpler version with only 4 columns.
- Event
- Initial Thought
- Cognitive Distortion/s
- Alternative Thought
5. Journaling
This is my favorite therapy exercise because I write a lot. Journaling can improve your mental health, especially if you experience a lot of stress and depression.
Journaling is also really easy to do. All you do is get a notebook and write about everything that happened to you. If you have a thought, write about it. If you had a great day, write about it.
The possibilities are endless when you think about it. It’s like creating a story every day about your life. By doing this, you will see what you need to work on and appreciate the good things that happened to you. It will definitely eliminate some of the cognitive distortions you have on a daily basis.
If you need more information about journaling, check out an article I did about ways to improve your mental health.
6. Mindfulness
This is another one of my favorite therapy exercises. I called it “mental journaling” because you are focusing all your attention to your mind and letting it flow.
With mindfulness, you are essentially doing meditation. You close your eyes and focus on breathing. Relax and let your mind do whatever it wants to. Whatever thoughts come into your mind, accept them and don’t fight back.
With mindfulness, you learn to accept your most negative thoughts. You accept all of the bad things that happened to you because you can look past that. With mindfulness, you are at total peace.
This is best to do in the morning because it sets you up for success and better mental health for the remainder of the day. If you’d like to do twice a day, I recommend you try it once in the morning and once at night. Doing it at night allows you to sleep better and help you prepare for the next morning.
If you’d like to know more about mindfulness, I highly recommend you check this article out!
Final Words
Those are 6 therapy exercises that you can try at home. These therapy exercises can also work in other places as well. You can try them at work, school, or even at a friend’s house. You don’t have to try all of these therapy exercises if you don’t want to. Look at this list and pick 2 or 3 things exercises and try them out.
Personally, I recommend you go with journaling and mindfulness as the first pair of exercises. If that doesn’t work, I would recommend thought records and cognitive distortion records next. Any 2 or 3 therapy exercises will do wonders for you and help improve your mental health.
Let me know what you thought about this article in the comments down below. Also, let me know if you’re going to try out one of the therapy exercises mentioned as well. Share this with anyone you think can use this information.
