Have you ever had mental health problems, but never knew what caused it? Maybe you had a good life and nothing was affecting you at the moment. I want you to close your eyes and think back at all of the things that gave you mental health problems in the past. You may have never seen those things as long-term problems, but I’m here to tell you that there are. Here are 14 things that can deteriorate your mental health over time.
1. Eating
What I mean by eating is eating foods that are bad for you and eating too much food. When you eat junk food, you tend to have bad health. You will have mental health problems along with a bunch of physical health issues.
You have a higher risk of diabetes, depression, cancer, and even death. It’s okay to eat junk food every once in a while, but try to eat more healthy foods whenever you can.
Just make sure that whatever you do, don’t eat too much food. You know those late night cravings are kicking into the point where you can eat a whole pint of ice cream by yourself. Yeah, that’s what I mean by don’t eat too much.
Eat within your caloric limit, so you have to be wise about the food you’re eating. Men need around 2,500 calories per day while women need 2,000 calories per day.
2. Poor Health
So you’ve eaten a bunch of junk food to make your health worse, but you’ve done absolutely nothing about it.
You haven’t done any exercise or practice any self-help techniques for your mental health. When you don’t exercise, your body will break down when you get older which makes you feel like you’ve just messed up your life big time. The problems that you will have with your mental health will continue to increase if nothing changes.
Exercising is easy, but if you’re not into all of that at least try to walk for 30 minutes a day every day to be somewhat active. You don’t have to go to the gym to exercise, remember that.
3. Bullying
If you know me, I experienced a lot of this when I was growing up. It came from my family and my friends, so I didn’t really have a safe space that I could go to for help and support.
I felt miserable to the point where I just wanted it all to end. It’s like this constant cycle of negative self-talk with no way out of it. All you hear is negative and you completely ignore the positive. I still do that to this day.
Whenever someone compliments me, I always try to find a reason to justify why I didn’t deserve it. I should just accept it and move on, but I just can’t. I clearly have some mental health problems that I need to take care of.
If you’ve ever been bullied, you become two different kinds of people. You either become depressed and/or suicidal for many years or you begin to stop caring what people thought about you and did whatever you wanted. I was both of them, but now I am more towards the second part of that.
Bullying greatly affects your mental health in the long run. Your self-esteem goes down and you feel like you’re a terrible person.
Why do I exist? Why couldn’t someone else be born instead of me?
Those are some questions that may go into your head if you’ve been bullied. For those that have been bullied, its best for you to deal with the situation and take care of yourself, so you won’t have mental health problems when you’re older.
4. Stress
Who doesn’t experience stress on a daily basis? We got to meet deadlines, run errands and try to have some time for fun while we can.
Life is stressful and if you don’t find ways to improve it or manage it, you will have mental health problems down the line. There are two forms of stress:
- Acute stress which is the stress that we get from our normal day: stuck in traffic, late for work, missed a homework assignment, etc. Acute stress is short-term but can turn into long term stress if it continues or if you use negative coping strategies for it.
- Chronic stress which is the stress that we get from tragic events: lost a loved one, got a divorce/breakup, lost a job, don’t have enough money to pay for rent, etc. This type of stress is long-term and can damage your immune system and cause problems for heart and blood vessels.
5. Anxiety
Feeling anxious about something? Maybe it’s talking to someone you’re interested in or presenting a project in a meeting. These are all normal forms of anxiety, but if you have it often then over time it will become worse for you.
Long-term anxiety can increase the chances of getting headaches and becoming depressed. It is best to find a way you can deal with this before you have a serious mental health problem.
6. Your Job
Who loves going to work every day? If you are one of those people then you should find a way to improve your work situation.
If you didn’t know, about 53% of people in America are unhappy at work. I can’t say that I’m one of them, but that’s a large number of people. The best thing that you could do to improve the situation is by finding the situation that you want to be in and work towards it.
The truth is that we all like to go for a job where we can get the most praise but not the most enjoyment. Praise is good, but it doesn’t matter if you’re not enjoying what you do.
7. School
This may sound like a confusing choice, but if you look at all of the things that students face nowadays, you will understand.
If you didn’t get a chance to read my last article, I advise you to take a look at it. I talked about this more in-depth on there.
Going to school has a lot of negative factors including bullying, measures of intelligence, and teachers. With bullying, you go through depression and feel really bad about yourself.
Schools base students’ intelligence on tests and grades, which is terrible. I could easily walk into my class and study for 15 minutes just to get 100% on my test. For those who get bad scores, they think they are a failure and that they won’t be successful. This seriously gives them mental health problems when they are done with school.
After every class, I forget what I learned because of the teachers. Teachers don’t really teach, they mainly lecture. There’s a huge difference between the two. You get frustrated and stressed out when school is over because you didn’t learn anything. The best thing for you to do is to retain the information that you believe is important for you and learn on your own time.
8. Drinking
Usually, when you are really stressed out, you turn to drink to take all of the pain away. The problem with this is that you can become addicted to it and drink all of the time.
It’s fine if you drink in social gatherings or have a drink here or there, but don’t make it a daily habit. Drinking regularly lowers serotonin levels in your brain, which regulates mood.
In simple terms, you turn to drink because it makes you feel better short-term. As you drink more and more, your mental health gets worse instead of better.
9. Smoking
Smoking is really similar to drinking in the sense that it causes a lot of mental health problems the more you use it. Yes, it may alleviate some stress, but if you use it more and more (you will) then things will be a lot worse for you.
If you don’t know, smoking increased anxiety and tension. It may help you relax in the long-term, but you will become dependent on it after repeated use.
10. Doing Nothing
Yes, I said it. I’m talking to the people that sit around and do nothing for themselves. You will feel a lot worse as time goes on because your life won’t be fulfilled or satisfied. Be prepared to be called a loser, lazy, and a failure in life.
Now, it is fine if you want to relax after finishing all of your work, but make sure that you did something meaningful. Depression will soon kick in and you will contemplate what’s your actual purpose in life.
11. Doing Too Much
The opposite of doing nothing is doing too much. When you’re constantly moving and doing things, you never have time to recharge your batteries and risk the chance of burnout.
I know they’re all of those people on the internet that talks about hard work and being successful, but they forget one point.
What’s the point of being successful when you’re not actually enjoying life?
Working hard and doing a lot sounds good, but consistency is the most important thing. I would take someone that works 30 minutes a day on their goal instead of someone that works 5 hours on 10 different things.
Make sure that you have time to relax while taking care of all of your responsibilities.
12. Not Getting Enough Sleep
This is similar to doing too much because this is a result of it. I can relate to not getting enough sleep because I used to get about 3-4 hours of sleep. This simply isn’t enough for daily functioning.
Less sleep makes you feel groggy and low on energy. You need a lot of energy if you want to finish all of the tasks that you have planned for the day.
Make sure that you plan to have about 6-8 hours of sleep per day. If you have a lot of tasks that you need to do for the day, pick 5 and save the rest for the next day.
13. Procrastinating
Procrastination is something that we all face. You see something that you have to get done and choose to wait until the last minute. You know that is the wrong thing to do, but you can’t help it.
The truth is procrastination can bring you a lot of mental health problems such as anxiety, stress, and depression.
The best thing you can do is to prioritize your time and do the important things first, so you can have fun later on.
14. Staying In a Toxic Relationship
You know the relationship that you’re in, but wanna get out? That’s what I’m talking about. If you’re in a toxic relationship, your best bet is to get out of it as fast as possible.
The way to do that is to simply let your partner know that things aren’t working out and that you should go your separate ways. Don’t settle for less and appreciate yourself. If you don’t, you’re going to feel depressed and stressed out about things.
