How to Keep Your Mental Health in the Fall Season

We face it every year. When August is almost over, we immediately feel like a strange anxiety starts to embrace us. We need to say goodbye to the long summer days when it seemed that the daylight was endless, and the nights were the perfect source of inspiration. However, we cannot stop autumn from coming with all its pumpkin flavors and romantic rainy afternoons. Even though the scenario might seem idyllic, there are a lot of people who feel that their mental health gets affected by the fall season.

The good thing about it is that now there are a lot of tools which can help you keep your mental health in good condition during the fall season. First, you need to identify how sensitive your mental health is during this season. Believe it or not, technology can help you determine how much you can be affected in the fall. There are a lot of great mental health apps which you can download on your phone and identify how your mental health is doing. Furthermore, this article is going to show how you can keep your mental health with some simple tips.

How Change of Seasons Affects Your Mental Health

Before treating the effect, it is always better to identify the cause. Therefore, understanding how the change of seasons affects your mental health will help you identify easier what you can go over the fall season without being affected.

• Daylight Savings Time – when the autumn comes, we all know that we will get an extra hour of sleep. However, the day becomes shorter which means that we will spend a bigger part of the day in darkness. This will bring a disruption in your normal routine which can affect your mental health. Just imagine how you start your day during autumn in comparison to summer. You wake up at 7 am, just like in the summer, and what do you see outside? Complete darkness and a cloudy start of the day! How much does this scenario motivate you to get out of bed and go to work? Not so much, isn’t it?
• Access to natural light – the daylight savings time means also that we will spend less time enjoying the natural light. What is more, the cold weather amplifies the discomfort and exposes us to mental health disorders even more. You might start feeling tired, without energy and motivation in such conditions. Furthermore, the lack of natural light might also affect your appetite and hunger level.
• Pressure and challenges – once the summer holidays are over, autumn brings a lot of new projects and pressure from your stakeholders. If during the summer the atmosphere was more relaxed, autumn usually comes with a lot of new projects. What is more, considering that the winter holidays are right “across the street”, then the deadline pressure becomes even greater. Hence, these circumstances might affect your mental health.

5 Ways to Save Your Mental Health in Fall Season

1. Say “Yes” to Magnesium and Vitamin D

It is no longer a surprise mentioning that a balanced diet helps you boost your mental health. The beginning of autumn is a great moment to load yourself with Vitamin D. Considering that as you reach the end of summer your exposure to sunlight starts to diminish, then you need to think of alternatives to keep up the levels of Vitamin D in your body. Our brain, heart, muscles, and immune system need vitamin D to function properly. Usually, when you experience anxiety or depression, one of the most common explanations is the lack of vitamin D in your body.

Furthermore, magnesium plays also a very important role to sustain your central nervous system. Magnesium helps you reduce panic, stress, and anxiety. Therefore, you can adjust your diet during the fall season and include products full of magnesium. For instance, you can eat more spinach or kale, known for their high doses of magnesium. You can prepare different smoothies using these ingredients and have an energetic start of the day. You can also include nuts in your diet to keep up the levels of magnesium. Brazil nuts, sesame seeds, almonds, or cashews are some good examples.

2. Breathe In, Breathe Out

September is the ideal month when you can start exercising some breathing techniques. Right before you start a new challenge and you are driving to work with a lot of thoughts in your mind, the best thing you can do is take a deep breath. An effective exercise is to inhale and keep your breath while counting to five. Then exhale and again, hold your breath for another 5 seconds. You will see how all the stress leaves your body and makes you feel like nothing stands in your way.

Yoga is also a very relaxing method to help you save your mental health during fall. It will help you become more conscious of your breathing and discover fast and effective techniques. Practicing long, deep breaths has a very positive impact on your parasympathetic nervous system. Therefore, the next time you feel stressed, you can send your brain the message: “never mind” and you move further.

3. Don’t Take Failures Personally

Studies have shown that most people have a high dose of perfectionism. Being ambitious and setting high standards is perfectly okay as long as you keep proportions. High levels of perfectionism are linked to depression and poor mental health. Perfectionism is a sword with double edges. On one hand, being a perfectionist is good when you want to get out of your comfort zone and be successful. On the other hand, when you worry too much because you cannot reach your goals and damage your health because of all the stress that you create to yourself, then this is a clear sign that you should take things slower.

Therefore, the best thing you can do is be a realist. You don’t become less perfectionist if you set small, achievable goals instead of setting one major goal. Thus, you will concentrate on doing each step well and take things slower. You will put less stress on yourself by keeping the perfectionism attitude at the same time. In addition, you can be a perfectionist without being affected by failures. You will force yourself to achieve success gradually, not all at once.

4. Try Outdoor Activities

Autumn might not be your favorite season, but this doesn’t mean that you should stay inside. Even though the temperatures are lower than during the summer, this season has a lot to offer. If you don’t go outside your mental health will have a lot to suffer. Your brain needs oxygen and activities which keep you entertained and distracted from all the changes you are experiencing during the fall season. Apart from the rainy days, you don’t have any reason to stay inside. You can try walks in the park or long rides with the bicycle, enjoying fresh air and mild temperatures.

Instead of spending your time watching TV or surfing on the internet, it is always better to spend your time outdoors and let nature energize you. You will notice that after 90 minutes in the park you will feel more self-confident and ready to start a new chapter right away. Furthermore, you can engage your family or friends in these outdoor activities and thus leave all the stress and worries behind.

5. Be Wise When Using Social Media

This article wouldn’t be complete if we wouldn’t talk about the effects social media can have on your mental health. It is perfectly normal that you are active on Facebook and Instagram to connect with your friends or find the latest news in your areas of interest. However, social media can also have negative impacts, especially in such a sensitive season like autumn. Reading the posts of other contacts who feel down because of the fall season, might also have a negative impact on your mental health. Therefore, one good strategy is to limit your list of contacts with those persons you feel the closest to. This is how you will save yourself from assisting to a lot of annoying and disturbing posts which can influence your morale in a bad way.

While using social media makes you feel that you belong to a community, the adverse effects can be serious. The bad weather and short days can make you spend more on social media and reading different stories published by your friends. Therefore, you will be more exposed to attracting negative vibes and being influenced by them. But, you don’t have to use social media to read about all the struggles your friends are experiencing. For example, you can read about paper writing services review and fill your free time with more exciting and useful information.

The fall season is always filled with newness and a lot of scheduling. The transition can be challenging, but it is not the end of the world. Challenge the change and be always ready to find the good part in any difficult situation you may experience. Don’t change your routine in an abrupt way and try to surround yourself only with positive thoughts and activities. Spend as much time as you can outdoors and keep an eye on your diet. Thus, you won’t have anything to worry about having problems with your mental health.