Your Mental Health Matters ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast ~ E70

Hi there.

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast,

Episode 70,

Your Mental Health Matters.

Thank you for coming by,

Everyone,

And those of you who are new,

Welcome.

If this is your first time here,

My name is Nicole White.

I'm an integrative mental health and energy therapist,

And I'm happy to be here to share wellness with you.

I want to clarify two things before I move into today's information.

The last episode,

I talked a bit about how we can get into a very narrow-focused mind sometimes,

And sometimes that can happen if we're zoned in on something that we're doing.

If we're working or if you've ever played a sport,

You know,

You can kind of get in your zone type of thing.

Well,

That often happens for me when I'm recording these podcasts because I'll kind of get a topic in mind,

Have a couple ideas of what I might want to share,

But then I just get into this zoned-in focus so that I can just be present and try to share the information that comes to mind.

But how I explained when we do that,

We can lose sight of other things,

And in other episodes I've talked about the multitasking and how it fragments the brain sometimes.

Well,

It can make us not remember how to do the simplest of things.

You might have done the ABC 123 thing with me before in a previous episode,

But it kind of came to play in the last episode.

I was so narrow-focused in and zoned in on what I was sharing that when I tried to pause for that moment and do a little simple math calculation,

Which was super easy,

I couldn't do it.

I added 10 years to my life,

Not literally,

But when I told you the age.

So I was not 31.

I was 21 when I was talking about Jerry Maguire and the whole you complete me and really we complete ourselves type of thing.

So I wanted to clarify that,

And it's an example in the moment of how that can happen,

And you might have heard other examples that I've shared in other episodes if you've been following me for a bit.

Now let's talk about today.

Your mental health matters.

I could talk about this topic for days upon days,

Probably even longer than that.

It is such an important topic that is often missed or bypassed or ignored in ourselves,

But in society,

Maybe our workplace,

Maybe our educational systems.

I'll share some details about that in all of those different places in just a few moments,

But it is such an important topic.

We are well aware of mental and emotional needs as a collective,

And we have been for a very long time.

Many of us are also aware of how much that has increased over the past two years.

Even in that awareness,

You might be a little surprised about some of the statistics I'm going to be sharing with you shortly,

But we have been aware about it,

And we might have even been aware about it within ourselves,

And there's still this elevation happening,

Which means that we are missing something here in terms of support,

In terms of how we're moving through things.

If every year here we keep elevating at the rate that I'm going to share with you,

We are going to crumble as a person and as a collective mentally and emotionally.

Today,

I would like to share with you some findings and also some key considerations around that,

Of what you might be able to offer yourself and some tools to help.

What we have seen occur over the past two years with mental and emotional distress is quite alarming.

When we have increased social isolation,

When we have increased financial distress,

Increased stressors going on in everyday life,

These things impact us in mental,

Emotional,

And physical ways that we might not recognize or see until we slow down and we recognize and see.

We have had so many changes and modifications in the way that we've been moving through life for the past two years,

And with this,

It has increased isolation.

It has taken away social opportunities.

For some people,

It has made it so that they are not exchanging hugs anymore.

They're not exchanging social time with others where they're laughing and kind of remembering to have experiences of joy and connection.

When this happens,

Our body physiologically begins to have response systems going on.

One of those has to do with our oxytocin levels.

Lots of research to show us that the exchange of a hug,

The exchange of connection in relationship connection,

But also community connection substantially increases our body's oxytocin levels,

Which has to do with that happiness hormone.

When we are decreasing this,

When we're decreasing our time with others,

When we're decreasing exchange of even a quick,

Simple hug,

Then it's impacting these oxytocin levels.

It's also decreasing our serotonin levels within the body,

Which is directly impacting depression.

When we have decreased serotonin in our system,

We have increased depression rates.

Serotonin has to do with depression in our body.

The combination of these two things,

Decreased oxytocin,

Decreased serotonin,

It increases,

Like opens the floodgates of increase for the cortisol to activate and elevate in our body.

Now we have elevated cortisol,

Which is the stress hormone.

The stress hormone of cortisol is going to say,

Hey,

Adrenaline,

Where you at?

Come on,

Come hang out with me.

I need your help.

So now we have lower oxytocin,

Lower serotonin,

Dopamine's in there with it.

So throw that in the category two of lowering down in the body system.

Increased cortisol,

Which is a stress hormone.

Increased adrenals getting flooded into the system,

Which will cause adrenal fatigue.

Decrease in sleep,

Because now we're all stressed out,

Which we have lots of research to show us impacts our sleep.

Our hormones,

Our digestion,

Our growth hormone,

Our mind ability to digest information all happens when we're sleeping.

All of those things I just mentioned,

All of them increase the inflammation in our body.

Inflammation in the body is a direct correlate to disease in the body.

There's been more research coming out about it.

Doctors are speaking more openly about it.

If we can work on our system to decrease inflammation,

We can drastically change our health,

Our mental health,

Our emotional health,

Our physical health.

When all these things are happening,

We're also holding that physical tension in the body,

Because remember,

All the stress hormones that are going on,

Our body is a whole system.

So if it's flooding the system with these things saying,

Hey body,

Stress is here,

Get ready,

Well the whole kind of linking of the system is ready to go.

And you can check out the anxious body system,

I think it's all the way back at episode two,

If you want to know how all that stuff starts communicating and working together as an example.

But it's all kind of linking up.

It's all ready to go.

And when we're in chronic mental and emotional distress,

It has large impacts on how we're moving through the day,

How we are connecting with ourselves,

How we are connecting with others,

And how we are mentally and emotionally.

It creates mental fog,

So we get really confused,

But it also creates a lot of emotional upheaval and discombobulation.

With this upheaval and this kind of inner confusion or inner intensity of emotion that impacts how we connect with self and how we connect with others.

We can see and we can hear a divide mindset that is elevating and just like a volcano exploding out there all around us.

Like how are we as a everybody?

How's that going to help us?

It's going to make us crumble.

And each of us have the opportunity to work on our mental and emotional well-being so that we can work together away from divide,

Away from anger.

People can't even have a conversation these days about what type of tea they like without getting into an argument if they like a different kind of tea.

Mental,

Emotional distress,

Chronic cycles,

Elevation of emotion,

Lower frustration tolerance,

Elevation of divide.

And think about what that does to mental health and emotions.

To share just a few of the things that may lead to one of them is increased mental health collapse.

This is when we have that elevation of emotion so high that we just can collapse.

That can be whether it's we're in the anxiety loop,

We're in the anxiety and depression loop,

We're in just the depression loop,

We're in an anger loop.

All these things and the chronic nature of them,

The chronic stress compounded with all the stuff I just talked about related to some.

That's not all.

I don't,

Like I said,

I could talk about this stuff for like days upon days.

So I mentioned some of the physiological responses that's going to lead to having an increase in mental health collapse.

We're just tapped out,

Burned out,

Overwhelmed,

Overstressed,

Feeling isolated,

Feeling separated and divided.

And then it fuels all the back to self of this crumbling,

This discombobulation is the best way to kind of,

I can't think of the best word to highlight this.

I mean,

It is just this whirlwind that goes on within inner self.

And that mental health collapse can mean some of the things I'm going to share in just a second here.

So we can have the mental health collapse.

And we also,

As another example of where this stuff can lead is addiction cycles.

We are in a crisis level of mental health and addiction here.

I'm sure it's not just here in America.

And when you hear the numbers of the increase in some of this that's happened since 2019,

You understand where I'm coming from here.

It's a crumbling,

It's a loop into addiction,

Which that sucks away the soul and ability to move through life healthy in and of itself.

And how many people ever find themselves out of it.

I am blessed to be one of the people who broke out of addiction.

I had the highest of highest possibilities to not.

I have a I don't even know percentage.

I'm not going to blast my family on here,

But.

My biological blood family relations,

Addiction,

Alcoholism and many overdose deaths from drugs.

I have chronic PTSD going all the way back from childhood.

I dropped out of high school in 11th grade due to pregnancy.

I lost my mom tragically at 25.

Like I am the poster person for.

Addiction and staying in it.

So I am so blessed in myself that I broke free.

But I know it is one of the biggest challenges.

In the full system,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Physically,

Spiritually to have the will.

To break out of before it leads to physical actual death.

While the people in it are just walking around already half dead.

Just what's leading so many into the addiction itself to want to just escape the torture they're feeling in their body from life.

Losing sight that there is help out there that you can if you are one struggling with it.

I am no different.

You can do it,

Too.

It is hard.

To get out of mental and emotional distress.

It is hard to get out of addiction.

Hard is not impossible.

Sometimes we have to get through some really hard stuff to get ourselves to even get the help.

But just remember there is help.

You don't have to do what I'm going to be talking about here throughout this alone.

And for children,

The situation with masks is having some other side things that are occurring for their mental and emotional well-being as well as social learning experiences.

I was a part of the Pennsylvania Mental Health Initiative,

Where we went to some rural schools and provided information for teachers to use a trauma informed focus.

This was last year.

And the amount of distress that teachers reported.

Experiencing in their schools.

Was so heavy,

Some of them didn't even know how to put it into words.

The amount of mental and emotional distress their students are showing up with and the lack of ability to even get them resources.

I think I've mentioned in a few episodes ago,

Sometimes it could take up to a year to get services for students.

A lot happens with their mental health in a year.

For some students,

They're coming in to the school as their safe place to be.

For young children,

The way that they are able to identify safety in an adult is through social cues and facial expression.

So if a child is having a lot of mental or emotional distress,

Or they're coming from a home environment that is something that does not feel safe to them,

They have been well trained within their own system to pick up on non-verbals to know if they can talk at the dinner table,

Or if something's going to explode if they ask a question.

If they can walk into a room,

Or if something's going to happen around them,

That's going to put them into a traumatic situation.

Well,

They know and are trained at very,

Very young ages to figure out social cues.

And they use this when they go into their schools to build relationships with adults in the school systems.

And the wearing of masks has made it really hard for children who are in this place that I just described to feel safe in the school setting,

To know what adults they can feel they can connect with and which ones they don't because all facial expression is removed.

Yeah,

We can maybe get some stuff through the eyes,

We can get some stuff through posturing,

But as a child,

This is how they train themselves.

And now that is removed,

So it's creating for some children more emotional and mental distress because they can't link into that feeling of safety there if they're even back in person in schools.

Because the at-home stuff has also increased a lot for the adults with stress in the home,

The children with stress in the home,

And the mental and emotional combination of distress between the whole system.

One other thing to mention before I get into the statistics I would like to share with you.

That has to actually do with the connection style stuff that I've been talking about.

When we are having this increase in all of this mental and emotional distress,

It can also lead to increase in impulsive behavior,

Which sure has to do with those addictions I mentioned,

But impulse and impulsive behavior can also have to do with connections with others.

We can get into such a place of despair that we get into like a desperation type of situation of connection that will then potentially lead us into one of those connection styles I mentioned in episode 68 is what it was.

When we're having this increase in the stuff,

Then it will lead to some of that subconscious driver really coming to the forefront in how we're connecting,

Which is more likely then to lead us into a pain-based,

Fear-based,

Or jumping,

Jumping,

Jumping type of connection with another versus that united connection and the building up looping that happens within that.

Let me just grab my little thing here.

I'd like to share some statistics with you.

Just be prepared.

These aren't pleasant.

There was a study done by Boston University School of Public Health,

And they were looking at depression rates from 2019 through 2021 to look at percentage of increase.

And what they found was the depression rates in 2019 for adults in America was 8.

5%.

In 2020,

It was 27.

8%.

In 2021,

It was 32.

8% of adults in America having depression.

That is one in three adults.

American Psychological Association had an article where they were talking about anxiety.

It was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health,

And they found it went from 8.

6% in 2019 to 37.

2% in 2021.

The National Center for Health Statistics,

Drug overdoses increased by 31% in 2020.

Opiates,

Overdoses increased by 35%.

Psychostimulants,

That's the stuff,

The medications that are being prescribed,

Like Adderall and Ritalin.

Psychostimulant overdoses increased by 50%.

Over the past four years,

It has increased fourfold.

I want to share some other information as well.

Another thing to keep in mind with these rates,

Over 60% of our youth report major depression symptoms.

In some places,

It's as low as 12% of them that get help.

Our adults,

Less than 50% of them get help for their mental and emotional distress.

It's a lot of people walking around without tapping into support to help that might be able to really help them.

I want to share a little bit about some work statistics.

I was a speaker at the Project Management Institute,

The Keystone Division yesterday,

And I was talking with them.

The presentation was on inner stillness for mental health,

But I was sharing some statistics with them,

The individuals here that participated,

Because they are all leaders of different businesses,

The participants of this event.

So I was sharing with them some workplace statistics related to depression and anxiety,

And I thought I would share those with you as well,

Because again,

The more we know,

The more we can see how we might really want to try to work on this a little bit.

The American Psychological Association showed that 43% of workers do not believe that their bosses care or understand about life balance.

We might call it work-life balance.

I just kind of prefer to call it life balance because this is our life,

Right,

And are we balancing it or are we not?

And work is a piece of it,

But so are a lot of other things.

But 43% think their employers don't care.

At the same time,

The American Psychological Association was able to show that work stress is one of the top three stressors in individuals' lives.

Pretty high number up there on the scale of what's stressing people out.

And remember just a little bit ago what I said happens all here in the body when we're all maxed out in stress.

The Center for Workplace and Mental Health reported that 120,

000 people die a year due to workplace stress,

And that it also costs $190 billion a year in health care,

Which is ironic to me even further,

Because over 11% of individuals,

Adults who need mental and emotional help,

Do not have any insurance,

And a very large percentage of individuals who have insurance,

Their insurance plops on an astronomical deductible or doesn't even cover mental health.

But here we are,

$190 billion in health care costs related to mental and emotional distress.

What are we missing here?

The American Institute of Stress Initiative reported that one million people a day miss work because of stress.

One million people a day.

That's a lot.

And the Anxiety and Depression Association of America,

They were able to talk about how individuals reported stress and anxiety were the leading causes of decrease in work productivity and increase in challenges with getting along with their coworkers.

At the same time within this report,

It was talking about how only 34% of individuals feel that their employer is a safe person to go to,

To talk to if they're having mental or emotional distress.

This is not about bringing all our stuff to work.

It's not about,

You know,

Oh,

We're just going to bring all our emotional distress to work,

And that's what we're going to do.

But as a leader,

As a supervisor,

As a whatever you're doing to lead people,

Two seconds,

A minute of your time to say,

I hear you,

Life is hard right now.

It seems like you're going through a rough time.

Is there something I can offer you that would help?

Because with the percentage of people who are going and talking about the fact that they're having a hard time,

Only four out of 10 of them are even getting any type of offer of assistance.

And that is even for people who have,

Companies who have employee assistance programs where they pay for three to five mental health sessions for someone.

So what's going on with the six that if someone's coming and saying,

I am maxed out,

Stressed out,

Fallen apart,

That it's just bypassed.

And you can hear all the ways this is impacting everybody.

This is not just in one sector of employment.

It's not just in one pocket of our lives.

Think about these numbers.

That's why earlier I said,

You know,

What are we doing,

Guys?

The person next to you or the person next to them is struggling with depression,

One in three people.

And we can move through life with not taking the time to understand ourselves or understand others and trying to build each other up and support one another in a way of loving kindness and compassion and getting rid of this divide.

And let's argue and fight amongst each other.

How's that helping our mental and emotional distress?

You can see this is such a heated topic for me.

I'm trying to stay in my zen over here with discussing this with you,

But it's just,

As a therapist,

I am seeing this escalation.

My last two years as a therapist has been something like I have never experienced as a therapist,

And I worked six years at an inpatient mental health hospital.

Something's got to change,

And we can make the change,

Each one of us.

I am not here to tell any of you what to do,

What not to do.

That's not my role.

But I am here to encourage each of you to really consider making your mental and emotional health a top priority.

There's a lot of ways you can do this,

Many things to think about,

And each one of us will have a different plan,

A different design.

Kind of like a snowflake,

Like the beautiful snow falling outside right now.

We're all unique,

But we all have the capacity to figure out what we need in self,

What support we need,

What tools we need to gather so that we can get back to a place of emotional and mental grounding.

And not the stressed out,

Maxed out being that many of us are walking around,

Moving through life as.

I'm going to offer a few tools here to help you,

And you can kind of gaze through the titles of all the previous podcasts.

They will give you some insight into the different topics,

And you can kind of select the topics that might resonate for you as well if you're building your toolbox to try to get some more wellness into your life.

When we're thinking about wellness,

It is a dedicated intention to create the time and space to do the things that we need to make us well.

It is a dedication and commitment to not bypass ourselves,

Tell ourselves we're not worthy or that we don't have time to make the commitment to ourselves to get well.

Who else is going to make the commitment for you?

I mean,

Unless you're hospitalized,

You know,

And forced into treatment,

But even then,

You're not willing to do it for yourself.

That's a temporary bandaid on a long-term problem.

One of the wellness tools is around emotion and trying to understand cultivated appreciation for your emotion,

Embrace your emotion,

And in the best form possible,

Try to stay in your body when you're experiencing emotion.

I'm going to just share a few ideas of how you might do that,

And you can also check out emotional ladders and emotion regulators.

I think it's episodes 14 and 15,

And they can help there too.

But when we're thinking of emotion and the body experience of emotion,

A lot of people get overwhelmed or they want to tap out,

Disengage because of how their body feels with emotion.

Well,

Part of it is to give yourself some training of sitting in the body with emotion.

I've talked before about just starting with low levels,

So thinking about something that might create a low level of anxiety or frustration,

Sitting with the body,

Feeling what it feels like,

And allowing yourself to bring down that level in the body so that you can create this feeling of safety in the body around emotion.

Easier said than done.

I get it.

So here's some things that you can do in that process.

One would be that when you're going into the body,

You can kind of think about the emotion as an object or shape of some sort.

I will actually do a meditation on this soon for you guys because it's such a helpful technique.

It incorporates energy therapy as well when I do it with you,

But you can do it without the energy therapy part because you're still bringing energy into the body to dissolve this when you do this technique.

So what you would do is you'd be feeling,

Experiencing this emotion,

And then try to find where it lies in your body,

And wherever that is,

Think about it as a shape.

Whatever shape comes to mind,

There's no right or wrong.

And then let your mind,

Your kind of mind's eye,

Connect with the shape,

And as you're breathing,

Breathe into that shape.

So just let yourself imagine the focus of your breath following into the body to wherever that shape lies for you,

And with each inhale,

It finds the shape,

And with each exhale,

It starts to break it apart and dissolve it.

And you can think of even the exhale is exhaling the dissolved pieces,

You know,

For the ethers or the earth to take from you.

And when you do this,

It,

In a short way to describe it,

It allows your mind to focus on the shape,

Which creates more comfort in the body versus sitting with the emotion completely.

But with it,

It's gaining trust in the body because you're focused on the shape,

Which is less scary and fearful than the emotion,

Even though you're with the emotion,

And you'll get to see also the impermanence of emotion.

The shape will start to dissolve and break apart.

That would be one example,

And you can practice that a few times.

You can practice it with different emotions,

Maybe a few times a week.

It's a building block.

You don't have to do it for,

You know,

Hours upon hours,

Set a five-minute timer.

The more you start trusting in your body with emotion,

The more you will be able to regulate your emotion.

If you're a high percentage of one of those areas I just talked about earlier,

Emotion regulation,

Understanding our emotion,

And being in our body during the experience is necessary.

And if you've been listening to me for a while,

Or if you're a client of mine in some capacity,

You know that I do not tell people what to do,

And I am not one who says things are necessary,

But this is one.

If we want regulation,

We have to be with ourselves.

Another thing you can do is use visualization and connect the visualization to emotion.

A lot of times people will do this with a snowstorm or like a rain,

Heavy rain.

So you would go with your emotion,

Recognize where it's at,

And then maybe you have it at a blizzard level initially.

I'll just use snow as the example since I'm in wintery snow over here in central Pennsylvania.

So if you're in a blizzard,

High level of emotion,

Connect the visualization of the blizzard in your mind,

And that's the level of emotion,

And then let the blizzard start to come down to a snowstorm as you bring down the emotion,

Maybe through some breathing,

Through some dropping down your shoulders,

Releasing your jaw,

And it's going to come down to a flurry or just a really tiny,

Hardly any snow at all type of thing.

I guess that could kind of be a flurry,

But it could go slower than a flurry,

I suppose.

And I'm recognizing as I'm saying this that some of you may have never seen snow before.

So let me use another example that most of you have seen,

And that would be a boiling pot of water.

So same thing,

You have a high emotion,

And you're picturing this boiling pot of butter,

And then the emotion goes down,

And it starts going down into maybe less of a boil,

Then down to a simmer,

Then down to the tiny bubbles that appear on the bottom of the pan right when you turn it on kind of thing,

And it starts getting a little heated to being just room temperature water with no movement,

No nothing.

Maybe some of you haven't seen that either because maybe you've never cooked before,

And that's okay too.

So you can think of the rain,

Or the ocean is another one,

You know you're kind of far out there,

Not to the point that you're going to drown or get sucked into the undertow,

But you're out there,

You know flopping around,

And then you slowly make your way back to the shoreline where maybe your feet are sinking into the sand as the water comes and goes.

So those are just some ways to work with emotion,

Sitting with body,

And feeling like you have some tools that it's not going to just become a volcano and erupt.

You can also have something tactile in your hands to help with grounding,

A fuzzy blanket,

Or you can have something like a smell.

I've got like stuff back there that sometimes I burn or an incense or something.

Whatever it is for you that you know you can have in your hands or you might have a ring or something on.

I usually have a ring on,

I cut my finger right before I was recording this so I had to take it off because of the situation.

But anyway,

Whatever it is,

You can ground yourself with something as well for the emotional experience part of things.

You can also think about where you can gain support with someone to sit with,

Process your emotions,

Feel safe around.

It might be a friend,

Family member,

Some of the support things I've talked about before,

Therapist,

Etc.

But a person that you can have an exchange of conversation with that you can vulnerable be yourself with and share what's going on with you.

You might also consider who a mentor in your life is.

Who would you consider to be a mentor?

Someone that you look up to and admire.

And what is it about them that would land them in that role for you?

What would make them a mentor?

Think about their mental and emotional well-being,

How they engage in life with others.

If they're fitting into the mentor role,

Then you might find that they have some tools there that they use for their own mental and emotional kind of flexibility in life.

But that could be something you can also gain from them in terms of understanding that they could share with you.

Prior to 2020 and everything kind of happening and shifting the way we move through life,

Many adults reported already that it was really hard to figure out how to make friends as an adult.

Like,

We're not in school anymore,

You know,

Growing up,

Many of us are friends,

We're the friends that we made in school,

And then we leave school,

And then if we're not like in a workplace where we're by people all the time and cultivating friendships that way,

A lot of people felt it was really hard to figure out how to make friends as adults.

And now,

That has kind of really elevated for a lot of people because of the things I talked about earlier,

More social isolation,

Less opportunity to get together,

And because that has extended so long,

A lot of people are reporting increase in social awkwardness or uncertainty.

It's like how,

I'm sure many of you have not experienced this,

But it's an example I give when I'm kind of talking with people about this kind of stuff,

This merging,

You know,

It's merging back and like in this state of how,

How do I socialize,

Like how do I be a person out here again?

For individuals who have been to an extended silent retreat,

Like a 10-day silent retreat,

At a 10-day silent,

You don't talk to anybody,

You don't have access to your phone,

There's no anything,

No technology,

There's other people maybe there,

But you do not communicate,

You don't have eye contact,

It's like you are in your vessel of view for 10 days.

And often,

Or there's longer ones too,

And there's shorter ones,

But I'm just using 10 days as an example,

Because when people come out of that,

Then it's like a re-merging of socializing,

Like,

Oh,

I kind of remember how to talk again to other people,

And talking to myself and hanging out with myself,

Which is a beautiful thing,

But how do I engage with others?

And it's kind of like that,

This like re-merging for people,

Where they had maybe a hard time thinking about how to make friends before,

And now they're like,

I don't even know how to do this,

How do I find people to hang out with,

Kind of thing.

There's a couple ideas I'll share with you,

Some of them you might already know,

Or maybe you already know all of them.

One might be to look at Meetup.

I will put a link to just the general Meetup thing that you can find,

And you put in your zip code there,

And it will bring up your things of interest.

You put in what your interests are,

You put in your zip code,

And there's tons of Meetups.

Some are virtual,

Some are in person,

So you can find individuals in your community who are doing the things that you like to do,

And you can get together with people with similar interests in that way,

Which will inadvertently cultivate connection and friendship.

And a lot of stuff is virtual still as well,

So you can,

On Meetup,

You know,

You might find stuff in other communities that you want to attend as well,

So you can expand your connections with people all over the place.

You might also want to consider checking out your community calendar,

You can see what's going on in your area event-wise.

A huge one is volunteering.

There's a lot of research to show us what volunteering does to mental health.

It increases our sense of well-being,

It increases our sense of connection with others,

It brings about that feel-good feeling when we're able to help others who are in a place of,

You know,

Suffering or struggling at that time to be able to offer that helping hand through volunteer work.

It's also going to connect you with other people who are into volunteer work,

So that there shows you have a common thread in an interest,

Which helps to build connection.

Another connection would be to try to connect more with nature.

I know some places it's super cold right now,

But nature has this exchange back to us as beings,

Where it has a lot of healing elements to it.

I won't go on and on about that here because I know I've talked about it many times,

But trying to get out a bit in nature can really help with mental emotional distress.

And if it's really cold out where you're at,

Even just like a minute,

Getting some air exchange there,

You can bring in,

You know,

Have lots of plants,

You can bring in plants into your place.

And that's going to kind of give you a little bit of an exchange with nature.

Because again,

There has been a lot over the years to show us how this helps with our mental and emotional well-being.

Now,

I'll share one other little piece of research here with you on nature and its impact on mental and emotional health before I wrap up here.

I don't remember where this was done.

I mentioned it in another episode a while ago.

I think maybe it might have actually been that emotion regulators episode.

But with it,

They were looking at the impacts of nature on surgery recovery.

And they found that individuals that were recovering from surgery in this study that they had sit in front of a certain window that had a bunch of trees on the other side of the window for a period each day,

Period of time each day,

They healed from their surgery quicker than those who did not have that type of exposure.

So I know I said I was just going to share one,

But just as a little other,

There has also been a lot of research to show individuals who live by more kind of eco-evolved areas or connection more to nature and earth,

That they have lower rates of depression,

Mental health,

And there's even been studies to show that they live longer.

So I won't get into all of that so that I can wrap this up here.

But allow yourself maybe to consider some of this.

How can you fill your heart,

Your space within,

So that you can be also mindful of your mental health,

Your emotional health,

And that importance of connection with others?

We are built as a system.

You know,

Our oxytocin responds that way for a reason,

Not because we tell it to.

When we're taxed out,

Maxed out,

It's easy for us to get into impulsive decision-making and destructive-like choices and behaviors.

There's a whole world of difference out there that we can also tap into when we give ourselves the grace,

The opportunity,

And the commitment for that wellness.

And remember,

Wellness is a dedicated commitment,

But man,

That commitment reaps a whole lot of benefit.

Thanks so much for joining me.

As always,

I appreciate spending time and space with you,

And I look forward to seeing you again real soon.

Have a good one!