Everyday things you didn’t realize are harming your mental health

Maintaining your mental health can seem like a full-time job, and it only gets harder with the more responsibilities we have. One of the reasons for this is that we take up more habits to cope, most of which we think are harmless, and we don’t have the time to interrogate their effect on us. We also largely underestimate the mind-body link!

Small, everyday things we do can have a huge impact on our mental health and can affect various other parts of our lives without our knowledge, leading us to a whirlpool of negativity that can be hard to escape. But the changes we can make are simpler than you might think. Click through to see the commonplace things you didn’t realize are harming your mind.

Doom Scrolling

Looking at the mirror every morning

Keeping your phone volume on or buzzing

Checking your phone mindlessly

Scheduling too much

Eating lunch at your desk

Eating in front of the Television

Being indoors too much

Preferring online to offline relationships

Small talk

Poor posture

Crossing your arms/legs, making yourself small

Running over tomorrow’s to-do list before bed

Beating yourself up over a mistake

Trying to be perfect

Being sedentary

Exercising too much or in bad form

Ruminating on negative thoughts

Comparing yourself to friends and followers

Looking at screens before bed

Not winding down for bed