Tips and Tricks for Dealing With Low Mood.

[SheffieldForum]

Some great comments here.

 

Exercise is a real tonic for mental health issues — and it doesn’t have to be crazy hard exercise, just a gentle walk.

 

If you have a nice green space near you, or even better a nature reserve — just have a slow walk through. The combination of outdoors, mild exercise and even seeing some nature and wildlife can do wonders. Open, natural spaces have a way of giving even the biggest of issues in your mind a better perspective. It is also nice to do just to get away from other distractions and chill out.

 

Nature is such a good treatment for mental health issues that doctors are starting to prescribe it! You also get your natural Vitamin D on sunny days!

 

There’s other things I try, like gaming. For me, getting into a good game and immersing myself in it proves a nice distraction and some games can even be meditative and get you into a ‘flow state’. If you can, give Tetris Effect a go — a combination of great gameplay, music, visuals and more (controller vibration and even VR modes if you have the gear) makes it such an immersive experience.

 

Or, just reading a good book. Take away any distractions and immerse yourself in a good read. It’ll depend what you’re into as to what to read but recent recommendations from me are Bob Mortimer’s ‘And Away’ autobiography (very funny), or ’Persons Unknown’ by Calvin Payne and Simon Crump which is about the Sheffield Street Tree protests from within the protest movement, but somehow makes the serious topic really amusing.

 

Another good option that not many consider is volunteering. There’s amazing volunteering opportunities for everyone, and you get such a good feeling and sense of achievement helping out a small charity or cause, even if just for a couple of hours a week or something.  VAS is a good place to start locally to find a suitable role for you, or if you want to kill two birds with one stone (i.e. get outdoors and volunteer), try Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust — they do volunteer work days on nature reserves across the region, which is rewarding as well as being outside and learning so much about nature and wildlife (and the staff are all awesome/knowledgeable/helpful).

 

 

[cressida]

Fresh air.

[Delbow]

^ these are all really good suggestions. Get a load of people in a room together and ask them what helps them feel good, and moving and nature come up over and over.

[cressida]

Pot of tea

[hackey lad]

Put some upbeat pop music on and dance like a loony.

Edited August 9 by hackey lad

[Draggletail]

I've suffered low mood on and off over the years, and overthinking (as mentioned by yourself and others)

Contrary to what's been posted, I lay down, and zone out by listening to binaural beats for an hour, and often the low mood is lifted when I've finished. Not sure how well it would work for a really low mood though.

There's plenty of binaural beats on youtube, usually overlayed with a  new age type music soundtrack. YOU HAVE TO wear earbuds or headphones for it to work. 

The ones that work for low mood, for me at least are in the frequencies of 3Hz - 1Hz. Binaural beats comes under the heading (if heading is the right word) of brainwave entrainment.

 

One last thing, stopping smoking. I used to have a thirty a day habit and stopped a long time ago after reading Allen Carrs Easy Way To Stop Smoking. It works dramatically well for some people. Widely available from online booksellers and ebay. and maybe your local bookseller could order you a copy. The  way it worked for me, without even realising it I had started to smoke less while reading the book. On finishing the book I threw away what cigarettes I had and haven't had one since, nor have I wanted one. It's an easy read too! 

 

Anyway a bit of a ramble from me... 😂