9 Tips for Managing Mental Health Inspired by Psychology
Managing mental health doesn't require complex strategies or expensive interventions. This guide offers nine practical tips grounded in psychological research and validated by mental health professionals. These evidence-based approaches can help anyone build stronger emotional resilience and improve their daily well-being.
Honor Your Body's Wisdom
The most important thing I've learned, personally and through working with clients, is that you cannot think your way out of something that resides in your body. Real healing didn't begin for me until I started working with a somatic therapist and began to listen to what my body was trying to tell me. I couldn't simply analyze my thoughts for answers. If you've tried therapy and medication but still feel stuck, it might be time to explore trauma-informed approaches that work with your body's wisdom rather than trying to override it with willpower or positive thinking.
Prioritize Sleep And Whole Foods
Don't overthink and stop eating junk foods if you are struggling with your mental health. There is no end to overthinking. In several cases, I have observed people suffering emotionally due to overthinking. They can't sleep at night and this makes them feel drained and lethargic in the morning. Don't think too much about your future. Take one day at a time. Divert your mind when negative thoughts creep into your mind. Listen to good music or watch a good movie. Whenever I'm down, I do that. It helps to divert my mind and elevate my mood.
Sleep for at least 8 hours at night. Your brain needs rest. Avoid eating junk foods as they tend to increase anxiety. Eat whole foods and stay hydrated.
Build Daily Presence Habits
My advice is to create small, consistent moments of presence throughout the day. During a period of constant pressure and emotional noise, I used deep breathing, brief pauses of silence, daily gratitude, and tried to be fully present during work, walks, and hard conversations.
Those simple practices helped me manage stress and regain balance. I later deepened them with longer meditation retreats and formal study of mindfulness and healing techniques, which strengthened the basics.
Even a few minutes at a time can be helpful when done regularly.
Work With Your Brain's Design
Stop treating your brain like a broken machine that needs fixing and start treating it like a unique instrument that requires its own specific set of instructions.
In my psychiatry practice, I often see people exhausted from the friction of trying to force their minds into a standard mold. I call this the "mismatch struggle." For example, someone with ADHD might feel like they have a high-performance racing engine for a brain but only have bicycle brakes. The goal isn't to trade the engine for a slower one; it's about upgrading those brakes. When you realize your difficulties are often just a mismatch between your wiring and your environment, the shame begins to lift.
I worked with a patient who was drowning in the guilt of their depression, viewing their lack of motivation as a character flaw. We shifted the perspective to see it as a "low-power mode" of the nervous system. This small change in language transformed their internal dialogue from "I'm failing" to "my system is recharging." This isn't just a feel-good tactic—it's grounded in how our chemistry works. By honoring the way your specific brain processes the world, you stop wasting energy on self-criticism.
My best advice is to treat your mental health with the same matter-of-factness you would a physical injury. You wouldn't yell at a broken leg for not being able to run, yet we berate ourselves for having a panic attack or a low-mood day. Giving yourself permission to simply be in a state of struggle—without the immediate pressure to "get over it"—is often the very thing that allows the healing to begin. It's about working with your biology instead of fighting it.
Keep A Simple Wellness Journal
When I was struggling in my twenties with exhaustion, brain fog, and an autoimmune disease, the turning point came when I stopped looking for quick fixes and instead asked myself: 'What is my body actually trying to tell me?' I started listening--really listening--to how different foods, sleep patterns, and stress levels affected me daily, keeping a simple journal to track it all. That awareness became my roadmap out of the burnout cycle, and now, 25 years later, I help leaders do the same because sustainable wellness starts with understanding your unique body's language, not following someone else's rulebook.
Explore Nearby Green Spaces
Look, running two businesses while chasing wildlife dreams pushed me to the edge a couple years back. Sleepless nights over client deadlines and safari bookings left me anxious and drained. The one piece of advice I'd give? Get outside into nature every single day, even if it's just 20 minutes walking a local trail or sitting under a tree. No phone, just breathe and watch the world move.
What helped me most was those jungle buffer zone walks near Jim Corbett. Science backs it: studies show 20 minutes in green space drops cortisol (your stress hormone) by 21%, boosts mood-boosting serotonin, and cuts anxiety by 25%. Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, lowers blood pressure and sharpens focus too. For me, hearing birds or spotting deer tracks reset my brain faster than any app or pill.
Saw the same for a ChromeInfotech developer friend battling burnout. He started daily park walks; within weeks, his focus returned, and he slept better. India's 2025 mental health data shows 150 million facing stress, but nature therapy works cheap and stigma-free, especially in Tier-2 spots like ours.
Start small tomorrow: leave the laptop, find green nearby, let nature do the heavy lifting. It turned my low days into fuel for Jungle Revives growth.
Act Now For Small Wins
The one piece of advice I would give is to stop waiting for the perfect time to do something. I've seen many of my clients get stuck in the cycle of waiting until they feel "better enough" to take action. I often use the phrase "mood follows action" to describe this. You don't feel better by doing nothing about it—you feel better because you've done something. That doesn't mean you have to do anything monumental. You just have to do something.
One of the ways both depression and anxiety work is that they feed off a cycle of inaction: you feel anxious or depressed, so you do less, and as a result, you feel worse. Conversely, if you're able to do something—almost anything—you tend to feel a bit better and more accomplished.
Last week, my 15-year-old asked me what the point of making your bed is if you're just going to get back in it and mess it up again. I had to smile because I thought the same thing for many years. I answered her like this: if you make your bed and do nothing else at all that day, you'll still see your bed and know that you did that. And once you start with even a small win, you're far more likely to do other things. Momentum builds on itself either way—you can propel yourself forward or drag yourself down.
So, in short: don't overthink it—just do. Do something, anything, and then notice how you feel afterward. The more often you practice this, the more it becomes a habit, and the more you'll see a difference in both what you can accomplish and how you feel—about your life and about yourself.
Rekindle Joy From Childhood
As a psychotherapist who has done a lot of work with trauma and attachment wounds, I find that many mental health struggles have a direct link to inner child fractures. One piece of advice I give often is to engage in a graduated version of something you used to enjoy when you were younger. If you liked to color, maybe take an art class. If you liked to play in the mud, take up pottery. These types of activities are healing to our inner child and can help alleviate some of our adulthood mental health challenges.
Seek Genuine Human Connection
Many people struggling with their mental health have the sense that they are alone in their experience, misunderstood, fundamentally different or flawed, or even beyond help. One of the most important things for people who are suffering to know is that they are NOT alone in what they are feeling. No matter one's symptoms, if they are struggling, they are likely experiencing loneliness. This could be due to the social impact of one's symptoms or the internalized shame of them. It is essential to combat this loneliness by talking about how mental health struggles are a common human condition and that most people can relate.
The most fundamental thing I would communicate to someone who is struggling is that most people, at some point in their lives and to varying degrees, have struggled with their mental health. This is not meant to invalidate or minimize one's pain, but rather to let them know that others may understand, and even identify with, what they're going through more than one may think
Mental health, though now much more visible and socially accepted to discuss, is still profoundly stigmatized. Many people don't disclose what hurts, but that doesn't mean they aren't hurting. Herein is a double-edged sword. With more and more people using social media to share their experiences, their self-diagnoses, and their advice, struggling with one's mental health may feel more like a fad than an authentic state. This can fetishize mental health issues in a way that can make it even harder to ask for help, feel seen, and/or legitimize one's authentic struggles.
We have a loneliness epidemic in our country, which, unfortunately, is leading to more and more suffering. But the experience of loneliness and the mental health challenges it brings is a universal human truth. If only we could find a way to authentically connect. Therapy is a great way to have someone witness what one is going through and make one feel less alone.
