There are things that we do that turn into habits that make our mental health worse. You might not notice it immediately since our lives become increasingly busier as we become older, however, if you don’t make a change, you might risk making your mental well-being worse than before.
Making your well-being a priority is a must if you want to feel better and be happier. Although it may be hard at first to stop these habits that you’ve picked up through the years — thinking it’s harmless and might feel good at the moment — it would be more beneficial for you and your overall health to find a better alternative or to stop completely.
Constantly Being on Social Media
Social media is a source of entertainment for everyone, however, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows on social media. You may find solace in constantly being on social media, and being updated with the latest news and trends, but constantly being on your phone and social media is bad for your mental health.
You become dependent on what the media posts and the trends that you follow. You may become insecure, angry, and frustrated because not everything on social media is good.
You may think that you don’t need to go out and socialize since you can do that with the use of social media apps, but in reality, social media makes you even lonelier.
Codependency
Being codependent on someone may feel good at first, but the habit of co-dependency will interfere with your ability to create healthy relationships with people. Once you become too reliant on someone, you may start to sacrifice yourself to benefit the other or vice versa.
It’s okay to rely on people during hard times, however, it’s not healthy for you and the other person to be too codependent on each other. Co-dependency may or may not affect both of your mental health negatively.
Perfectionism
Doing your best and aiming for excellence and success to reach your goals is healthy to an extent. However, you must know that aiming for perfection may be good at the moment, but aiming for perfection every time and not allowing yourself to rest until you get the ”perfect” outcome may lead to insecurity and anxiety.
It’s okay to do your best to deliver the best outcome. But you should know that there is a fine line between negative perfectionism and positive perfectionism. Positive perfectionism is setting realistic goals, learning from your failure, and making your failure a stepping stone and learning curve. If you have negative perfectionism, you set up your standards too high and become unsatisfied with even the littlest mistake which can lead to mental health problems.
Retail Therapy
Making retail therapy your coping mechanism when everything or something goes bad might be doing more harm than good, even if you feel happy at the moment. Apart from piling up debt and accumulating items you don’t need or want, compulsive spending can leave you feeling guilty or anxious about how to settle for your expenditures or what to do with all the new stuff you’ve accumulated.
Final Thoughts
These habits may feel good at present, but you should think about the after-effects of these habits and what they could do to your mental health over time. Breaking these habits and replacing them with healthy ones will need effort and time but gradually, you’ll start to learn healthier habits that will help improve your mental health.
