If you’re needing to improve your mental wellness then you’re in the right place! In this article, I run through my top tips for improving your mental health and overall wellness, even if you’re a busy mom that never seems to have enough time.
How Important Is Mental Health For Mothers?
I cannot stress enough how important good mental health is for mothers. If you want to stay sane and be a good mother, then looking after yourself is a non-negotiable priority. Whatever happens to you, affects the lives of your children—so you want to make sure that you’re looking after yourself as best you can.
If you’re depressed, anxious, stressed, or feeling unfulfilled then it’s going to benefit you to explore different options to improve your mental health. Being a mother can be hard enough as it is, without also battling poor mental well-being too.
How Can I Be A Mentally Healthy Mother?
It takes a little planning and practice to be a mentally healthy mother. And it’s also a winding road. Even if you religiously practice all of the general recommendations for good mental health, some days you might just feel rubbish—and that’s ok! Because it makes you human.
Everyone has good days and bad days. But it’s important to know how to deal with your bad days to minimize the negative impact on you and your family.
If you’re at the beginning of your motherhood and positive mental health journey, you might find the transition to new structures, habits, and routines a challenge. But, it’s worth it in the long run, mama.
Once you have embodied your new rituals, you’ll never look back. There are various different facets to becoming a mentally healthy mother, so here are my top tips on how you can improve your mental health and overall mental wellness.
Positive Mental Health Tips For Moms
1. Seek Help If You Need It
My first tip is definitely to seek professional help if you need it. Don’t be ashamed if you’re struggling with a mental health issue—because you’re not alone. If you’re struggling with postpartum depression, the baby blues, anxiety, mood swings, or any other mental health condition or disorder such as postpartum psychosis—seek help immediately.
Maternal mental health is an important topic and professionals will be well acquainted with your needs, because poor maternal mental health is a common issue.
Perhaps you’ll be provided medication (if you need it), a therapist, or other forms of support to see you through your tough period. The symptoms of mental illness can be supported in a variety of ways such as professional therapy, medication, and a variety of complementary therapies that are more holistic natural approaches too.
Don’t be scared to seek professional help and do not suffer in silence. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad mom if you need support, it makes you a wise and strong human for being vulnerable enough to seek it.
2. Create A Good Self Care Routine
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single mom, stay-at-home mom, or working mother—you need to prioritize self-care. Self-care isn’t selfish, it’s self-preservation, self-love, and self-respect.
Having a good self-care routine is going to help you with stress relief and mental wellness. You might find self-care a bit of a struggle to start with, especially if you’re a new mom, because you’ll be juggling your newfound routine with your little one. But as soon as you can, it’s important to establish a good self-care routine to support and strengthen your mental health.
You might need to ask a family member to look after your kid or arrange child care such as a trusted babysitter. Or you might be able to find time early in the morning, at night time when your child is asleep, or during nap times. Some moms find it easier to put a movie on for their kids so they can get some free time to practice some self-care.
You’ll want to decipher what activities help you to destress and unwind. This might be taking a long hot bath, doing a face mask, painting, playing music, or doing yoga. It’s a good idea to pick a few different activities that work for you so you can switch between them to keep things fresh.
Check out my self-care for moms blog for top tips on how to indulge in self-love.
3. Focus On Consistent Healthy Habits
Focus on consistent healthy habits as opposed to perfection or large changes that you can’t sustain. It is much better to focus on small changes that you can implement and keep up with, as opposed to making huge lifestyle changes that you can’t maintain.
Keep your focus on small consistent habits that you can really embody for the long term. Be patient and trust that they will improve your mental health when you are persistent with them.
For example, if you decide that yoga is going to be your self-care ritual to destress it is much better to commit to 10 minutes of yoga every day than one class of yoga every month.
Don’t assume that because your self-care routine isn’t long or elaborate that it won’t work, because it is still going to make a huge difference. 10-minutes a day of mindfulness or a 20-minute walk every day is going to be much more effective than something you can only spare the time to do once a month.
4. Practice Mindfulness And Meditation
In a medical journal by the Journal of Psychiatric Research, they found that mindfulness meditation decreases the physiological markers of stress such as heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol.¹
Meditation and mindfulness not only help you in terms of stress relief, but they also train you to be more self-aware. There is no self-development without self-awareness.
Being self-aware allows you to recognize when you need to take five minutes away from your kids when you need it—something which I like to call a ‘5-er’.
Essentially when you notice yourself being overcome with emotions such as stress, sadness, frustration, or anger, being self-aware allows you to take 5 minutes away from your kids to breathe and decompress. This prevents you from exploding and then experiencing mom guilt for your lack of control!
When you start working on your self-awareness it brings a huge sense of accomplishment, empowerment, and strength, because you start feeling more in control—even when you’re angry or stressed.
5. Commit To An Exercise Routine
A German medical journal notes that regular physical exercise is commonly associated with increased mental well-being. And it has also been suggested to improve sleep disorders, depression, and anxiety.²
We all know that physical activity isn’t just about looking good, it’s about feeling good too. Your exercise routine doesn’t have to be extravagant. For example, you can commit to a 20-minute walk every day with the baby stroller, or 10 minutes of yoga first thing in the morning. Whatever you do, just make it easy and consistent so that you can keep it up.
Be realistic with your goal setting, don’t set yourself the challenge of 90 minutes of cardio every day if experience shows that you don’t have the time. You want to set realistic goals so that you can feel accomplished and empowered when you reach them.
There are plenty of 10-minute exercise videos on YouTube that you can access for free.
6. Review Your Diet
You are what you eat, mama! Eating whole foods and avoiding junk food wherever possible is going to support your mental health and physical health so much!
Check out my blog post here on easy healthy recipes for busy moms for some great ideas on good nutrition to support your mental wellness.
7. Get Good Sleep And Rest
Getting good rest and adequate sleep is vital for good mental wellness during motherhood. If you’re feeling tired all the time then it’s highly likely that your mental health will suffer and you’ll be on edge.
When you’re tired you’re way more likely to experience frustration, irritability, and a short temper. And the rest of your family will probably be affected by your mood swings too!
Listen to your body and check in with yourself. If you’re constantly feeling tired then take it easy, get rest where you can, and get extra support from family members and friends too.
8. Study And Educate Yourself
You can improve your mental wellness by studying and educating yourself! There’s a plethora of free resources online that you can use to your advantage.
You’ll learn loads about mental health and well-being on blogs like mine, along with podcasts, audiobooks, and YouTube videos. Use car drives to listen to podcasts, or perhaps stick in your AirPods whilst you’re cleaning the house.
Use these free tools to learn how to improve your emotional and mental wellness so that you can be the best mom you can be. Listen to certified professionals for great tips and tricks which can help you to broaden your perspective and tool kit.
Heal those traumas, quit those bad mindsets, break those bad habits, and find the strength to be the generational curse breaker. You can do it—I believe in you!
9. Have Your Own Space And Time Away From Your Kids
One of my favorite all-time tips is to remember to be you. In fact, I love this tip so much that I literally have ‘be you’ tattooed on me!
Be you.
Yes, mama, you’re a mom, and you may also be a wife, sister, daughter, aunt, and whatever else—but you are also an individual!
It is so important for your mental wellness to have time alone to do the things that you love. Decompress. Destress. Do nothing. Workout. Work on your business. Stare at the clouds. Whatever. Just find time to be alone without all the labels that you carry. It’s going to do your mental health the world of good.
If your little ones, or you, struggle with separation anxiety and mom guilt then deal with it, because it is really important to hold onto your personal identity and to have time alone.
Conclusion
Did you find this article helpful? What other tips do you have for improving mental wellness for busy moms that you can share? Let me know in the comments!
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