When we get distressed, it can be challenging to help ourselves in that moment and to regulate our distress. Cold showers are fast becoming a way that people are helping themselves to cope with intense feelings of distress. So what’s all the rage with cold showers? We know it seems outlandish to be thinking about taking a cold shower, especially with winter fast approaching, but they work! And here’s why…

It will have been hard to notice that in recent years the development of mental health apps has grown enormously and now on the market are hundreds of readily available apps to support you with your mental health and wellbeing. A quick search easily finds apps for support with a wide variety of mental health and wellbeing problems and lots of exciting promises about how they can help. As such, we thought we would do a series of blogs on mental health apps exploring apps for different needs and today we begin by exploring whether mental health apps actually work.

Starting therapy can be a daunting affair, and as it is with all new and unfamiliar things it can often elicit feelings of trepidation and nervousness. One of the most challenging barriers to getting started in therapy is deciding who to see. If you have ever done an internet search for therapists, you’ll know just how many practitioners and types of therapy there are, and sorting through all of the choices can feel overwhelming. While there is no exact formula for selecting a therapist, here are some things to consider that will hopefully get you or someone you’re supporting to get started.

Stay with me here… You can’t stop your thoughts. Why? Because your thoughts are generated in your brain. Your brain’s job is to think. Just the same way that your heart’s job is to pump blood, your lung’s job is to breathe, your stomach’s job is to digest food, etc. So how can you switch off your thoughts if your brain’s job is to think? We cannot help what pops into our brain, but what we can do is work on how to manage them. Managing thoughts is no easy feat but there are a few things that can help.

Our hormones can do weird things in our bodies. They can make us feel and behave in ways that can leave us scratching our heads especially when we’re lacking in certain hormones. The hormones in our brain are no different. There are four main hormones that are implicated in our ability to regulate our mental health which are: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins. So what do they do exactly and how can we up our daily D.O.S.E?

We’ve all heard people say that movement is great for our mood and for very good reason. Research has been able to demonstrate for a long time that movement can positively improve mood, decrease stress, improve clarity of thinking and memory capabilities and improve motivation and confidence. With all of these positive associations it makes perfect sense that we would give it a try. So why does it work?