17 Everyday Behaviors That Psychologists Say Are Bad for Your Mental Health
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Human beings do things every day that cause destructive long-term damage to their mental health either wittingly or unwittingly.
How often do you put the needs of others before your own? Are you a chronic procrastinator? Do you suppress your emotions or engage in multitasking? All of these behaviors can be destructive to your mental well-being.
Here are 17 everyday behaviors that psychologists say are bad for your mental health along with tips on how to change them.
Procrastination
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Procrastination is a negative behavior that is like a snowball rolling down a hill steadily increasing in size. That small or big task that you put off might incur consequences in the future. Procrastination causes feelings of failure, inadequacy, and anxiety. It also makes you fear the future. Do tasks one part at a time, use non-stress-inducing time management strategies, and learn to meditate. Procrastination could become a lifelong mindset if you don’t eradicate it.
Putting Your Partner’s Needs Before Your Own
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Codependency is a destructive mental health behavior where one person constantly takes, is abusive, or causes problems while the other one constantly gives, enables, or solves problems and both think it’s normal. It’s a mindset that can occur in families, friendships, and marriages. You may have normalized this mindset long ago unknowingly. Constantly putting others before yourself causes resentment, irritability, anger, and feelings of loneliness. Set relationship boundaries, socialize with positive people, and prioritize what you want in life.
Normalizing Stress
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Everyone knows that chronic stress is damaging to your biological health and can even cause heart attacks. Stress also irreparably damages mental health. Stress can impair cognitive functions, impede learning, and cause forgetfulness. Unchecked stress clouds critical thinking skills and incites anger. Stress can cause unconscious teeth grinding, destroy your smile, and further erode your mental health. Learn to minimize your ego and check your emotions. You can’t do everything at once, and that is OK.
Living in Cluttered and Messy Environments
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Mom always told you to clean your room for a reason. Even if you are not a hoarder, living in messy, cluttered, and visually disorganized environments can be destructive to your mental health. Aesthetic messiness causes depression, degrades decision-making skills, deflates ambition, and increases feelings of hopelessness and anxiety. Visually declutter and organize your surroundings and you will feel better.
Hoarding Items in Your Home
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The greatest thing you can do for your mental health is to live a minimalist lifestyle. Living like a hoarder, stacking objects in your home and turning it into an obstacle course is no way to live. Hoarders develop emotional attachments to items disintegrating in their homes more than real people in their lives. Hoarders are lonely, paranoid, depressed, antisocial, and disconnected from reality. Happiness in life is about the emotional connections you nourish with others along the way, not how many items you can stuff in your garage.
Constantly Suppressing Negative Emotions
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Learning not to give in to every emotion is a mark of maturity. Still, it is not healthy to ignore your emotions either. Ignoring inner turmoil erodes mental health. It causes depression, resentment, and seething anger. You could become a pressure cooker of anger that will explode at the smallest inconvenience. Feeling angry is normal – you just have to manage it. Talk out your issues with those who wronged you or mental health experts. Don’t obsess over grudges or perceived sleights – try to resolve them or let them go.
Comparing Your Real Life to Social Media
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Everyday people comparing their real lives to social media may be the most destructive threat to mental health in decades. Studies have been conducted to prove the phoniness of social media. Social media influencers and pseudo-celebrities use filters to augment their looks and outright lie about their status and finances. Comparing your life to social media is only going to make you feel unnecessarily jealous, regretful, and lonely.
Social Media and Smart Device Addiction
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It is incomprehensible to consider life without smart devices or social media. Still, addiction to social media and technology has created a generation of socially disconnected people who check their devices constantly. You’re more likely to meet new people online now than in the real world. People now check social media on their smart devices for 2 and a half hours daily. Research studies show that such addictions cause mental health issues like anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Make time for the real world as much as for social media.
Chronic Multi-Tasking
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Multi-tasking work duties are the worst things that you can do for your mental health. Multi-tasking negatively affects cognitive function and makes you forgetful the more you try to do more things. It amplifies stress which in turn can lead to anger issues or depression. Optimize your time management skills and give yourself ample break times from work. Make time for meditation, exercise, and leisure activities to balance your hectic work life.
Not Exercising
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Developing an exercise routine and exercising more than three times weekly helps stave off bouts of depression. According to a recent Harvard study, people who exercise regularly decreased their odds of becoming depressed by 28%. Most depressed people live sedentary lifestyles, never exercise, and have no incentive to exercise due to their negative mindsets. You can find exercise videos online and engage in moderate cardiovascular exercise to stay fit and optimistic.
Eating a Bad Diet
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We are all guilty of over-indulging when it comes to comfort foods. There is nothing more satisfying to the palette than high-sugar foods and drinks, fried foods, or an alcoholic drink. These foods are not good for your mental health. A bad diet can cause obesity and depression. A bad diet will also affect your cognitive abilities, and memory, and slow down brain functions. Eat guilty pleasure foods in moderation with a healthy diet.
Living Like an Introverted Hermit and Never Socializing
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Fears of a global loneliness epidemic were being discussed years before the pandemic. Those fears are now a fact in a post-pandemic world where people prefer staying indoors for work, safety, or personal preference. Antisocial behaviors are known to cause mental health issues like enhanced feelings of loneliness, depression, impaired cognitive function, and Alzheimer’s. Get outside, join a social group, and regularly experience life with others.
Shopping Addiction and Hyper-Materialism
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Americans excel at buying things they don’t want or need to fill unfillable emotional voids within themselves or impress people they don’t like. Shopping fuels a compulsive need to fill emotional emptiness, wastes money, and fuels depression, which then restarts the cycle. Any fleeting happiness you may derive from impulse shopping will soon fade with more shopping required to reignite that feeling. Make a budget, stick to a shopping list, reflect on your materialism, and try to focus on saving more money instead of shopping.
Slouching and Bad Posture
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93% of human communication is nonverbal. How we communicate impacts our mental health and that of those around us in ways we don’t consider. The tone of your words, your body language, and your posture say more about you than your words. Slouching will put you in a negative mindset and promote pessimistic thinking. Walk with a straight back, hold your head up, and keep your shoulders upright and broad when walking. It will improve your mental outlook and boost your confidence.
Living a Sedentary Lifestyle
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The human body is not designed for constant sitting and it destroys mental health. This might seem like a contradictory argument to make in a post-lockdown world where hybrid offices, telecommuting, and the online gig economy mandate workers to operate in a sedentary manner. Living a sedentary lifestyle can permanently impair memory and cognitive function and cause depression. Make the time to develop an exercise routine that suits your lifestyle.
Not Getting at Least 7 Hours Sleep Nightly
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You should be getting at least 7 hours of sleep every night. The longer you go without ample sleep each night, the more likely you are to experience worsening and potentially irrevocable mental health episodes. Lack of sleep causes decreased cognitive impairment, anxiety, and hallucinations. It can also cause psychotic breaks with reality, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Not sleeping enough can also cause the early onset of Alzheimer’s.
Taking Selfies of Everything Instead of Living in the Moment
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Recording videos while you vacation or taking pictures of your restaurant meal for minutes before eating will only make the experience less satisfying afterward. We remember some moments in time and never forget them because we experience them firsthand in the moment, not because we recorded them. Posting selfies all of the time alienates people and could be an indicator of narcissism. Take fewer pictures and live in the moment, you’ll remember more.
You Can Improve Your Mental Health Anytime You Want
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It’s the little things in life that can have the most lasting impacts on our lives. It’s the little mannerisms, behaviors, and everyday actions that incrementally destroy your mental health.
In most cases, you might not even realize it. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Contact a mental health specialist and take control of your mental well-being.
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Allen Francis is a full-time writer, prolific comic book investor and author of The Casual’s Guide: Why You Should Get Into Comic Book Investing. Allen holds a BA degree from Marymount Manhattan College. Before becoming a writer Allen was an academic advisor, librarian, and college adjunct for many years. Allen is an advocate of best personal financial practices including saving and investing in your own small business.
