Spending time in nature–casually referred to as “nature therapy”–has many positive mental health outcomes. Each year, new studies emerge highlighting how people can nurture their health by spending increased time in nature, getting exposure to sunlight, and bringing natural elements (like house plants) indoors.

If you have ever been stressed and found yourself feeling calmer after a walk outside, then you know from personal experience how nature can help reduce tension and lift your mood. Here is a brief glimpse into the ways that nature “therapy” is great for mental health for people of all ages.

Humans Are a Part of Nature: It Makes Sense That We Need It

While it is easy to feel–and be–disconnected from nature, people are a part of nature. Historically, most of human life was spent outdoors, which means that our brains and bodies are naturally adapted to life outside.

Humans shifted from hunter gatherer lifestyles, to agrarian systems with farming and more permanent settlements, and in more modern times, we spend time in office buildings, indoor shops, and the confines of apartments and houses.

From a “big picture” historic perspective, humans are used to a lot of time in nature, but modern humans now spend 90% of our time indoors. That is a sharp decrease from what we were accustomed to by design.

Eco-psychology studies the link between nature and health

People in cities that have little green space often deal with cognitive fatigue. This is where eco-psychology comes in: how can we design cities that center our basic need for nature?

Ecopsychology has helped people consider how to better design their homes, office spaces, backyards, and more, to be reflective of nature. Studying the link between nature and health has also helped reveal that plants and green space help reduce stress. Even spending some time in a backyard or “pocket park” can produce positive outcomes.

Children also need nature for overall, strong mental health

Bringing family or friends to a park is an easy way to be outside, get some movement, take a break from screens, and experience a mood boost. Many studies suggest that children with attention deficit disorders may experience reduced symptoms when they consistently spend more time in nature.

If you have a child in your life and you can consider a weekly trip to a regional or city park, a local school garden, or even a local, favorite tree, you are helping your child stay healthy on many levels. Kids often know how to explore nature and can remind adults too, when we forget or when it’s been a while.

Simply feeling connected to nature is good for children, teenagers, and adults.

Nature Therapy can Improve Quality of Life

Many types of therapy can help people realize big epiphanies like, “I want to have more energy in my life,” or “I want a job that allows me to spend my weekends in nature, with no need to check email.”

There is also an abundance of nature-based activities, from hiking to looking for rainbows after a good rain. Maybe make a list of three activities in nature you miss doing or that you are curious to try. Can you try one this week? Therapists can also help you set healthy lifestyle goals and spend more time in nature.

North American Mental Health Services has offices in Redding, Eureka, Fairfield, Monterey, Salinas, Red Bluff and Hollister to work with a therapist in person. Online therapy is available through HomePsych.

“Emotional resilience refers to one’s ability to adapt to stressful situations or crises. More resilient people are able to “roll with the punches” and adapt to adversity without lasting difficulties; less resilient people have a harder time with stress and life changes, both major and minor.” – VeryWellMind.com

It’s been a stressful few months. As we approach the summer, many people are wondering what the future is going to hold. The coronavirus has not only impacted the health of many around the world, it has also produced economic hardship and uncertainty. How do we manage the “curve balls” that life throws at us from time to time? I personally wonder, is there anything that I can do for myself, and my community, to weather life’s storms?

I believe there are things we can do. In these next few blogs, I am going to outline five key principles of emotional resilience to help maintain one’s shape when stretched and pulled by challenges and hardships.

The Pursuit Of Happiness

A few years ago, I was curious about the concept of happiness. What is happiness? Our founding fathers considered it to be quite important, so much so they included it as criteria in our country’s founding document. The Declaration of Independence states that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This led me to wonder, how does one pursue happiness, and when will I know when I’ve found it?

So, I did some research, and I discovered that a doctor at the Mayo Clinic was asking some of the same questions. His name is Dr. Amit Sood. He noticed that the research showed that people who report a general sense of “being ok” in their lives were healthier, more productive, and more resilient. He conducted more than 25 studies on this subject and came to some conclusions. You can read about it for yourself in his book A Guide To Happiness.

One of the common factors that he found was that these “happy people” live with intention, not only in their actions, but in their thinking. Dr. Sood outlined four areas that happy people have in common. The first is the ability to focus your attention. You see, about 30-40 percent of our thinking is not focused thought, but rather, wandering thought. This is totally normal. However, these moments of wandering thought result in us telling stories about ourselves, the world, and how we relate to the world. When we feel good, and life is full of hope, the stories we tell ourselves can be wonderful, full of dreams and positive vibes. However, when we are feeling particularly vulnerable, sad or anxious, these stories can be decidedly negative, and thus we feel really bad. Finding ways to be more mindful in our thinking as well as engaging in activities that keep us more in the present moment can be helpful. Activities like puzzles, working in the garden, fixing your car, and countless others can be ways of focusing your attention on the Here and Now. When left alone with our thoughts, even we can spiral down if we’re not careful.

The 5 Principles Are:

1. Gratitude
2. Acceptance
3. Compassion
4. Meaning
5. Forgiveness

Over the course of the next five posts, I will break down these principles. Practicing these can make a significant difference in your life. Think of this as daily “MENTAL HYGIENE.”

A Therapist’s Guide To Surviving The COVID-19 Lockdown

They say it rains 226 days a year in Seattle. Gray clouds from the North Pacific drift over the Emerald City and drop precipitation on the coffee-drinking public. It is a beautiful city, full of green parks and green politics. You can tell the locals from the others—by the use of umbrellas. Out-of-towners clutch winged sticks held aloft to divert the deluge. Seattleites leave them at home, accepting the fact that a little water from above makes their hair look cooler.

In 1995 I waved goodbye to the sun, and began the trek north from California to this “city on the Sound.” Dad and I loaded up the car with my few possessions. Mom baked some cookies for the trip and packed a cooler full of Diet Pepsi and apple wedges. “Now, don’t forget to eat lots of green vegetables and fruits. You don’t want to get scurvy,” she said. I looked down at the bag slung around my shoulder to see her placing a book in one of the side pouches. I slid it back out just enough to see the title: A Mom’s Guide to Surviving College. It had recipes for macaroni and cheese that gave blow-by-blow instructions on how to make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As we pulled out of the driveway she stood tearfully watching her youngest son go off to college. We waved, and as the car turned onto the road I felt like I was pulling away from childhood and toward my future. My compass pointed north, and like Jack London, I mushed.

Stepping out into the unknown can be an exciting thing. However, new challenges can sometimes make me feel afraid. As I sit here today, it has become evident that we are faced with a different kind of life transition. Worry and fear have crept into the national consciousness. COVID-19 Information In Redding has infected the hearts of many around the world. While doctors and scientists and politicians work on ways to defeat the microscopic threat, each of us look inward to combat feelings that lie deep inside. Feelings of a lack of control, feeling stuck, and feeling lonely. What will the future hold? Will it look the same as I had grown accustomed to? Will I or someone I love get sick and die? These are all questions that can have a significant impact on our mental health.

Managing these feelings, and coping with the stress that they produce will become increasingly important as the next few weeks and months draw out. We are pulling out of the driveway of what is known and comfortable and heading toward a new reality that is unpredictable. So, as I start down the road stocked with beans and rice and boxes of Hamburger Helper, I would like to share with you a “Therapist’s guide to surviving the Lockdown.”

The River and the Reservoir

The first thing to remember is that your feelings are valid. It is perfectly reasonable to feel uneasy in this time. Acceptance of your emotional reality will help you move through this experience with your mental health intact. Denial of these feelings will only add pressure and weight to the reality that you face. Imagine your feelings are like a river. It flows through you. It touches you. It impacts you. But then, it sails on down the river. On the contrary, a reservoir holds onto the water. The water dams and pools up, creating more volume for you to hold.

Tip: When you feel an emotion like sadness, acknowledge the feeling. Realize that this feeling will not last forever. It will pass, and another feeling or thought will replace it. We think all the time. It is just what minds do. One thought comes. It stays for a while, and then it goes. Another thought comes behind it, and so on. Allowing yourself to experience the emotion authentically will allow you to process it, and move on.

Don’t be surprised if you have some surprising emotions. Each of us will process this crisis differently. One writer described this as grief processing. We are grieving the loss of loved ones yes, but we may also be grieving the loss of a job, the loss of routine, or a loss of security.

Routine of Distraction

It is important to find ways to keep a regular routine. Finding a sense of normalcy is a critical part of maintaining calm and maximizing your effectiveness. If you normally wake up in the morning at 7, continue to do so. Get up. Take a shower. Get dressed, as if you had something to do that day. Develop goals and projects for each day. Benchmarks to measure what you have accomplished. This will help you limit the sense of one day flowing into the next with no real structure.

Mix in scheduled entertainment and ways to distract yourself from your situation. Mindful practices like cooking, gardening, and exercise are helpful. Ask yourself, what activities make me feel normal?

Tip: Write it down! Making lists can assist you in organizing these activities, but it can also give you something to look back on at the end of the day as evidence of what you did. Warning: Don’t judge yourself if everything doesn’t get done. There is grace in the midst of this. In other words, be kind.

Have Courage

“Courage is being very afraid, and saddlin’ up anyway.”
– John Wayne

When I was a kid, I loved imagining I was Indiana Jones on an adventure to defeat the Nazi’s in a race to a mythical artifact. I dreamt of commanding the USS Enterprise against the Romulans like Captain Kirk. I visualized myself as Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon toward the Death Star to save Luke Skywalker. I, of course, was only a child. The world I lived in was scary, and I was often afraid. In those times, I would ask myself, ‘What would Han Solo do?” In a sense, even though they were fictional characters, I was borrowing their courage for a little bit in order to get through. Eventually, I realized that their courage was actually mine all along.

The bible talks about how persevering through hardship produces character (strength), and that strength produces hope. The competing ideas about our future are fear and hope. Which one I choose to focus on will have a big impact on how I feel and act.

We will get through this. There will be another side. If you have family that are staying with you, enjoy them. Use this time to grow closer together. Resist the urge to go to your own corners and isolate. Engage, talk, do a puzzle, or watch Jeopardy together. If you are living by yourself during this time, reach out to others on social media, pick up the phone and call a friend, or find opportunities in the community for connection. You are not alone. Isolation is depression’s best friend.

Reflecting on the Power to Change and the Things I Learned while Watching the Science Channel

Gravity is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their masses.

I’ve been watching a lot of shows on the Science Network recently. There is something both comforting and intriguing about learning what keeps this universe of ours together—and what tears it apart. The vastness and complexity of the natural world never ceases to amaze. In fact, the scale of the universe is almost unfathomable.

In order to wrap our human heads around the universe, scientists have focused their curiosity on the forces that govern matter and energy. Laws govern this world, and theories try to explain what the laws don’t.

Gravity is interesting to me. Now I don’t know all the intricacies of physics, but it seems to me that objects with more mass attract objects with less mass. The sun attracts the Earth and all the rest of the planets. The Earth attracts the moon and keeps all of us on its surface, too. It takes immense energy to escape its gravitational pull. This is called escape velocity.

Wikipedia explains this process: “In physics, escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy plus the gravitational potential energy of an object is zero.[nb 1] It is the speed needed to “break free” from a gravitational field without further propulsion.”

Life change has similar dynamics. The “mass” that is created in our lives can create a type of gravitational pull that keeps us where we are.

When I moved from the San Francisco bay area to Southern California to attend graduate school, I never thought that I would stay. I assumed that I would be there 2 years or so to get my degree, and then move back up north. However, during my therapy internships, I began gaining influence in my job at the hospital. Promotions and added responsibility made it easy for me to ‘go with the flow,’ and stay put.

This was not a bad thing. In fact, I am grateful for the opportunities that were presented to me. I met the love of my life, and we got married. We had a little girl who has been a blessing and recently had a baby boy. Life’s gravity began making it harder to change. Fear of failure, lack of security, and complacency made it harder to reach the escape velocity needed to see the change that I would like to see.

The desire to step out of my comfort zone seemed daunting. I ultimately came to some conclusions about life change and reaching my “escape velocity.”

1.) The energy needed to break free from the gravity of your situation can be immense. Therefore, you need to be wise in how you direct that energy. You only have so much energy to expend. The more dissipated or distilled it is will determine the impact of your efforts. Keeping focused and redirecting your thoughts back to where you want to go is key.

For me, making lists, scheduling quiet time, scheduling community time with my wife and counselors are important toward achieving this. Ask yourself, “Is there unnecessary energy expenditure in my life?” “What specifically can I eliminate from my life that is not serving my goals?”

2.) When discouragement comes (and it will), remember that it is a process. Many of the relationships and situations that I have the opportunity to be a part of now are invaluable toward what I will be doing. Remember that if the goal hasn’t yet been realized, it does not mean that change is not already occurring. Ask yourself a couple of questions: “What about my current situation is serving the change I want to see in my life?” “Who in my life can be an ally?”

3.) Trust in the process. The struggle you are experiencing can be the very thing that will make you stronger. Wisdom is forged in the crucible. Ask yourself, “What am I learning?”

Take courage. Reaching your escape velocity requires perseverance, patience, and faith! C.S. Lewis said, “Courage is not merely one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.”