We all grow up learning the basics of physical health: Eat well, get enough sleep, move your body, cut back on the things that harm you. These lessons are drilled into us early, and they haven’t really changed much over time.

But when it comes to mental health, no one gives us the same kind of starter kit. At nineteen, when I first got sick with depression, I didn’t have a single framework to fall back on. I didn’t know what depression was at the time, let alone know how to measure how sick I was, how to respond when things got overwhelming, or even what recovery really meant.

Looking back now, there are a handful of practices I wish I’d known then — the ones I lean on today. They’re not perfect, and they’re not the only way forward, but they’ve become my essentials. And if they can help guide you through your own mental health journey, I want to share them with you here. 

Finding a Way to Measure

With physical health, there’s no shortage of metrics. You can step on a scale, check your blood pressure, or track your steps with a smartwatch. We all know that mental health doesn’t come with the same dashboard.

That means it’s up to us to create our own. 

For me, that looked like doing a monthly stress self-assessment. I’d take a moment at the end of the month, score myself, and look for patterns. This was a helpful way to get a pulse and notice whether things were getting better or worse.

And that matters, because when you’re not doing well, the first thing to slip is often your own insight. Without some way of checking in, you don’t always see how far off track you’ve gone.

Reclaiming Choice 

Once I started paying attention to where I was, the next hurdle was stress itself. For years, I thought of stress as something that just happened to me, like bad weather. I only knew how to endure it and wait for it to pass.

But one of the most life-changing lessons I’ve learned is that stress isn’t always outside of our control. We can’t eliminate it, but we do have choices in how we respond. A framework that’s been helpful for me is the Four A’s: Accept, Avoid, Alter, Adapt.

• Accept. Some things are simply beyond our control, like a global pandemic or the loss of someone we love. Fighting against what can’t be changed only increases stress. Acceptance doesn’t have to mean liking it or pretending everything is fine; it means acknowledging reality and then working through the emotions that come with it.

• Avoid. While we can’t avoid every stressful thing, we can try to reduce unnecessary ones. Maybe it’s taking a different route to work to bypass traffic, or maybe it’s unsubscribing from news alerts that only spike your anxiety. When you avoid, you aren’t in denial; instead, you’re being intentional in how much stress you invite into your life.

• Alter. Sometimes the stressor itself can be changed. You don’t have to live with a toxic friendship, a draining work routine, or a noisy environment. Altering the situation might mean setting boundaries or restructuring your day so that the stress doesn’t have as much power over you.

• Adapt. And finally, sometimes the change has to come from inside. This is about reframing how you think about a situation. A big project at work might feel overwhelming, but you can also frame it as an opportunity to grow. A chaotic season at home might feel like disorder, but it can also be seen as a transition and newness. Adaptation might not erase stress, but it helps reshape the meaning you give to it.

The Four A’s don’t make stress disappear, but they shift you from feeling like a passive victim of it to realizing you have agency. And that sense of agency, in my experience, changes everything.

Catching the Negative Spiral

Once I started noticing my patterns, I couldn’t ignore what was happening in my head. Like most people, I had an endless loop of automatic negative thoughts — the “ANTs” that crawl in without permission.

The tricky part is that thoughts aren’t harmless. They shape how we feel, and those feelings drive how we act. A single distorted thought — “I’m terrible at this project” — can lead to frustration, which leads to procrastination, which leads to real performance issues. The thought creates the very outcome you feared. That’s the spiral.

When I first learned about cognitive distortions - a classic cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) concept -, it was like someone turned the lights on. I could suddenly see negative patterns that had been running through my brain in the background. But the power isn’t in flipping those into false, toxic positives. Some situations really are tough, and pretending otherwise isn’t helpful. The goal is to get back to balance. Instead of “I’m terrible at this project,” maybe it’s “This part is hard, but I’ve handled challenges before.”

That shift isn’t about painting over pain with positivity, it’s about reclaiming accuracy. And accuracy is what interrupts the spiral before it pulls you further down.

Rethinking Recovery

When most people hear “self-care,” the images that come to mind are bubble baths, wine, Netflix, and comfort food. And let me be clear — there’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I still enjoy them. But when I started relying on them to recharge me, I realized they weren’t actually helping my recovery… they were a distraction.

Recovery, I’ve learned, has to be intentional. I like to borrow the perspective of professional athletes here. For them, recovery isn’t a treat or an afterthought — it’s part of the training plan. Rest days are scheduled. Activities are chosen deliberately to repair the body and prepare for the next challenge.

The same idea applies to mental health. Real recovery is about recharging in a way that equips you to keep going. That might look like:

• Doing something different from your usual work. If your job is mentally taxing, recovery might mean moving your body, cooking, or getting outside. If your work is physical, recovery might be journaling, meditating, or reading.

• Planning it in advance. Just like an athlete doesn’t wait until they collapse to take a rest day, we can’t wait until burnout hits to recover. Build it into your week, not as a backup plan, but as a core practice.

• Engaging, not numbing. Recovery should leave you more alive, not less. Creative hobbies, time in nature, or good conversations often provide more fuel than hours of passive scrolling.

Treat recovery as a way to strengthen your capacity for whatever comes next.

Asking for Help, Building Connection

And then there’s the hardest lesson of all: learning to ask for help.

I grew up thinking resilience meant going it alone, but resilience has never been a solo act. Life got better when I started leaning on people I trusted. Having connections that felt mutual and where support flowed both ways is a game-changer. 

If I Had These at 19…. 

If I’d had these essentials at nineteen, my path through depression might have looked very different. Not easier, but clearer.

That’s what essentials like these do: they give you a starting point and a way to steady yourself when life gets messy.

So I’ll leave you with this: what’s one essential you could start practicing today?