3 Sneaky Habits That Can Secretly Sabotage Your Mental Health 

Maintaining your mental health is not a one-and-done process, by any means. That's why physician Robin Berzin, M.D., founder of Parsley Health and author of State Change, says it's important to track those small, unconscious habits we do every single day, as these can snowball over time and affect mental well-being. "We do ourselves a disservice when we think about what we eat every day, how we move every day, and how we interact with technology every day as our lifestyle," she says on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast. "These things are not habits… These things are core to who we are and our defining actions for how we feel." 

We've discussed at length the issue of blue light exposure at night (according to Berzin, it does have the potential to sabotage our sleep, which has downstream effects for mental well-being). It's a valid topic of concern, but Berzin points us toward a slightly different avenue: "What we haven't talked about as much are the ways in which technology, and the information we're getting from it, is stimulating us and keeping us from reaching a deeper sleep," she says. "We don't take this seriously enough." 

"We are designed as human beings to move emotions through movement," says Berzin. "The body is designed to do that, and when you don't move and just sit 11 hours a day on average, you store your emotions." And those "stuck" emotions can lead to both physical and mental consequences in your body. 

Allow her to explain further: "When you have a thought, like I'm scared, or I'm upset, or I'm angry, you might not even register the words, but the brain has perceived a threat or something emotionally challenging or negative," she says. You have to "take the time to process those emotions, feel them, and experience them through movement," notes Berzin, or they'll affect other parts of your life.

Berzin believes that alcohol can be a part of a balanced lifestyle (we would agree), but in terms of mental wellness, it's important to ask yourself: Are you having alcohol to feel better, or are you having alcohol to feel even better? "If alcohol is your method for dealing with life, that might indicate to you that you're using it in a problematic way," Berzin notes. "So that's always a gut check I invite people to have." 

From there, she also recommends reflecting on how alcohol affects your sleep quality. Poor sleep, as we know, can affect your mental well-being in a major way2. And it's common to drink a glass of wine to wind down at the end of the day—but according to Berzin, this notion is quite contradictory. "That alcohol is making it impossible for your body to reach the lower resting heart rate and lower body temperature you need to achieve at night for deep sleep," she explains. "As a result, your sleep quality is much lower." 

That said, she recommends drinking no more than three nights per week; and on days you do pour yourself a glass, try to drink earlier in the night if you can. "Ten p.m. is not the time to have that glass of wine. It's 6 p.m., so you have time to metabolize it," she says.