“Research has found positive links between healthy self-esteem and many desirable outcomes, including happiness, humility, resilience and optimism. Studies show that low self-esteem is related to stress, depression and anxiety.”

The article details a range of strategies for boosting your self-esteem:

• Practice healthy habits
• Recognize how you’re attacking yourself
• Identify and challenge self-critical thoughts
• Find out who you are
• Learn what lights you up
• Accept your imperfections

Read the full article: What Really Strengthens Self-Esteem.

“In theory, the social networking website Facebook could be great for people with low self-esteem. Sharing is important for improving friendships. But in practice, people with low self-esteem seem to behave counterproductively, bombarding their friends with negative tidbits about their lives and making themselves less likable.”

via the Association for Psychological Science.

Dr Elisha Goldstein, author of “The Now Effect”, is a clinical psychologist who specializes in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. He has a blog on Psych Central that addresses these kinds of problems, which I’ve found to be personally very helpful.

In his latest post he writes:

“Even though we believe our thoughts represent reality, the truth is, our thoughts are not facts. A lot of us live without an awareness of this, operating mostly from a state of auto-pilot, sleepwalking through life.  The good news is we can train our minds to become more aware of this automaticity, get perspective and tune into what really matters.”

If mindfulness interests you (and it should) then I would recommend his blog. Click to read the rest of the post Mindfulness Over Mood: The Now Effect and Your Mental Health.

There is a yawning big gap in the market for a CBT therapist to specialize in exercise. Or at least overcoming the mental obstacles that prevent exercise. My recent post Psychologists Therapy Treats Mind and Body pointed to one such therapist who combines psychotherapy and fitness sessions. It’s a close match, although he doesn’t necessarily focus on a mind-exercise problem, as much as provide a treatment solution.

Despite my finely tuned powers of search I’ve only found one research paper on CBT and exercise: “Physical Activity in Women: Effects of a Self-Regulation Intervention.”

The paper’s conclusion is positive:

“…this study provides evidence that cognitive–behavioral strategies help women be more physically active. The self-regulation technique—mental contrasting with implementation intentions—was effective for initiating and maintaining behavior change. It is a low-cost intervention component that requires only a single session to learn the technique. People can then apply the technique on their own.”

That’s my kind of technique.

The conclusion is a no-brainer. The interesting thing to me is the technique used.

By way of summary, participants in the self-intervention group made diary entries and mental notes each day on the following:

• their most important current wish regarding physical activity
• the most positive outcome of realizing their wish and events and experiences they associated with this positive outcome
• the most critical obstacle together with events and experiences they associated with this obstacle
• three implementation intentions with the following questions:
  - When and where does the obstacle occur, and what can I do to overcome or circumvent the obstacle?
  - When and where is an opportunity to prevent the obstacle from occurring, and what can I do to prevent it from occurring?
  - When and where is a good opportunity for me to act on my wish, and what would this action be?

If you’re interested you can download a PDF of the research paper.

In a somewhat related story, sleep experts say they are seeing an increase in cases of “sleep texting”. From a TMCnet article: ”Apparently, sending text messages throughout the day and right before bed isn’t enough for some text messaging addicts…according to researchers, day-to-day stress has triggered an unusual habit of people sending text messages while they are actually sleeping.”

Dr. Markus Schmidt of Ohio Sleep Medicine Institute says that one of his patients even sleep-texted nude pictures of herself!

Facebook’s explosive rate of growth and recent product releases, such as the prominent Newsticker, Top Stories on the newsfeed, and larger photos have all been focused on one goal: encouraging more sharing. As it turns out, its precisely this hyper-sharing that is threatening our sense of happiness.” Daniel Gulati.

Personally, I don’t write for Facebook, Google +, Twitter, or any other social network. We all need to take care of ourselves and draw a line in the sand. For me this means staying away from the noise. I imagine most Facebook users would disagree with the paragraphs above, but if you’re consciously trying to look after your mental health then it’s worth thinking about.

Click to read Daniel Gulati’s full article: Facebook Is Making Us Miserable.

This post has a great lesson about judging people. It reminds me of coming out of a lengthy depression, realizing for the first time that many of the people I knew – and judged – were actually kind and well-meaning.

Read the post in full at Depression on My Mind.

Gretchen Rubin, a well-known writer about happiness, makes the same observation:

“One of my key realizations about happiness, and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists, given its emphasis in popular culture, is that outer order contributes to inner calm. More than it should…”

In this post she walks through the things that stop us from clearing clutter. They are largely psychological.

Don Mills, self-confessed “crabby old fart”, rails incessantly against young people. ”They all have “disorders”. That’s the problem with young people today.”

Apart from this contention, Don’s blog really has nothing to do with mental health. I’m just passing it along as potential laugh therapy.

From a recent post:

“The problem with young people today is that they’re too damned soft.

In my day, young people were tough, damn it. We were gristly, sinewy and hard as nails. My generation was forged in a furnace of fiery parents, sweltering outhouses, creamed chip beef and the type of childhood diseases that either killed you or put some damned hair on your chest…There was no room for mollycoddling and teenaged slackassery. We couldn’t lie around in our underpants all day levelling up in Donkey Kong and text messaging our idiot friends.”

There you have it. Read more of Don’s objections at The Problem with Young People Today.

The study’s lead author, Meyran Boniel-Nissin from the University of Haifa, says that “writing about distress in itself, even without audience interaction, generates desired changes in participants. Although social feedback is an important factor in causing change in bloggers, the very writing has its own value, thus supporting the arguments and replicating the findings pertaining to the therapeutic value of traditional expressive writing.”

A new blog, We Have to Make It, is a good example of a teen writing for therapeutic reasons, although in this case for depression.

From the home page:

“I’m 16 & I battle with depression. I guess I made this blog to make myself better and give others hope… for them to know they aren’t alone. I play basketball, love gaming, music and, I actually like to write…when I’m in the mood :) I sometimes post random things to make people smile lol.”

I really like this blog. It expresses hope and optimism, it is personal but not self-absorbed, and it is well written. I wish more teens would write, and not just for Facebook.

Visit We Have to Make It to read more. The full blogging study by Meyran Boniel-Nissin can be downloaded as a PDF.