Health & Wellness

Physical wellness

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By Skylar Millard

With the colder weather quickly approaching and daylight saving just passing it is easy to fall into more of a stay-at-home routine. It is important to consider your physical wellness during these hibernation months. There are many facets to physical wellness beyond physical activity. Physical wellness can include physical activity, substance use habits, as well as sexual health.

Physical Activity

Overall physical activity is important for physical wellness as well. The Ohio State has exercise classes that students can participate in as well as fitness groups on demand and written workout plans. Additionally they have short 5 minute videos called Buckeye Breaks to help take break from work or school.

Substance Use Habits

Many students choose to indulge in drugs and alcohol use while in college. College campuses often have a culture that normalizes binge drinking, marijuana use, and vaping. These choices can be alright in moderation but once they are used too frequently, they can be damaging to your physical and mental health. Here are some tips on how to do so more responsibly:

  • Count your drinks or hits
  • Be aware of your limits
  • Slow your intake
  • Don’t drive while under the influence

Remember! If your friend gets into medical trouble, you can call for help without fear of being prosecuted for underage drinking or drug violation. And there are NARCAN kits available to Ohio State University students, which can help someone that has overdosed on opioids.

Sexual Health

Sexual health plays into your overall physical wellness and one of the bigger concerns with engaging in sex in college is the contraction of sexually transmitted infections. Having proper protection is very important. Resources like OHIV.org provides free protection discretely via the mail. Protection including:

  • Condoms
  • Dental Dams
  • Lubricant

The Condom Club at OSU allows you receive 25 condoms or barriers for 5 dollars. And if something happens where you’re concerned that you might have contracted an STI Ohio State University offers free HIV-STI testing.

Grow Into a New Mindset

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By Skylar Millard

In a transformative space, such as college, it is important to have a growth mindset and to develop positive self-talk. Having a growth mindset allows people to develop more from learning opportunities and embrace change as it happens. It also helps prevent people from falling into stagnation. Here are some tips on how to develop a growth mindset.

Try new things

It is hard to grow in the same environment that you have always been in and college provides the opportunity have new experiences. It is important to get out of your comfort zone. Try a new hobby, play a new sport, eat new food, or generally challenge yourself to do something you have never done before.

Reframe Challenges

Think of difficult situations as a challenge to overcome rather than a reason to give up. This allows you to embrace new challenges and use them to your advantage. They provide opportunities to learn, grow, and improve yourself. When you believe in your capacity to improve your own talents, failure stops being something to be afraid of. Reframing does not only have to apply to external challenges but to internal dialogue as well.

Be Your Own Hype-man

Allow yourself some grace and give yourself some slack. If you’re putting yourself in challenging situations that are unfamiliar in, there is going to be a learning curve and you might not be great at everything you try at first. Continue to believe in yourself to be able to improve and develop. Be kind to yourself; if you would not say it to your best friend do not say it to yourself. You have to spend 100% of your time with yourself so be your own hype-man and try to make your thoughts a kind and welcoming place for yourself.

Be careful about falling into negative thought patterns such as stewing and personalization. Stewing is when you repeat negative thoughts or bad experiences over and over in your mind. Try to recognize when these intrusive thoughts occur and become intentional about stopping them. If you find yourself often stewing, consider starting a gratitude journal to bring your attention towards positive things in your life. Personalization occurs when you take things too personally or over generalize. For example, I failed a quiz so I am a failure or will always fail. For personalization it is recommended to focus on the big picture of life. Continue moving forward and realize that you have the power to change and do better in the future. It is important to be able to make mistakes and forgive yourself. If you find yourself continuously struggling with negative self-talk or obsessive thoughts consider going to Counseling and Consultation Services.

Don’t Put your Mental Wellness on the Back Burner

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By: Skylar Millard

Happy Fall Break Everyone! I hope the past couple days of nice weather has been utilized well. We are heading into the shorter and colder days of the year. Many people experience a decrease in mood during this time, but it is particularly prominent in college students due to the immense stress they already find themselves under. Here are some tips and resources to maintain mental wellness this upcoming winter:

Quality of Sleep

Lack of sleep or poor quality of sleep can increase the symptoms of depression. It can be hard to maintain a good sleep pattern with the need to work or study or the desire to go out. But it is important to be mindful of. Most people have heard the typical suggestions to improve sleep: set a schedule, don’t look at screens around bedtime, avoid caffeine or alcohol before bed. But here are some different suggestions:

  • Don’t lie awake trying to fall asleep, if you aren’t sleepy in 20 minutes, get up and do a quiet activity without much light exposure.
  • Play calm music at a very low volume and focus on being able to hear it
  • Eat a small snack or drink a warm beverage
  • Use sleep-inducing scents (ex. Lavender, chamomile, etc.)

Creating a balanced Routine

Especially when it gets cold it’s easy to want to stay inside but hibernating indoors is not the best option. It is important to maintain a balance schedule of studies, work, student organizations, and downtime. Establishing a good routine now, while it is not cold, can help when we get into the colder days. Check out last week’s email on time management if you want further help making a balanced routine.

Mindfulness

Although establishing a routine is important, it is also important to not fall into autopilot. Slow down and be aware of the things and people around you. Be mindful of your actions and deliberate in your decisions. This can help ground you and improve your overall mood. Some mindfulness techniques include:

  • Observing your breathing
  • Going for walks in nature
  • Not multitasking
  • Creating a journal

Visit on-campus facilities

At some point, it may be necessary to take advantages of the resources available on campus and that’s okay. They are here to help. Here is a link to the counseling and consultation services and a list of other student resources:

Counseling and Consultation Services

Student Resources

 

All the Small Things: A Note on Self-Care

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By: Jason Dodson 

Let me paint you a familiar picture. You wake up, it’s Monday, the beginning of the week. You’ve got to get food and get to your classes. After classes you want to spend time with friends or your partner, maybe go out for food as well. Instead, you head home and open Carmen, navigating through the syllabi, and skimming the modules to see what readings are required. While doing the mental math of how many pages of how many books, articles, slideshows, etc. you will have to read over the next 144 hours, you move on to assignments (the actual work that needs to be done in those same 144 hours): 4 discussion posts, 2 papers, a group project, and two quizzes.   

 And then after the already exhausting task of putting together a priority list of things to do for the week, you get an announcement notification from a professor with the title, “Don’t Forget About Self-Care!” The professor more than likely has good intentions, but its impact at the top of a busy week is twofold. For one it is blind to students’ gargantuan pile of assignments and readings to sift through and complete, it is adding on to said gargantuan pile as well. Self-care can feel like an additional assignment if you either A: don’t know yet what the best and most effective form of self-care to can practice or B: are not able to work your ideal self-care practice into your incredibly busy schedule.   

 It can be terribly easy to write off self-care as an impossible task to incorporate into your day simply because of how hard it is to achieve and keep up with in the first place. But, maybe taking the time to brew a fresh cup of coffee in the morning is self-care to you. Maybe listening to music in your headphones for a few minutes without a screen in front of you feels meditative. Whatever it may be, whatever small thing that brings you joy and ease even for a short period. These things may seem like a waste of time, or something you may feel like you haven’t earned due to all the other obligations you have, but should be incorporated anyway if they bring you a sense of calm and happiness. 

 Self-care is not about finishing all of your assignments and slumping down in your chair, exhausted, and then carrying on with the things that you enjoy doing that you’ve deprived yourself of to that point. It’s about finding ways to incorporate, even to a small degree those things you enjoy so you don’t feel deprived and exhausted at the end of it all.  After all, self-care should be considered more literally as “taking care of yourself”, which is only definable by you. 

 So next time you’re reminded about self-care, don’t ignore it. Find something, some time in that day in the middle or beginning of all the assignments or whatever expectations you have, take some time to yourself for, again, even a small thing to give yourself calm and happiness in that moment, enough to carry on. 

The Importance of Self-Care 

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As the Autumn 2020 semester begins to wind to a close, many of us are worried and stressed about our final exams and projects. As all of these assignments and exams pile up, we as students begin to stress out and overwhelm ourselves about completing these assignments on time. Although the completion of these assignments and exams are important; it is essential for us to put time aside to focus on self-care activities. Our mental, emotional, and physical well-being are critical to remain healthy so that we are able to avoid burnout. If we are unable to take care and focus on those aspects of ourselves, how can we expect ourselves to stay motivated and determined to finish out the semester strong? Self-care activities are meant to relax and re-energize ourselves while increasing our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Research tells us that self-care keeps us healthy and improves our moods. Remember, you are just as important as that assignment, so let’s spend time caring for ourselves and finish out the semester strong! 

Attached below are a couple of resources that give you more information about why self-care is important, how you can practice and prioritize it, and a few self-care activities you can engage in. 

https://cmhc.utexas.edu/selfcare.html https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/134-activities-to-add-to-your-self-care-plan/