The Importance of Taking Mental Health Breaks

Speaker 1

Hello there, and welcome to another episode of Zevo Talks. My name is Shawna Farrell, and I am a wellbeing specialist with Zevo Health. Today, we are gonna be talking about the very important topic that is mental health breaks. So we’ll chat about why these are important and how they can best be achieved.

So before we dive into what a mental health break is and why that’s really, really important for you, for your health, especially your mental health, just your health in general, the first thing I’ll invite you to do in a moment is just to pause this episode and take a quick two-minute break.

So ideas for a two-minute break might be looking outside, taking a quick stretch, singing along to your favourite song, anything that you can do in two minutes that will be a break from what you’re doing right now. So I invite you to pause the episode here, take a quick two-minute break, and then come back and we’ll go from there.

Okay, so I guess it’s helpful to check in after that two-minute break and think about how did that feel? Did you notice anything? And usually what we notice is, even when we’re only taking a very short break or a very short pause, one minute, two minute, three minutes, it really can make a difference to how we feel. Those short breaks can help to boost our mood, boost our concentration levels.

We’ll come back to that in a little while and explore a little bit more about the benefits of taking breaks. But I think it can just be helpful to practise those short breaks that over time will make a big difference to how we feel. I’m making sure that we’re doing something during those breaks that makes us feel good or kind of helps us to relax.

So a question I have for you is, how often do you think that we need a break during a working day? Now, usually there’s lots of different responses to this question and lots of people might say things like an hour or two hours, but really every 30 to 50 minutes is when we need to take a break.

And that might seem like quite a lot of breaks, but these can even be those two or three-minute breaks, but it really, really is important that every 30 to 50 minutes, we are taking those short breaks in order to give us a chance to recharge, to maybe look away from the screen, to take a deep breath.

And again, we’ll talk about it a little bit more why that’s important, but it really is every 30 to 50 minutes that we need to be taking those breaks. That might be surprising. And I know a lot of us can be autopilot during the working day, especially.

And this means that we can kind of just be stuck into a piece of work where we can just be doing things without even noticing that the time is going by or feeling stressed out by deadlines and feeling like if we stop to pause, we’ll never get anything done. But actually what we know is it’s the opposite of that.

If we don’t stop to take those pauses, if we don’t stop to take those mental health breaks, it actually means that we’re more likely to be less productive, but also we are more likely to suffer from things like chronic stress and burnout.

Speaker 1

And that would lead to less productivity in the long run. So those breaks, even if they’re short and sweet, really do make a difference to how we feel. And they actually make us more productive and help us to look after our mental health. So I hear you all ask, what is a mental health break?

So a mental health break or a break for a mental health is a way to take a break from anything that’s stressful or demanding, or just generally taking a break from our kind of day-to-day work life or even outside of our work life. So these breaks for our mental health can be short. And we talked about those short breaks already. They might be two or three minutes.

They might be an hour lunch break, but they can also be longer than that. And that just depends on our needs where we’re at in the situation that we’re in. These mental health breaks give us a chance to kind of re-energize. They give us a chance to de-stress really.

So those shorter breaks tend to be more during the day that as we talked about, there’s maybe two minutes, three minutes, or those longer lunch breaks. And it’s really, really important that we’re taking our lunch breaks. So that can be things that we do during the day or even after work, making sure we have time to wind down, doing things that we enjoy, doing things that make us feel good.

And depending on our situation, depending on who we are, there’s lots of things we can do that count as a mental health break. And we will talk about those a little bit later in the podcast as well.

We definitely can take these shorter mental health breaks and they’re really important, but also just to say that sometimes we might be in need of a longer break for our mental health and that’s absolutely fine as well.

If we notice symptoms of stress or burnout, so these might be things like not being able to focus, feeling very low or anxious, noticing that we’re not sleeping as well or waking up in the night, if we’re struggling to manage our workload, if we’re feeling quite withdrawn, that might be a sign that we are potentially suffering from chronic stress or burnout and that also would be a sign that it’s a good thing to maybe speak to a health care professional, so a GP or using your EAP service just to let somebody know that that’s how you’re feeling because if that’s the case, it might be that you need a little bit of a longer break for your mental health in order to recover from that and if we are struggling, it does take a little bit of time to recover sometimes and that’s absolutely fine.

Getting that period of recovery is what is going to help us be able to bounce back, to build our resilience, to build up those strategies in order to be able to acknowledge stress and burnout and implement those breaks during the daytime, during our work time to try and create a buffer to try and create something that will prevent us from getting to that stage of burnout.

Speaker 1

So as I said there, mental health breaks can be either short, those ones that we take during the day or after the kind of work day ends or they might be longer depending on our situation and depending on if we are going through a difficult period or noticing those symptoms of burnout. So why are breaks important for our mental health?

So we talked about burnout a little bit already and that’s that idea of feeling unable to focus, not able to manage our workload, maybe feeling anxious or low and we know that burnout can be very very common and we know that we’re seeing more signs and symptoms of burnout.

This potentially is due to post-pandemic, we’re kind of going through a very difficult time, we’re coming to the other side of that now but sometimes there can be a bit of a snowball effect of burning coming from situations like that.

So it’s really really important to be aware of that and the reason why mental health breaks are so important is they can actually give us a buffer against burnout and what that means is if we take the time to really disconnect from work or from stressful activities and recharge this means that we can be you know more quick to handle stresses, difficult situations, we’re getting a chance to de-stress before we go back and have to deal with difficult situations or stress at work or just our day-to-day work life which can of course be very fulfilling but it can also be very challenging.

So we can’t be the best version of ourselves in any capacity if we’re not getting the opportunity to recharge and that’s why taking those breaks is really important and it might seem like you know a two-minute break every 30 minutes or 50 minutes isn’t going to make that much of a difference to your mental health but those small breaks over time will really make a big difference.

As I mentioned there they give us the opportunity to recharge, they help to really revive us, they help to give us energy and particularly you know longer breaks can help with those things like energy so getting some exercise, making sure we’re resting, making sure we’re getting adequate amount of sleep, all of those things are giving us a chance to get a break for our mental health and helping us to recover, helping to re-energise those so that during the day we can cope with the demands that might be put on us.

Yeah, taking those breaks, you know, those shorter breaks during the day or those longer lunchtime breaks are up to work is really one of the most powerful things that you can do for your own mental health.

It gives us better job satisfaction also when we’re getting those breaks because we’re not feeling that kind of back-to-backward work or that chronic level of stress that we might get if we are never taking breaks, never taking breaks or taking very few breaks, as we mentioned can lead to burnout and stress, so by taking those breaks overall we will get that better job satisfaction.

Speaker 1

And also it means that we can do things like potentially socialise with our colleagues or socialise with people around us, which we also know is really really good for our mental health. It also helps us to get a break potentially from screen time.

Screen time we know can be something that impacts on our mental health and also our physical health as well, having that access to a lot of screen, a lot of bright lights that can have a negative impact on our physical and mental health.

It can have an impact on our ability to sleep well too, so that’s really really important to be able to take some time away from the screen and that’s why when we’re taking those shorter breaks or any kind of mental health break, it can be helpful to think about that. What are the kind of things that we want to do?

And it’s not to say that we shouldn’t be doing things like watch TV or go on social media, we’re all going to do those things and sometimes they can be nice ways to take breaks, but it’s just worth bearing in mind that it’s also good to take a break away from those in order to improve our mental health and our physical health as well.

So we’ll come back to thinking about what are the kind of helpful things we can do during these mental health breaks, but just bearing in mind that reducing the screen time there is also going to be a good way to boost our mental health and our physical health. We also know that taking mental health breaks help to improve memory and improve performance.

So we sometimes might worry if we take breaks we won’t get things done or we won’t perform to as much of a standard as we want to, we might not get that promotion and work, they’re the things that we might worry about when it comes to taking breaks.

But actually what we know from research is that taking breaks during the day, taking frequent breaks even if they’re just those shorter ones helps to improve our productivity, helps to improve our memory and our performance.

Because when we take those breaks we’re getting a chance to re-energize, to reduce our stresses a little bit, to maybe do something that boosts our endorphins and endorphins are the things that make us feel good and make us feel kind of happy and productive. So taking breaks actually is the thing that makes us perform better in workplaces and also outside of workplaces in relationships etc.

It just improves our capacity to engage with different things when we take those breaks. So it can seem counterintuitive to say taking a break will make you work better, but we do know that that is the case. Taking those breaks will actually help you to perform better.

Obviously there’s always times where we maybe have to work a little bit longer or we have a deadline coming up or something like that, but all of us can take the time to fit in those two or three minute breaks dotted out during the day and we can all find time to do that.

Speaker 1

So even if that’s all we’re able to do for that kind of short time period and then it might be once that deadline has passed we can take some of those longer breaks as well, but making sure we’re definitely at least taking shorter breaks during the day even when we’re under pressure because as we said when you’re under pressure you will perform better if you give yourself the chance of the time to take those breaks for your mental health.

Speaker 2

Self-awareness is a core component of optimizing health and well-being. Gaining clarity around personal needs, preferences and boundaries helps to manage daily stressors and life demands. Whether financial, relational, work-based or environmental, it is vital to recognize how common stressors can impact their physical and mental health if left unchecked.

Oftentimes, self-care can gravitate into becoming another to-do list. Even people burdened by a sense of need to do specific things in order to be healthy. By gaining an understanding of the benefits of a self-care routine, you will see positive steps in all areas of your life. Zevo Health has a number of self-care trainings that will assist your organization maximize well-being.

Contact us today to start your workplace well-being journey. www.zevohealth.com Self-awareness is a core component of optimizing health and well-being. Gaining clarity around personal needs, preferences and boundaries helps to manage daily stressors and life demands.

Whether financial, relational, work-based or environmental, it is vital to recognize how common stressors can impact our physical and mental health if left unchecked. Oftentimes, self-care can gravitate into becoming another to-do list, leaving people burdened by a sense of needing to do specific things in order to be healthy.

By gaining an understanding of the benefits of a self-care routine, you will see positive steps in all areas of your life. Zevo Health has a number of self-care trainings that will assist your organization maximize well-being. Contact us today to start your workplace well-being journey. www.zevohealth.com

Speaker 1

Okay, so we’ve talked about why breaks for our mental health is important and hopefully you’re all bought into the idea that it’s really important to take these breaks and then it’s going to be really helpful for you, for your productivity, for your mental health, for your job satisfaction. So what are ideas that we can use for mental health breaks?

So we’ve already talked about the concept that these can be maybe shorter breaks or potentially longer breaks like our lunch break or after work. So what we want to make sure, the most important thing with these breaks for our mental health is to make sure that it’s something that is engaging, has our attention and is in some ways meaningful to us.

So these breaks for our mental health are really taking us out of the stress and the demands that might be on us and that might be coming from work, from relationships. So it’s not about taking a 20-minute break where we’re maybe sat in front of the TV but we’re still thinking about stress or we’re still thinking about work.

We want to make sure it’s a break or an activity that helps to bring our mind away from those stresses. And even if that’s only two minutes, five minutes, even if it’s a bit of a longer break, 30 minutes, an hour, trying to do something engaging that will take our attention away from the thing that’s causing us stress. So how can we do this? Obviously, we’re all different.

We all have things that are meaningful to us that we enjoy doing. So these are just some ideas of things that we have found can be a helpful way to draw our attention away from stress, anxiety, worry and more into the present moment. So one thing that can be really helpful is laughter. So laughing is a really, really good way to reduce stress, to take a break.

And we all know that humour can be a helpful way to just kind of manage in difficult situations. So maybe talking to a friend who makes you laugh, watching a comedian online for a few minutes. You can even try this idea of kind of fake laughter. So forcing yourself to laugh and that will usually trigger a laughter response.

And sometimes that can be a really helpful way to boost our endorphins, make us a little bit happier and help us to kind of re-energise. What’s also really helpful is to be outside if possible. Now, this is going to be more achievable when we have a bit of a longer break. But spending time outside in nature is a really, really good for your mental health.

We know that the effects of nature are actually separate to those that we get from exercise. So what that means is we all know that exercise and movement is really beneficial for our mental health. But what we know as well is on top of that, nature has an added benefit and added bonus for us.

And there is something called ecotherapy where we take people outside in order to boost their mental health and wellbeing because we know that being in nature is a really helpful way to feel better and reduce stress.

Speaker 1

So if you can, during the week, during the day, take some time outside, even if it’s only five or ten minutes, outside in green spaces, if possible, this is going to be a really helpful way to reduce stress and take that break for your mental health. If that’s not possible and if it’s for a shorter break, even looking at nature can be helpful.

So even playing a video maybe on YouTube of some sort of beautiful natural scene or looking at pictures of nature that you’ve taken in the past or it painting of nature, we know that this can actually have the same effect. This can help reduce stress and boost our mood.

So just remembering that idea of nature is a really helpful way to engage our attention and boost our mood and therefore an excellent idea for our mental health. Another thing that can be helpful is stretching. You know, when we’re sat for long periods of time, our muscles can become tight. We can notice tension in our muscles.

So taking a couple of minutes to stretch, again, this can be quite an engaging activity and it can feel quite nice for us to feel those muscles relax and stretch out. So you can do some kind of, you know, stretching like you would have done, maybe back when you did PE back in the day, or like you do now for post your pre-exercise.

You can also do something like purposely tensing and then releasing more muscles. And that’s a really, really nice way to get a bit of relief from tension. So an example of that is if you take your shoulders and you lift them all the way up to your ears and then just hold that tension there for five seconds, so five, four, three, two, one, then release your shoulders down.

And you should notice a nice relief in any tension that you’ve had there. So you can do that all over your body, that purposely tensing your muscles and releasing them. And that helps us to release any stress or tension that might have built up in our body. And that’s a really nice way to get a kind of mental health break. And it also helps us to more physically relax as well.

We know, of course, that moving our bodies movement is a really, really good way to boost endorphins, which are things that make us happy. We know movement gives us more energy. We know it’s great for our concentration, our prefrontal cortex and our brain loves movement. So if on those longer breaks, maybe lunch breaks or after work, we can increase our movement.

That’s gonna be a helpful way as well to benefit our mental health and really take a break from the stresses and the anxieties that we might be experiencing. Because again, exercise and movement, we tend to be more focused on our bodies and the activity than focused on our thoughts. And that’s really, really important when it comes to taking that mental health break. So how do we go about doing this?

We know that taking mental health breaks is really, really good for our mental health.

Speaker 1

We have some ideas of the things that we might even do and that they hopefully should be engaging and meaningful to us. But it can be easier said than done. Sometimes we have very good intentions when it comes to taking breaks and then we get wrapped up in our work where other things get in the way.

And that’s totally understandable given the worlds we live in and the fact that we’re human beings and that tends to happen. So one really helpful way to implement these shorter breaks is something called the 25-5 rule. So this rule is when we work productively for 25 minutes and then we take a five minute break. And then that starts again, we work for 25 minutes and then we take a five minute break.

So how you can do this is you can set a timer for 25 minutes and then a timer for five minutes. So during those 25 minutes we’re working and then during those five minutes we’re engaging in those shorter breaks. So looking at nature, taking a stretch, laughter, making a couple of team chatting to someone. Then we go back to our work for 25 minutes.

So doing it this way is quite a structured way to do it but setting an alarm can give us that nudge and that reminder that it’s time to take a break. For some people this is a very effective way to help them to work productively during that window of time and then take their short break.

Obviously as we go through the day we wanna be taking a bit of a longer break maybe at lunchtime, but this is a helpful way for the time kind of around before and after lunch. There is a nice app called the Forest app and that is a app developed for this idea of working and then taking breaks. And every time you do this work break cycle you get to grow a tree.

So it’s just nice visioning and it’s a helpful way for us to think about taking those breaks and also to remind ourselves to take those breaks as well. So that’s one way we can go about implementing more breaks.

Another thing that we can do, if we’re thinking maybe about longer breaks, so we’re trying to implement things like maybe moving a little bit more, spending time outside, but maybe we’re struggling with motivation, maybe we’re tired from the working day. So something we can use is this idea of the five minute rule.

So as human beings, we often wait for motivation to kick in before we do something, but usually what we find is that motivation actually comes after action. So if we can do an activity for even just five minutes, usually what we find is our motivation will then kick in.

So for example, if I want to, let’s say, go for a walk twice a week as a break for my mental health to get out in nature, but I’m struggling with my motivation, I can just encourage myself to do that for literally five minutes. What I’ll usually find is after those five minutes, I might be able to walk a little bit further or a little bit longer. My motivation will probably increase.

I’ll start to notice the release of some of those endorphins.

Speaker 1

But if not, I’ve done something for five minutes. I’ve taken a five minute break for my mental health. So I’ve already achieved something. It’s an easy rule to remember, we can all usually find five minutes to do something. So this is another way to help us to implement some of those breaks for our mental health and that we can gradually build up over time.

The final tip I’m going to give you in relation to these mental health breaks is how to bring yourself back to the present moment. Often we take these breaks, but our mind might still be stuck in the stresses or anxieties of the day, whether that’s work or relationships or anything else that we might be feeling worried or stressed about.

So what we can do when we’re taking these breaks is remind ourselves to be more present in here and now. When we’re worried, we’re usually thinking about the future. When we’re sad, we’re usually thinking about the past. And what we know is if we can be present, this can have a really powerful impact on our mental health. It can help us to feel better and it can help to reduce stress as well.

So when we’re taking these mental health breaks, whether they are being in nature, stretching, taking a break with a colleague, et cetera, what we want to do is try to be more present in the moment. And how we can do this is we can use our five senses. So our sense, the way this works, this task is called five, four, three, two, one task.

So what you can do when you’re having these mental health breaks, if you notice your mind is wandering, if you notice that you’re thinking about the future or worrying or feeling stressed, try to look around you first of all at five things you can see. Then what are four things you can feel? Then what are three things you can hear? Then what are two things you can smell?

And finally, what is one thing that you can taste? So this five, four, three, two, one task helps us to be descriptive about what we can see, what we can feel, what we can hear. And using our senses in this way helps to pull ourselves and our thoughts back into the present moment. Our mind will naturally wander while we’re doing this.

But we just remind ourselves to bring it back to the activity that we’re doing. Also, because we’re focusing on our senses and what we can hear and what we can smell and what we can see, this actually starts to take up room in our mind. So there’s less room for those distracting, stressful, or anxiety provoking thoughts.

So this is a really, really great task that we can use when we’re outside, when we’re cooking, when we’re in nature, and really just bring our attention to what’s around us by using our senses. Some of us will find certain senses are stronger than others, and we can always change around the pattern of this five, four, three, two, one task.

So for example, if you were cooking, it might be five things you can smell, four things you can taste. But practicing this five, four, three, two, one grounding task helps to bring us into the here and now.

Speaker 1

And that helps to reduce stress and makes our mental health break more effective and more meaningful. So just a thing to add to that, if you are taking these breaks, but you’re struggling to actually get a break in your mind, try that grounding exercise to really bring you back to the here and now and really get the most out of those breaks that you’re taking for your mental health.

Okay, so we’ve come to the end of today’s podcast on taking breaks for your mental health. I really, really hope that was helpful and that there’s some good stuff there for you to take away. I’ve been Shana Farrell, and thank you so much for listening to another episode of Zevo Talks.