Self-Care on a Budget: 30 Affordable Ways to Prioritize Your Well-Being
Wondering how to have a self-care day? We’ve got you covered. Here are 30 ways to have a self-care day on a budget. Because taking care of yourself doesn’t have to break the bank. Many of these suggestions are completely free!
Go for a walk: Exercise helps with increasing levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in the brain, similar to medication.
Take a bath or a shower: Doing so can reduce stress, tension, anxiety, anger, hostility, and depression. It also improves one’s sense of cleanliness and confidence.
Practice mindfulness: There are so many health benefits to practicing mindfulness! First and foremost, it helps with relieving stress and anxiety. If you’re new to mindfulness or meditation, try just five minutes at a time. You don’t need a whole self-care day of meditation to practice mindfulness. Even just eating mindfully, savoring and paying attention to every bite, counts as a mindfulness practice.
Watch your favorite movie: Watching movies can help reduce stress, improve your mood, increase motivation, and increase empathy. Make a whole self-care day of it and have a movie marathon.
Watch your favorite TV show: Re-watching your favorite TV show helps with controlling emotions, therefore, making you feel safe in stressful times. Invite friends over to binge a new series and make it a self-care day with friends.
Journal: Journaling assists with controlling symptoms and improving mood. It can help you prioritize problems, address fears and concerns, monitor symptoms day-by-day (e.g. recognizing triggers and how to control them). It also provides the opportunity to engage in positive self-talk and identify negative thoughts and behaviors.
Read a book: Reading increases your critical thinking skills and creativity. A good book can make you experience a range of emotions from happiness to surprise to sadness, fear, and anger.
Listen to music: Listening to music may lessen the impact of depression and anxiety. Music improves your health by reducing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, decreasing cortisol levels (stress hormone), and increasing serotonin and endorphin levels (which boost mood). It can also increase the brain’s production of the hormone and neurotransmitter, dopamine.
Dance like there’s no tomorrow: Dancing releases endorphins, which increase feelings of pleasure and reduce pain. Endorphins also help reduce depression, anxiety, and improve your self-esteem.
Adult coloring books: Coloring books aren’t just for kids! Coloring can relax your brain and improve brain function, induce a meditative state, improve motor skills (especially the ones we don’t use when scrolling through social media). It also improves sleep and focus and reduces anxiety.
Give yourself a facial: Facials help with reducing tension in the face and neck muscles.They increase confidence and promote circulation.
Give yourself a mani/pedi: Pampering yourself relieves tension. When you get a mani/pedi or do one at home, you’ll feel more relaxed, joyful and less anxious.
Indulge in your favorite dessert: Desserts will elevate your mood. They contain sugar which causes your brain to release endorphins such as serotonin. Remember that this needs to be practiced in moderation (hello diabetes!)
Practice gratitude: Focusing on the good things in your life helps with reducing depression and lessening anxiety. A gratitude practice supports heart health, relieves stress, and improves sleep.
Take a nap: Research shows that the best nap length for adults is 26 minutes. Napping can reduce fatigue, increase alertness, improve your mood, relieve stress, and increase your performance (e.g.quicker reaction time and better memory.)
Have a staycation: Scheduling time away from daily responsibilities boosts mental and physical health. Staycations can help reduce depression, lower cortisol levels, and decrease job stress while increasing happiness and well-being. Rather than a self-care day, make it a whole self-care weekend.
Diffuse essential oils: It is believed that essential oils have stimulating or relaxing effects on the limbic system due to how memories of the scent have been stored in the brain. For example, lavender can help with fear, anxiety, stress, panic, and depression along with reducing nightmares, and sleep problems. Bergamot can help with relieving fear and anxiety. Ylang ylang and clary sage can assuage feelings of anger and rage. Frankincense, chamomile, and sandalwood can help relieve various symptoms of PTSD.*
*This is not meant to substitute medication.
Listen to a podcast: Depending on the topic, podcasts can help reduce stress and anxiety, improve listening skills, provide emotional support, and help you develop a new perspective on life.
Stretch: All types of stretches will improve blood flow to the brain and increase endorphins. It has also been shown that stretching increases serotonin levels, helping to stabilize our mood, reduce stress, and reduce depression and anxiety.
Sing at the top of your lungs to your favorite song: Singing provides a non-threatening way to express emotions, relieve stress, increase pain threshold, and improve mood.
Unplug from social media: Reducing time spent using social media and even deleting social media altogether provides great mental health benefits including reducing stress, improving sleep, increasing in-person connections, enhancing focus, increasing confidence, and decreasing feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
Get at least 8 hours of sleep: Sleeping 7-8 hours a night provides many benefits including lowering the risk for serious health problems like diabetes and heart disease. A good night’s sleep also increases performance and the ability to think clearly. Sleeping enough enhance energyand reduce anxiety, depression, and other mental health difficulties related to stress.
Light your favorite candle: Candles can help with improving mood, reducing stress, increasing concentration, reducing anxiety, promoting sleep, and creating a relaxing atmosphere.
Go to the beach: Being at the beach has shown to lower stress hormones and increase your ability to reboot and refocus your energy. Because it provides a soothing effect on the brain, a beach self-care day can promote relaxation and decrease anxiety.
Spend time in nature: Spending time in nature helps with anxiety and depression as it increases positive emotions including calmness, joy, creativity, and can facilitate concentration.
Write a letter to yourself: Writing a letter to your future self allows you to reflect on all the progress you’ve made in your life thus far! When you reflect on your accomplishments, you understand all the growth that has occurred while also identifying areas that still need work. Writing letters to yourself can help you cope with challenges, reflect, gain insight, and create a vision of your future.
Write out a list of things you love about yourself: Practicing self-love helps reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger, and loneliness. It can also increase your self- confidence and help you encourage and support yourself.
Call someone you love/talk to friends: Talking to individuals you love helps keep you grounded while increasing your sense of belonging, purpose, and security. Conversations with loved ones can offer relief from or act as a protective factor against depression and anxiety.
Establish boundaries: Say no when you feel stressed out. Setting boundaries can increase your overall well-being. It will help you increase self-esteem, clarify your values, enhance focus, avoid burnout, develop independence, and increase your sense of identity. If you struggle with boundary setting, read this blog post.
Cuddle with your pet: Interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of stress, lower blood pressure, reduce loneliness, increase social support, relieve depression, reduce anxiety, boost your mood, and promote a sense of well-being.
Bonus: Another self-care on a budget item is engaging in therapy. There are multiple mental health providers that accept insurance and out of network benefits. It is important to review whether you have met your deductible and if you have any responsibility (co-payment).
Whether you are ready to engage in therapy or are starting to seek information about the process to see if it fits into your self-care routine, the providers at Reflection Psychology are here to help you. Schedule a free consultation with one of our highly qualified providers and let’s start your healing journey together.
