Mental Health Awareness Month!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month! 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and as we have been posting, discussing, and telling our partners we want to celebrate and promote ways to better mental health of our clients, employees, friends, family, and entire community. We will create a list below of the ways you can engage with Northstar EAP to better your own mental health starting today!

Consider journaling! Whether you use a notebook you already own or would like a journal made for this specific use. We are promoting the use of our newly created Therapy Journal! We recently announced a product launch in collaboration with therapy milk.

Northstar EAP Counselors at times have clients use journaling as a technique during their sessions. There is no right or wrong way to keep a therapeutic journal. The following tips might help you to get started:

• Create a routine of your journaling habits

• Many people begin journaling with the best intentions, but find that the habit is difficult to establish. Scheduling time in advance is one way to enhance your commitment to journaling.

• For example, you might schedule that every day between 5 and 5:15 p.m., you'll write your journal entry.

• Find somewhere quiet to write

• Find somewhere quiet to sit and write, where you won't be disturbed by other people or alerts on your phone.

Here are some prompts for your journaling, to help get your creative and healing juices flowing. A few questions and statements to consider when you are starting out:

1. What are your five favorite qualities about yourself?

2. Write a letter to someone who has had a positive impact on your life.

3. List out three of the best compliments you've ever received.

4. Write down five positive things you'd like to remember the next time you're in a bad mood or spot.

5. List 10 things that make you smile, no matter what.

We have talked about our Northstar Resource Portal in other posts. For the employees that have access to the Northstar Resource Portal, log in and explore! This members only self-service portal has thousands of articles, videos, webinars, and tools to explore.Life is busy and we don't always have time to sit down and talk with a counselor.

Gain access to information on topics such as:

• Financial & Legal

• Child Care & Education

• Eldercare

• Health & Wellness

• Career & Military

• Everyday Living and more…

For employees who access Northstar Resource Portal in partnership with Northstar EAP in the month of May or June, will be entered to win one of five Amazon gift cards we are giving away to those accessing the portal! Create your login today and win at improving your mental health and more. (This will be a highly confidential process unless the Employee gives us permission to share their information when winners are notified in July 2022.)

Another way to improve your mental health starting today is to text with Tess!

Begin your path to learning self-care and addressing issues and barriers to a healthy work/life balance with help from Tess.

Missed days, miscommunication, errors at the office, issues with follow-up, sloppy work, mistakes being made: these are all symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, work-related conflict, traumatic events, and relationship issues spilling into and onto company time and causing implications on your personal life. Get help from Tess today. Click here to start texting with her right now and seek the help you need from your smartphone and gain skills, tips, and tricks along with simply having someone to talk to.

If you need more ideas and ways to create a more mentally healthy workplace, contact Northstar EAP. We can walk you through quick wins and long term strategies that will help improve your people and your entire organization.