6 Preventative Mental Health Practices That Will Keep You Out of Crisis

The Shift

Preventative Self-Care

Before I became a therapist, I spent years as a personal trainer, movement specialist, and holistic health coach, which positioned me as both participant and observer in the shifting wellness trends. 

The tides have turned in the health space, away from aggressive fitness routines toward sustainable and restorative practices that focus on longevity.

This shift emerged as a direct response to mass-scale burnout. Hustle culture's relentless demands collided with our biological limitations. The pandemic offered a brief intermission from our productivity-focused nature, but as we've shuffled back into old patterns, anxiety, depression, and stress-related illness have spiked dramatically.

People are starving for robust internal reserves that don't exist. 

We've turned outside our culture toward the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and indigenous healing practices, desperate for something to give us an excuse to slow down. Luckily, these approaches are being "legitimized" by longevity research, neuroscience, and epigenetics. If science backs it, it must be worth considering, right?

But the same culture that produced our epidemic of isolation and burnout now promises to cure it through more sophisticated forms of self-optimization.

In some ways, I'm noticing a positive trend toward preventive care. We are no longer content with our medical system's reactive approach to health and healing. We don't want to wait for a crisis to occur before taking action. We want to monitor and get ahead of potential problems.

More and more people are seeking out regular screenings, genetic testing, and microbiome analysis. They are using wearables (Oura, Whoop, Apple Watch) to track everything from vital signs to sleep scores to mood analysis. We are seeking biohacking protocols and ways to reduce toxins in our environment. AI algorithms digest this information and spit out recommendations tailored to your unique biological fingerprint.

Despite our technological sophistication, I can't help but notice how radically detached we still are from ourselves.

This tension got me thinking more about therapy, which remains stubbornly attached to the reactive model of healthcare. 

People come to therapy when things are falling apart, not when they're thriving. We wait for the crisis, then spend months or years trying to excavate whatever went wrong.

You wouldn't wait until your car breaks down to change the oil. You wouldn't ignore your physical fitness until you're hospitalized. Yet somehow we've decided that mental and emotional health operate according to different rules, that psychological well-being is something you address only after it's already compromised.

This isn't to say I believe weekly therapy is necessary for everyone, especially not indefinitely. The model of perpetual psychological tinkering and deep self-examination can turn into its own form of narcissistic paralysis.

But I also recognize that mental health, like physical health, requires daily attention.

The question becomes: What would preventative mental health actually look like? Not optimization for its own sake, not another set of metrics to track, but genuine practices that build the internal reserves we're all so desperately seeking.

Below are a few practices I've found that make a significant difference, but it’s worth noting, part of the reason people don't engage in these practices is their lack of measurement and metrics. 

As a culture, we largely believe "if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." This extends to emotional and relational experiences.

How do you quantify "I didn't have a panic attack because I recognized my somatic warning signs early"? How do you measure the crisis that didn't happen because you maintained better boundaries? What's the data point for working on emotional literacy, then not exploding on your colleague when you're under stress?

Success in preventative mental health often looks like... nothing happening. 

It's exactly what makes it so hard to sell in a culture obsessed with visible progress and dramatic transformations.

Nevertheless, here are a few areas that I've found make a huge impact:

Emotional Literacy

The big idea: Name your emotions with precision—"apathetic" versus "bad," "disrespected and provoked" rather than "mad." If you're out of practice or new to this, emotional shorthand is the perfect place to start, but the goal is understanding emotional nuance.

Why it matters: Research shows people who are skilled at emotional differentiation regulate better, have a lower stress response, and are less likely to engage in destructive coping mechanisms.

Emotional Tolerance

The big idea: Develop the capacity to stay with difficult emotions instead of escaping them through avoidance, suppression, or panic. Emotions are like waves, which naturally peak and subside if you let them.

Why it matters: Mental health struggles stem less from having hard emotions and more from frantically avoiding them. Research has found that increasing distress tolerance reduces impulsivity and dramatically improves long-term well-being.

Somatic Fluency

The big idea: Your body broadcasts information before your mind catches up. That's why it's important to be able to interpret bodily warning signs. So consider the muscle tension, gut sensations, and chest tightness, for what they might be trying to tell you.

Why it matters: Antonio Damasio's groundbreaking research on somatic markers showed that these bodily cues actively guide our emotional and moral decision-making. Noticing and translating these messages can help you gain clarity and help you make choices from a centered, grounded place. 

Energy Management

The big idea: Treat your nervous system like the finite resource it is. This means saying no to commitments that drain you, limiting news consumption when it overwhelms your system, and recognizing that being available to everyone means being truly present for no one, especially yourself. 

Why it matters: Chronic stress creates "allostatic load"—the cumulative damage of chronic stress that leads to physical, mental, and relational breakdown.

Cognitive Training

The big idea: Train your mind like you train your body—for strength and flexibility. Practices like mindfulness meditation, strategic journaling, and continuous learning help strengthen neural pathways related to attention control and emotional regulation.

Why it matters: Cognitive rigidity, the inability to adapt thinking to new information or situations, is associated with mental health issues. Mental habits like rumination, self-criticism, and over-distraction actually shrink cognitive flexibility over time. This means consciously building alternatives when you recognize you've slipped into an unhelpful thought pattern.

Relational Attunement

The big idea: Build high-quality connections through authentic communication, presence, and healthy boundaries. Cultivate connections that see your full humanity, not just your professional utility.

Why it matters: Harvard's 85-year study found that close relationships predict health better than wealth, and a 2017 meta-analysis revealed that social isolation has the same mortality risk as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Connection is a protective factor against loneliness and stress.

The Essentials

Your Weekly Toolkit

TO HELP WITH EMOTIONAL LITERACY

Chip Conley created “Emotional Equations”. He translated the cognitive processes that dictate our emotional responses into simplified formulas to help you become fluent in the language of your emotions.

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This has already been posted in this section, but in case you missed it or have never seen it. The Feeling Wheel is a tool that helps people identify and articulate a wide range of emotions by visually organizing them from core feelings to more nuanced variations. I also like this chart that combines feelings and sensations.

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TO HELP WITH SOMATIC FLUENCY

This is one of the coolest graphics I’ve seen for detecting emotions in your body. The body has a way of telling us what it needs. Improving our ability to recognize and name which emotions are present for us, particularly when they are difficult emotions, can help us to take better care of ourselves and each other. This was created by Abby Vanmuijen.

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TO HELP WITH COGNITIVE TRAINING

Dr. Ramani Suryakantham Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and retired professor, talks about psychological flexibility in a 50-second digestible clip on Jay Shetty’s podcast. Below is a little worksheet that can help you get started on this work. It is a bit basic, but nevertheless, a place to start.

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