4 DIY Therapeutic Activities For May

This article offers a variety of unique activities you can do in between actual therapy sessions to get you out of your comfort zone and improve your mental health, whether you crave sunshine or yearn to revisit a past artistic endeavor. By engaging with your life in these ways throughout the week, you can solidify the progress made during therapy sessions and accelerate your journey towards mental well-being. These activities can act as prompts for self-reflection, helping you gain deeper insights into your thoughts, feelings, and motivations and helping you pinpoint specific things that might be helpful to discuss with your therapist during your next session.

Do Something In St. Petersburg

What You’ll Need: 

• Transportation. 
• Willingness to go outside. 

How To Do It: Step one: pick a place outdoors. Step two: go there. Seriously, it’s that simple. Saint Petersburg is a great city, with lots of outdoor destinations to choose from. Whether you’re going to the beach, the park, or the pier, you never have to be in shortage of sunshine or fresh air. The key to this activity is truly just the act of leaving your house and going outside. 

What You Can Gain: Going outside can have serious benefits for your mental health. Even putting aside what you stand to gain by feeling the sun on your skin, smelling nature in the air, and hearing the birds sing their song, going outside gives you an opportunity to enter a new environment. No matter how comfortable we make the interior of our home, if we never leave, it can begin to feel like a gilded cage. So what’s the antidote for all that? Going outside!

“Pretty flowers need the sun / this applies to everyone.”

Jack Shaindlin, Let’s Go Sunning

Art Therapy For Taurus Season

What You’ll Need: 

• Art supplies (whatever you have on hand) 
• An art piece you’ve already made.

How To Do It: Take five minutes to just look at your previously made piece of art. Think about what it means, what you like about it, and what you’d do differently if you made it again. Then, keeping all that in mind, try making your art piece again from scratch. Maybe you don’t have the same materials. Maybe you can’t recreate certain aspects of the old piece. That’s all part of the process. Just give it your best shot, then look at your two pieces side by side. What’s the same? What’s different? Think about yourself and the place you were in when you made the original piece. How are you the same? How are you different?

What You Can Gain: In life, we don’t always get a chance for a do-over, but in art, we can try to make the same piece as many times as we want. Some artists actually make a career out of that. Taurus season is a time for stabilization, getting your bearings, and returning to your old routines with new eyes. 

“April is the cruelest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain” 

T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Writing Hate Mail For Mother’s Day And Not Sending It

What You’ll Need: 

• Pen & paper. 
• Intense feelings about your mother (comes bundled with a difficult childhood)

How To Do It: For this activity, you’ll be writing a letter to your mom. The content will vary wildly based on your own style, emotions, and experiences, but there are certain lynchpins that you should include to guide your writing and make it feel like a real letter even though you won’t be sending it. 

• Start it off with a “Dear Mom”. That’s classic. We like classic. If that’s too warm for you, feel free to substitute with the first name on their birth certificate for added bite.
• Write about the ways that it was hard to be her child. Why do you think it was the way it was? How could she have done differently?
• Write about the opportunities and skills you had because she was your mom. What (if anything) did she sacrifice for you? What did you learn from her teaching? What did you learn by her negative example?
• Write about the ways that you wish your relationship with your mother could change. If you could snap your fingers and instantly fix your relationship with your mom, what would be different? 

What You Can Gain: Each Mother’s Day, it seems that everyone takes to social media to brag about how great their mom is. This cavalcade of performative positivity can be incredibly triggering if your relationship with your parents is anything less than perfect. It’s easy to find outlets of expression when you feel positively about your parents and childhood, but finding a way to channel our uncomfortable or difficult feelings is another story. Writing this letter gives you a constructive (and private!) avenue to express your feelings. 

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”

Oscar Wilde

Celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month By Supporting Your Loved Ones

What You’ll Need: 

• A cell phone.
• A loved one who’s having a difficult time. 

How To Do It: The ways we can support those we love are as varied and diverse as those very same people. You know them better than I do, so I leave the specifics up to your discretion, but here are a few ideas to get you started: 

• Text a loved one you haven’t spoken with in a few weeks. Express interest in their lives. Talk about your shared interests. 
• Compliment someone you admire. Talk about the things you wish you could learn from them. Shine a light of honest admiration on them. 
• Check in with people. Ask about what they’re going through. Offer your help if you can, but sometimes listening is help enough.

What You Can Gain: Many a speech, compliment, and advertisement have often mentioned an elusive but highly sought after concept referred to as “the gift that keeps on giving”. In truth, such a gift is one that cannot be bought or kept, only performed and cultivated like the keeping of a campfire when we give selflessly and unconditionally to others.

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”

John Bunyan

 If you feel stuck on your healing journey, working with a therapist can help. Based on your needs, our intake specialist will help you get matched up with your perfect therapist. Click here to schedule a consultation.

Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.