How to Set Mental Health Goals

Mental health journeys can be chaotic, with fits and starts, and sometimes come to your life unbidden.  However, whenever we embark on any process of change, it is useful to ask the question: when will we know we have reached our destination?

Setting mental health goals, and specific markers to help us check in along the way, is especially useful when attempting to change a behavior.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) teaches us that not all thoughts are helpful, and emotions do not necessarily need to be elevated as truth.  Our behavior is the direct result of our thoughts and emotions, and sometimes does not lead to healthy outcomes.  

In CBT, we start by developing SMART goals. SMART goals are: 

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

Specific goals help us make desired outcomes more concrete.  A common error for goal setting is to make goals too general, therefore creating an ambiguous path towards completion.  A measurable goal helps us recognize progress, which is vital for continuing motivation.  Achievable goals are best because we want to set ourselves up to succeed rather than risk a shame-spiral.  We want goals to be relevant to our core values, and internally coherent with our experience.  Finally, even though mental health journeys last over the lifetime, time-bound goals for mental health are essential. 

We can push through a difficult road when we know that it is, on some level, temporary.  

If you would like to formulate mental health goals with an experienced therapist, yoga practitioner, mindfulness coach, or exposure coach, please reach out to Kairos today.