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Emotional support animals offer more than comfort—they help you build structure, encourage self-care, and support better habits through consistent daily routines. From promoting exercise and sleep to enhancing mindfulness and social interaction, an ESA can be a powerful ally in improving your mental well-being.
A structured daily routine is so important for your mental health and overall well-being. Studies show that routines are associated with increased feelings of confidence, comfort, safety, and control. A structured daily routine reduces any uncertainty about your day. So, it is no surprise that when you have a healthy routine in place, your mental health issues are reduced.
If you want to improve your mental health and well-being by implementing a daily routine, do you know that having an emotional support animal (ESA) can help? ESAs are animals that provide therapeutic benefits to people who have mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression.
An ESA offers comfort and compassion, can enhance your daily life, and can help you stick to a healthy routine. For example, if you have a dog as an ESA, you might have a routine of walking them in the morning, feeding them at noon, and playing fetch with them in the evening.
Let’s discuss how an ESA can help you establish a routine and how routines benefit your mental health. This article will review the ten top ways an emotional support animal helps you set a healthy routine.
Emotional support animals play a vital role in helping individuals create and maintain healthy daily routines that support mental health. By encouraging physical activity, time outside, scheduled meals, and consistent sleep patterns, ESAs help structure your day in meaningful ways. The companionship and non-judgmental presence they offer also provide emotional stability and reduce feelings of isolation. These benefits make ESAs an excellent companion for anyone looking to develop better habits and improve their overall well-being.
Emotional support animals can promote daily exercise and encourage time outdoors, both of which are excellent additions to any routine.
Your ESA can help you add healthy physical exercise to your daily routine. In fact, dog ownership is associated with higher levels of physical activity. Caring for an ESA, especially dogs, requires going for walks and playtime.
When you take your ESA outside for a walk, you get daily exercise. This is a great addition to your healthy routine because regular exercise has been shown to improve mood and reduce anxiety. Exercise is good for your mental health, and you and your ESA can get outside and exercise together, which helps you both feel better.
Regular exercise has also been found to relieve stress, help regulate negative emotions, and even promote resilience.
ESAs will also encourage you to get outside and experience nature. Spending time outdoors, even just for 20 to 30 minutes, helps to reduce cortisol levels, which, when elevated, fuel stress.
Even if you live in an urban area, you can still spend time outside with your ESA. Consider taking them to the park or down by the riverbank for half an hour. Spending time in nature is a great addition to your daily routine, and it can also help your mental health.
ESAs can promote more consistent sleep schedules. Your ESA helps you to keep a structured schedule. This means you tend to feed, care for, and play with your ESA at certain times of the day, creating a predictable routine. By taking care of your ESA on a set schedule, you begin to take care of your own needs on a schedule, too. Structured schedules lead to more consistent sleep patterns.
Sleep is crucial for emotional regulation and brain restoration. Humans need around eight hours of sleep to ensure their overall health. When you spend time with your ESA regularly, you tend to be more active, and therefore, you'll have better sleep quality.
Another way that an ESA can help you set a healthy routine is that they can help you connect more with others.
Walking or playing outside with your ESA can lead to more social interactions. When you go outside and take a walk with your ESA, you are more likely to run into someone else out and about with their pet. Or people may just find it easy to strike up a conversation with you because you have a dog.
ESAs are known to facilitate social interactions. This study found that simply being outdoors with a dog increased social interactions with strangers. Basically, being with a dog out in public is a catalyst for social interactions with others.
Humans are social creatures, and interacting with other pet owners or even just community members helps you feel good. Sometimes, just having your ESA with you can enhance these connections because it gives you a common interest to bond over.
Having an ESA can greatly reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation. The Human Animal Bond Research Institute’s (HARBI) recent pet questionnaire found that 80% of pet owners say their pet makes them feel less lonely.
But it's not just the presence of the animal that helps. If you have a healthy routine and take your animal out for a walk every day, you may meet and speak with several members of your community weekly. These interactions help to foster a sense of community and reduce feelings of isolation, even if you live alone. The social benefit of having an ESA can be a clear reason to consider having one to improve your mental health and routine.
ESAs provide responsibility, a sense of purpose, and structured daily tasks that can all contribute to a healthy routine.
Your ESA can provide you with a sense of purpose. Having a sense of purpose helps your overall well-being as it gives your life direction. Taking care of an ESA and knowing that you are responsible for their livelihood can even encourage you to engage more in your own self-care. Having a sense of purpose can add more meaning to your life, which can improve your mental health, too.
Routine activities such as feeding, grooming, or exercising with your ESA can help create structure and routine in your daily life. Having a structured routine is good for your mental health, as you know what to expect and do each day. If you have children, you likely understand the importance of structure and routine for their happiness and well-being. It’s no surprise that these elements are beneficial for you, too!
Emotional support animals offer you emotional bonding and can be a non-judgmental presence in your daily life.
If you have kids or have ever seen a child and a mother who share a special emotional bond, you know how good it feels to have a unique, emotional bond. ESAs offer a similar emotional bonding experience. The compassion and companionship that your ESA offers you helps you feel joy and emotional stability. This strong human-animal bond is one of the main reasons why an ESA works so well for people with mental health issues. Sharing a loving bond with your ESA helps you feel better and allows them to be equally receptive to your love and care.
Animals are non-judgmental creatures and will always give you unconditional love. Sometimes, having your ESA with you feels so good because they offer a loving and non-judgmental presence.
People who are dealing with issues like anxiety or depression greatly appreciate this kind of support. When you find emotions and mood regulation challenging, you can always count on nonjudgmental love and compassion from your ESA. Even the most loving family and friends are not going to be nonjudgmental all of the time, so you know that you can count on your ESA to fulfill this role in your life.
Having an ESA, especially a dog, helps you spend more time outdoors. Being outdoors exposes you to fresh air and sunlight, which can do wonders for your mental health. Let's look at a couple of theories as to why spending time in nature is so good for your mental health.
Attention Restoration Theory
The attention restoration theory states that spending time in nature helps to reduce mental fatigue. For example, going outside with your ESA and playing toss in the park can help reduce feelings of mental exhaustion.
The Stress Reduction Theory
Stress reduction theory explains how spending time in nature can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps the body relax and snap out of the constant fight-or-flight state that many people in modern society live in. Being outside in nature helps reduce stress, and playing outside with your ESA is a great way to enjoy fresh air and sunlight.
Speaking of the benefits of being out in the sun, it helps your body produce vitamin D and serotonin. Vitamin D and serotonin can boost your mood and energy levels. So, it's a good idea to spend some time outside with your ESA and increase your vitamin D levels.
Mindfulness is one of the greatest skills you can learn that benefits your mental health, and ESAs can help you develop it! Mindfulness practices significantly reduce stress levels.
Mindfulness practices are good for your mental health because they help you learn to be grounded and more present. This type of mindfulness practice is called Present-Moment Awareness.
Animals are a perfect example of how to live mindfully. They live in the present all the time. They do not worry about paying the bills or how they may have upset their boss last week. They simply live in the here and now and face each day with wonder and curiosity. Interacting with your ESA helps you become more mindful and stay in the present moment.
ESAs can help you adopt better eating habits. One way that an ESA can help improve your nutritional habits is to encourage you to eat at consistent meal times each day. If you give your dog or other ESA breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you will be more likely to take a break and eat during these regular intervals as well.
Eating at consistent times each day with your ESA is a good way to ensure you do not skip any meals. Skipping meals or overeating can lead to stomach discomfort and digestion issues. To really feel good, it's good to eat consistently. No matter how busy your life gets, try to grab a bite to eat when you feed your ESA.
Taking care of your ESA can absolutely motivate you to care for yourself better. Instead of skipping breakfast, you may also want to grab a piece of toast when you feed your ESA in the morning.
When you properly care for and feed your ESA, you may feel more inclined to take better care of yourself. Self-care is vital to ensuring that you are able to give the appropriate amount of love to your ESA. They give you all that they have and help with your mental state, so it's only fitting that you should make sure that you are taking the best care of yourself to be there for them, too.
ESAs can help provide sensory stress relief. When you feel stressed, you can pet them, and it will help you feel better.
Petting a dog releases oxytocin, which is considered to be a "love hormone." Oxytocin helps you and your animal bond and also reduces stress.
Petting dogs can also reduce cortisol levels, which is one of the "stress" hormones. So the next time that you feel a little stressed out, you know that you can go cuddle up with your ESA, and just by touching them, you can relieve some of that stress.
Any animal lover knows that the presence of their animal is enough to cause them to feel calm and less stressed out. Just having your ESA in your home provides you with comfort. Whenever you feel anxious, sitting on the couch beside your ESA can help reduce those feelings.
Time management skills are essential for maintaining a healthy routine, and ESAs can help you learn to prioritize your time and schedule activities better.
Caring for an animal requires a lot of responsibility, but you also have to learn to balance your other responsibilities. Taking care of your ESA on a structured schedule can help you with time management skills. For example, you know that you need to adhere to a schedule with your animal’s care. By doing this, you can decide when to take on additional tasks and which ones you can simply put off until tomorrow.
It's important to create and follow a schedule for your ESA. This helps you prioritize their care while deciding when to tackle other tasks. By organizing your activities around your ESA, you'll improve your time management skills and ensure you finish your day-to-day responsibilities.
Create a schedule that prioritizes the needs of your ESA first. Then, you can delegate time to take care of any other tasks that you need done, too. With prioritization, it's possible to balance your ESA's care and the other important areas of your life.
There are many great reasons to get an emotional support animal. One really good reason is that your ESA can help you set a daily routine and ultimately benefit your mental health.
Having an ESA can bring structure and routine to your life by encouraging you to spend time outdoors, engage in exercise, and practice mindfulness. With an ESA by your side, you may also experience better sleep and enhanced time management skills. Having a healthy daily routine is so important for your mental, physical, and overall well-being, and your emotional support pet helps you set your routine and stick to it every day.
If you have an animal that supports your mental health and are interested in having it become your ESA, Pettable can help! We connect people with mental health professionals in their state to help them get their emotional support animal certified. We offer a money-back guarantee if you don't qualify, so there's no risk in trying. Take our survey to see if you qualify for an ESA today!
Alicia Ramella is a freelance writer specializing in mental health and wellness. She has been writing professionally for over three years in this space. Her work has been featured on reputable sites like WEBMD.com and many other health and wellness websites.
Alicia is also a life coach, a podcaster, and a nutrition nut with a background in psychology. She plays with her two children in her free time and enjoys music, gardening, and nature.
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