Top tips for looking after your mental health during lockdown.

Top tips for looking after your mental health during lockdown.

Here we go again

We’re becoming old hats at the ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS. Save lives.’ routine but that doesn’t it make it any easier. In fact for many, it gets harder and harder to cope with the restrictions and they are left feeling more and more frustrated and out of control. So here are some top tips to keep your mental health on top form for lockdown and beyond…

1. Keep in touch.

As easy as it might be to shut yourself away and long for the days when you could go out and socialise with friends, take the kids on a day out or go to the pub for a meal, it is not helpful.

The reality is that you can still keep in touch with all of those people, just in a different way. Change the way you are looking at. How great is it that we live in an age where we can see people online and chat? Even a decade ago that simply wouldn’t have been possible!

So instead of having a gloomy “isn’t everything awful” try this tip…

TIP: think about the situation from someone else’s point of view that is completely different from yours. What would they be doing to keep in touch? Why might they be enjoying lockdown and feeling closer to people than ever before?

2. Get off the sofa!

Do something. Anything!

We can all get sucked into a Netflix binge but doing this all day every day isn’t going to do your mental fitness any good at all.

Make plans (yes, you still can as long as they are inline with reality). Do that DIY job, put some time aside to enjoy your hobby, go for a walk, do some housework, plan an online quiz night with your mates.

It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you keep your body and mind busy.

TIP: get up in the morning and write down what kind of day you want – productive? Positive? Social? When you have decided on this, write down 3 things that you are going to do to make it happen.

3. Keep some perspective

Lockdown isn’t exactly the time of our lives but take a little time to think about some of the benefits.

Whether it be spending more time with the children, getting in touch with someone you haven’t seen for ages, or whether it has been getting fitter.

Look for the small positives in EVERY situation (yes, even the bad ones) and recognise that there is good all around you every day if you just spend less time looking for all the negatives.

TIP: write down 3 things that have been positive at the end of every day. It can be getting a job done, paying a bill, doing the Joe Wicks workout. However small, write it down. Spend a minute thinking about WHY it was positive and what you can take away from the experience.

4. Limit your social media

Or at least keep a check on what you are looking at and the amount of time you are on it.

Social media is absolutely full of ‘mood hoovers’. People who are trying to convince you of fake news, or trying to back up unhelpful beliefs about current situations. Whether that be Covid, Brexit, the government, the weather… what is the benefit to you?

Absolutely nothing. Most things on social media are designed for the SOLE PURPOSE of making you spend time looking at them. It doesn’t matter if they are real. It doesn’t matter if they are relevant. Find something better, more constructive and more wholesome to do with your time.

TIP: Set a time limit for your social media activity a day. STICK TO IT! Also, remember, just because you’ve read it, doesn’t make it real. At least take the time to fact check information you are reading.

5. Have helpful thoughts.

If you find yourself spiralling into thoughts about how rubbish life is at the moment, how you wish this this, how you just want to that… STOP.

Ask yourself how helpful these thoughts are. Are they helpful to you in any way?

If not, change them for something more helpful, more in perspective and more empowering.

TIP: trying to be positive and optimistic ISN’T the answer. Quite often when we try to be positive or optimistic we lose sight of the reality of situations and end up feeling disappointed and more helpless. Try swapping unhelpful thoughts to something simply more helpful or more true.

Getting support

Quite often it can feel like there is nothing that will help or that you hope it will all just go away on it’s own but if you have been struggling with these thoughts and feelings for a while now, it may be time to ask for a bit of support.

Here at Chanya, we offer a fresh, new and very successful approach to help you overcome the symptoms that have been troubling you.

Whether your symptoms are recent , or long term. Or whether you think they are not worth getting help for, or so bad you think nothing will work then our courses CAN help.

Why not book a free relaxed 30 minute chat to find out a little more and see what our courses can do for you.

info@thinkfertility.co.uk

07849 786177

or send a message to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/chanya.life