How to Protect Your Mental Health During Social Distancing
Allow yourself to feel your emotions during these tricky times, but don’t let yourself stay hostage to your feelings
(let them pass like clouds)
Yesterday I went on an IG live with my friend Hanna Thedros to do a Mental Health check-in with our communities. We talked about our new realities due to the outbreak of #TheRona and the fact that we’re in this strange place right now with a lot of sudden changes that can and will affect our mental health in one way or another.
This is the time for all us to really look at our wellness strategies and habits, and if for some reason you don’t have them established yet, then this is a good time to start! This new reality that we find ourselves in is not going away anytime soon from the looks of it, so this is the time to set yourself up to win, mentally, physically and emotionally. This is the time to start creating a power base within yourself to make sure that you can cope with this situation long term and be helpful to others, because we’re going to need each other.
Here are some of the tips that we shared on the IG live yesterday that I hope might be helpful to you:
Move your body
My local gym is closed, I’m totally thrown out of my habits of going to the gym 4-5 times a week, but that’s not an excuse to not move my body! So I go for 2 daily walks now, morning and afternoon and do some at home stretching and body weight workouts, I adapt. Move your body anyway that you can, walk up and down stairs, dance, go for walks, do some stretching, go on Youtube and find some instructional fitness videos, get creative and get on Facetime and exercise with your friends. However you do it, it is going to contribute to your wellbeing, so make sure you move your body daily and through doing this you’ll also be moving stale and anxious energy through your body, it must go! Don’t hold on to that stuff!
Protect your peace
We all need to know what’s going right now, but what we don’t need is a minute by minute or play by play update of #CoroCoro aka the Corona virus pandemic. At this point, you know what it is and you know what you need to do as an individual to help flatten the curve (wash your hands and stay away from people)!. Don’t feed into watching the news excessively, its only going to make you feel bad and likely to increase anxious thoughts. A lot of us are are feeling like we’re free-falling right now, so do take care and be mindful of over-consuming news that isn’t really going to help your mental health. Also seek out news sources that help to give you context around this situation instead of just feeding you click-bait headlines that will put a strain on your mental health. I do 1 daily roundup of news per day and try to watch longer segments that help provide better context, I’m also religiously watching the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, aka the “Daily Social Distancing Show” which is keeping me informed and giving me a lot of much needed laughter right now (laughter is good for the soul, dont hold out on yourselves).
Eat your fruits and veggies
This is the time to load on live high vibrational foods that help you stay hydrated, that are full of vitamins and minerals. So load up on your fruits and try to eat as many raw vegetables as possible (smoothies, salads). These foods will nourish you, they will make you feel light especially in these times that we are moving less than usual, so keep it light and fresh nutrition wise. Drink a lot of water, staying hydrated will help us also to think clearer and feel better in general (be kind to your brain). Try to stay away from processed foods, sugar and empty calorie foods that are just going to give you a quick lift but then you’ll crash mood wise and also feel heavy, so you want to stay away from these type of foods to keep a consistent good mood.
Sleep
Make sure you sleep and rest appropriately, anything below 7 hours can actually be harmful to your health. We mentioned the book The Happy Pill on our IG live, its an essential book in a moment like this which outlines the importance of sleep and rest for our general wellbeing, nuff said, read the book!
Process your emotions
Allow yourself to feel your emotions during these tricky times, but don’t let yourself stay hostage to your feelings (let them pass like clouds). I would really encourage you to find a way to process your feelings in a positive and productive way. So basically, allow your feelings to move through you, they are temporary and you have the power to change your state regardless of whatever feeling is present in the moment. Two things that are important to keep in mind are to stay grounded in gratitude for what you have (!) and try to put your situation into context of whats happening for other people globally. The #Rona pandemic has taken all of us by surprise but this is a good moment to realise that we’re going to need each-other to see this through and we’re going to need to help each-other long after the outbreak is over.
Use this time
What we have right now is time, its so important that we use this time well. Make active choices about how you are using your time, own it! We don’t all need to spend this time being productive from a career perspective but we need to make an active choice about how we’re spending this time. Time is not given, its an incredible opportunity, use it to get work done, to learn a new language, to connect with family, to rest, to de-clutter, to strategise for the future, to strengthen your relationships. Just make sure that you’re choosing what to do with this time instead of just letting it pass by, taking charge of what’s within your sphere of influence is going to help with your mental through creating some certainty in this quite uncertain situation.
Conclusion
To thrive in this new reality that we’re finding ourselves in make sure you move your body regularly, protect your peace through being picky about how much information/news you consume, eat high energy foods that are going keep you vibrating higher! Get adequate sleep so that you’re functioning at your optimal level. Process your emotions but don’t stay in them for too long, let them pass like clouds, and most importantly use this time in a meaningful way for yourself, your family and your community, do something good with this time, its valuable.
Hope these tips have been helpful, hang in there, we’re all in this together. Drop a comment below or send an email if you have any questions. Here to help.
XO
Ruthie