How to keep mental health and maintain balance in family life at the time of social distancing and quarantine. Tips from psychologists
1. Schedule your day. Our brain loves routines. They help us navigate through everyday life. Changes confuse our brain. That is why keeping even a part of your morning habits, you will be more focused on your objectives and able to control your attention. Remember intermitting your productive work every 25 minutes by ten-minute breaks. Some of us can relax playing with their cat, walking a dog, cooking lunch or cleaning the floor. Maybe, you would like to listen to a podcast, an audio book, music or to do ten push-ups.
2. Find time for self-care. Everyone has their own habits of body care, and it always helped us look great and feel well. Do not forget your routine daily procedures. Change your pyjamas into comfortable home clothes. Remember bright colours improve your mood and keep your spirits positive.
3. Organize your own workspace. Ask your family not to disturb you over a period of time when you are “in the office”.
4. Spend extra time with your children. The times are hard for them as well. The usual course of the day is upset. Children never needed your care and love so much as now. Keep alarming conversations out of earshot from children, they see and hear everything and easily perceive an emotional state of adults.
5. Respect personal boundaries of each family member. All the family are together for a long time and everyone can wish to retreat, stay absolutely alone for a moment and focus on himself/herself. Try to move with grace through blowups, avoid conflicts, cut corners. Everyone has a hard time, and all of us truly do our best.
6. Accept everything about yourself. You stay home for the global reasons, stop feeling guilty. Under such conditions it is not so easy to make the right decisions. Nobody is perfect. Do not give yourself great tasks to solve. What happened is the whole world got stuck in this emergency situation, and the humanity does its best to cope with challenges.
7. Do not speak all the time about the pandemic, coronavirus and lockdown. Mass media sometimes show facts upside down seeking for sensations and choosing most dramatic events which cause emotional storms, and they are not always positive. Find the sources that provide short trustworthy information, and spend max. 30 minutes two or three times a day to get to know the current situation.
8. Reach out to others. Call your friends, relatives, colleagues. Communicate via messengers, social media or video tools. Why not to discuss some news, share opinions, impressions, ask for advice. Help you elderly relatives in the ways you can.
9. Find some time to move. Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy body is a way to a healthy mind. Try to do a home workout daily not less than 30 minutes. Choose basic exercises which you can perform without leaving your flat, such as push-ups, bends, squats, twists. It also can be yoga, easy warm-up, aerobics, advanced gymnastics or hide-and-seek. Our body needs motion, particularly now, in confinement, when we miss our former busy and dynamic life. There are plenty of various free workout video classes to fit any taste.
10. Benefit from the situation. Did you want to read a book, but had no time? Maybe, today is a perfect day to find your old paints, a guitar or a building set? To make a family tree or to study online? To watch the TV series so popular last year? To solve finally a jigsaw puzzle, reread Harry Potter books, sew a patchwork bedspread or play Monopoly? Sculpt in clay, draw, dance, sing, play musical instruments! There are no boundaries to your imagination! Museums invite us to virtual guided tours, theatres let us enjoy the live streaming of performances, educational resources are eager to help us in learning something new. Make your dreams a reality!
11. Keep up your sense of humour. Humour is a great tool to adapt to reality. A smile intensifies internal processes in our body, which favourably influences our brain and mind. Watch comedies, amusing videos, stand-up shows. Read funny books. Find positive moments in each day. Laugh and be healthy!
Remember that one day all the lockdowns will pass. They are temporary. The life will improve in one way or another, and some day, new opportunities will open up for meeting people, communicating, attending concerts and other exciting performances. We will be able to travel again. And these thoughts about the future can be enjoyable and delightful already today. Stay healthy!
The text is compiled by Natalia Mazarskaya from the following internet sources: [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5].
