Content:
7 solutions How to stay Calm in isolation.
Self-check sheet
Cleaning
Maintaining yourself in order
Tactility and smells
Call loved ones
Vitamins and delicious healthy food
Sounds around
7 solutions: How to stay calm in isolation.
Isolation, lifestyle changes, worrying about your own health - these and other consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic lead to anxiety. Here's how to deal with your nerves in quarantine.
A large number of publications have been devoted to global anxiety against the backdrop of the pandemic - for example, a longread in Time magazine. At the same time, we need to calm down most often at home and in the company of ourselves: many self-isolating ones are loners, and the rules of ethical communication with others during quarantine are still being formulated. Here are tools to help you calm down and relieve anxiety while isolating at home and in privacy.
Self-check sheet
Anxiety in a global sense is associated with a lack of a sense of control over the surrounding reality. And at a time when we cannot control the global financial crisis, our own future, or information flow, the most accessible area of control in self-isolation is our own body and environment. In situations of discomfort, psychologists advise using the simplest check-list to check your physical and emotional state in a situation when you may feel the ground is slipping from under your feet. This sheet includes the simplest states and reactions associated with the senses. Here are some basic questions to ask yourself if you experience discomfort:
Did I get enough sleep?
Do I have a pain?
Am I thirsty?
Am I hungry? How long has it been since I have eaten?
(If it's time to eat) What do I want to eat?
Is the indoor air fresh?
Is it too cold or is it too hot for me?
Is there some noise distracting me?
Is my posture comfortable?
Is any part of my body tired, does it require movement?
Does a smell or color annoy me?
Is it clean around me?
You can add to this list what is important for you, and return to it every time you have unwanted thoughts or want to check social networks once again, engage in unnecessary communication and be distracted by something that will shift the important focus from you to a third party situation.
2. Cleaning
As you know, cleaning is an excellent remedy for anxiety, restoring a sense of control over your life and the established order, especially when your area of influence is limited only by your home for a long time. The concept of cleanliness is individual: someone needs surfaces that are rubbed to a shine, someone needs enough things removed from view.
Self-isolation is the right time to optimize your home cleaning experience and arrive at the gold standard of cleanliness that suits you. You can take apart your home library, seasonal items and kitchen utensils, part with excess and rearrange items for easy access.
Another method is to choose the same time (preferably in the morning) for your daily small house cleaning, when you can put things in their places. Do the dishes, water the plants, clean the floors, put things in their places, collect the laundry, make a shopping list - set aside 15 minutes a day for this. Accompany the cleaning with your favorite music or podcast if cleaning isn't your favorite pastime.
3. Maintaining yourself in order
Keeping your body up and comfortable is needed for all people equally. Through attention to our own body (this includes sports, and breathing practices, and sleep), we again return to understanding ourselves: self-massage, warm-up, stretching, bathing and beauty procedures equally help to reunite with the body.
Create a personalized set of self-care rituals that will boost your energy. A bath or shower at the beginning or end of the day, skin and hair care (cream and lip balm are needed not only for women), a short warm-up at a convenient time, maintaining hygiene, cleanliness of Clothes and home space - this is a maximum of half an hour a day, which will help to distract from worrying about the outside world and re-establish contact with yourself.
4. Tactility and smells
We also often underestimate the comfort of the body in contact with the surrounding space: we do not dress for the season, we do not pay due attention to the tactile properties of the environment in which we live, we inattentively select the materials of the objects that surround us. Pets, touching people, tactile sensations from food are also included in the list of things on which our comfort and peace depend.
Analyze the world around you by touch. Do you like the dishes from which you eat. A towel that you use to dry yourself every day. The bed in which you sleep. Clothes in which you spend time. The gadgets you touch. Surfaces that you touch. Make sure that you are comfortable with home clothes and clothes for sleeping, smells in each of the rooms, your own perfume. The scents of shower gel and laundry detergent can change the feeling of your morning shower and clothes. Do not neglect touch and smell - more often than not, we do not realize the importance of these senses.
5. Call loved ones
Isolation creates the illusion of total loneliness, where new rules of movement stop us on the way to other people. If you have to hold meetings in the format of video conferencing and conduct business by correspondence, it is difficult to persuade yourself to switch to a virtual mode of communication with loved ones. Meanwhile, a video call to a loved one is an effective remedy for anxiety.
Agree that you will call each other during the day or week (depending on which frequency suits you), and break the hourly sessions into short calls, leave time for spontaneous communication sessions and do not neglect them for the sake of other matters.
6. Vitamins and delicious healthy food
Almost everyone is engaged in self-isolation cooking: the task remains not to overeat, while fighting stress, and to maintain the right habits.
In order not to choke on "very healthy" produce that you do not enjoy, explore a full range of fresh products and find interesting recipes. Celery and carrots exist not only in the form of vegetable sticks, cucumbers make light salads, and home-cooked kimchi with spices can replace crispy chips.
The main thing is to remain realistic and not to spend too much free time on cooking, so that the habit of cooking quickly and healthy is preserved in a situation when life returns to its usual course, and again there is not enough time for food and meditation.
7. Sound
Your sound environment is another area that we don't pay enough attention to at normal times. Street noise, aggressive videos, and loud music all contribute to anxiety. Self-isolation is a good time to deal with this problem. Try to find comfortable background music: a non-aggressive radio station, podcasts, and streams that will calm you down. Hear what sounds are set on alarms and gadgets. Turn off all notifications when eating, exercising, and sleeping.
Enjoy the silence, try earplugs. Many psychologists advise to surround yourself with the sounds of nature to calm you down: the noise of rain, rivers, the crackling of firewood are good for focusing at work and going to bed. Self-isolation also frees up time to listen to your favorite music without distraction or look for new inspiring albums or radio stations with which you can explore not only spring, but also summer.
