MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE
Hello
I found these wonderful wellness tips from a Psychologist in NYS with a
Psy.D. in the specialities of School and Clinical Psychology.
MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR
QUARANTINE
1. Stick to a routine. Go to sleep and wake up
at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for
work as well as self-care.
2. Dress for the social life you
want, not the social life you have. Get showered and
dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth. Take the time to do a
bath or a facial. Put on some bright colors. It is amazing how our
dress can impact our mood.
3. Get out at least once a day,
for at least thirty minutes. If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or
later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues. If you are high risk or
living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan. It is amazing how much
fresh air can do for spirits.
4. Find some time to move each
day, again daily for at least thirty minutes. If you don’t feel
comfortable going outside, there are many YouTube videos that offer free
movement classes, and if all else fails, turn on the music and have a dance
party!
5. Reach out to others, you
guessed it, at least once daily for thirty minutes. Try to do FaceTime,
Skype, phone calls, texting—connect with other people to seek and provide
support. Don’t forget to do this for your children as well. Set up virtual
playdates with friends daily via FaceTime, Facebook Messenger Kids, Zoom,
etc—your kids miss their friends, too!
6. Stay hydrated and eat
well. This one may seem obvious, but stress and eating often don’t mix well,
and we find ourselves over-indulging, forgetting to eat, and avoiding
food. Drink plenty of water, eat some good and nutritious foods, and
challenge yourself to learn how to cook something new!
7. Develop a self-care
toolkit. This can look different for everyone. A lot of successful
self-care strategies involve a sensory component (seven senses: touch, taste,
sight, hearing, smell, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (comforting
pressure). An idea for each: a soft blanket or stuffed animal, a hot chocolate, photos
of vacations, comforting music, lavender or eucalyptus oil, a small swing or
rocking chair, a weighted blanket. A journal, an
inspirational book, or a mandala coloring book is wonderful, bubbles to blow or
blowing watercolor on paper through a straw are visually appealing as well as
work on controlled breath. Mint gum, Listerine strips, ginger ale, frozen Starburst, ice packs,
and cold are also good for anxiety regulation. For children, it is great to
help them create a self-regulation comfort box (often a shoe-box or bin they
can decorate) that they can use on the ready for first-aid when
overwhelmed.
8. Spend extra time playing with
children. Children will rarely communicate how they are feeling, but will often
make a bid for attention and communication through play. Don’t be surprised to
see therapeutic themes of illness, doctor visits, and isolation play
through. Understand that play is cathartic and helpful for children—it is how
they process their world and problem solve, and there’s a lot they are seeing
and experiencing in the now.
9. Give everyone the benefit of
the doubt, and a wide berth. A lot of cooped up time can bring out the worst in everyone. Each person will have
moments when they will not be at their best. It is important to move
with grace through blowups, to not show up to every argument you are invited
to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements. Everyone is doing the
best they can to make it through this.
10. Everyone find their own
retreat space. Space is at a premium, particularly with city living. It is important that
people think through their own separate space for work and for
relaxation. For children, help them identify a place where they can go to retreat
when stressed. You can make this place cozy by using blankets, pillows, cushions,
scarves, beanbags, tents, and “forts”. It is good to know that
even when we are on top of each other, we have our own special place to go to
be alone.
11. Expect behavioral issues in
children, and respond gently. We are all struggling
with disruption in routine, none more than children, who rely on routines
constructed by others to make them feel safe and to know what comes next. Expect increased
anxiety, worries and fears, nightmares, difficulty separating or sleeping,
testing limits, and meltdowns. Do not introduce major behavioral plans or consequences at this
time—hold stable and focus on emotional connection.
12. Focus on safety and
attachment. We are going to be living for a bit with the unprecedented demand of
meeting all work deadlines, homeschooling children, running a sterile
household, and making a whole lot of entertainment in confinement. We can get wrapped up
in meeting expectations in all domains, but we must remember that these are
scary and unpredictable times for children. Focus on strengthening
the connection through time spent following their lead, through physical touch,
through play, through therapeutic books, and via verbal reassurances that you
will be there for them in this time.
13. Lower expectations and
practice radical self-acceptance. This idea is connected
with #12. We are doing too many things in this moment, under fear and
stress. This does not make a formula for excellence. Instead, give yourself
what psychologists call “radical self acceptance”: accepting everything about
yourself, your current situation, and your life without question, blame, or
pushback. You cannot fail at this—there is no roadmap, no precedent for this,
and we are all truly doing the best we can in an impossible
situation.
14. Limit social media and COVID
conversation, especially around children. One can find tons of
information on COVID-19 to consume, and it changes minute to minute. The information is
often sensationalized, negatively skewed, and alarmist. Find a few trusted
sources that you can check in with consistently, limit it to a few times a day,
and set a time limit for yourself on how much you consume (again 30 minutes
tops, 2-3 times daily). Keep news and alarming conversations out of earshot from children—they
see and hear everything, and can become very frightened by what they hear.
15. Notice the good in the
world, the helpers. There is a lot of scary, negative, and overwhelming information to
take in regarding this pandemic. There are also a ton of stories of people sacrificing, donating, and
supporting one another in miraculous ways. It is important to
counter-balance the heavy information with the hopeful information.
16. Help others. Find ways, big and
small, to give back to others. Support restaurants, offer to grocery shop, check in with elderly
neighbors, write psychological wellness tips for others—helping others gives us
a sense of agency when things seem out of control.
17. Find something you can
control, and control the heck out of it. In moments of big
uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world. Organize your
bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, group your
toys. It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.
18. Find a long-term project to
dive into. Now is the time to learn how to play the keyboard, put together a huge
jigsaw puzzle, start a 15 hour game of Risk, paint a picture, read the Harry
Potter series, binge watch an 8-season show, crochet a blanket, solve a Rubix
cube, or develop a new town in Animal Crossing. Find something that
will keep you busy, distracted, and engaged to take breaks from what is going
on in the outside world.
19. Engage in repetitive
movements and left-right movements. Research has shown that
repetitive movement (knitting, coloring, painting, clay sculpting, jump roping
etc) especially left-right movement (running, drumming, skating, hopping) can
be effective at self-soothing and maintaining self-regulation in moments of
distress.
20. Find an expressive art and
go for it. Our emotional brain is very receptive to the creative arts, and it is
a direct portal for release of feeling. Find something that is
creative (sculpting, drawing, dancing, music, singing, playing) and give it
your all. See how relieved you can feel. It is a very effective
way of helping kids to emote and communicate as well!
21. Find lightness and humor in
each day. There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason. Counterbalance this
heaviness with something funny each day: cat videos on YouTube, a stand-up show
on Netflix, a funny movie—we all need a little comedic relief in our day, every
day.
22. Reach out for help—your team
is there for you. If you have a therapist or psychiatrist, they are available to you,
even at a distance. Keep up your medications and your therapy sessions the best you
can. If
you are having difficulty coping, seek out help for the first time. There are mental health
people on the ready to help you through this crisis. Your children’s
teachers and related service providers will do anything within their power to
help, especially for those parents tasked with the difficult task of being a
whole treatment team to their child with special challenges. Seek support groups of fellow
home-schoolers, parents, and neighbors to feel connected. There is help and
support out there, any time of the day—although we are physically distant, we
can always connect virtually.
23. “Chunk” your quarantine,
take it moment by moment. We have no road map for this. We don’t know what this
will look like in 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month from now. Often, when I work with
patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues, I suggest that they
engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever bite-sized piece of
a challenge that feels manageable. Whether that be 5
minutes, a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a
time stamp for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry. Take each chunk one at
a time, and move through stress in pieces.
24. Remind yourself daily that
this is temporary. It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end. It is terrifying to
think of the road stretching ahead of us. Please take time to
remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on
for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will
pass. We will return to feeling free, safe, busy, and connected in the days
ahead.
25. Find the lesson. This whole crisis can
seem sad, senseless, and at times, avoidable. When psychologists work
with trauma, a key feature to helping someone work through said trauma is to
help them find their agency, the potential positive outcomes they can effect,
the meaning and construction that can come out of destruction. What can each of us
learn here, in big and small ways, from this crisis? What needs to change in
ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world?
Rosetta Racco , Psychotherapist
(QP), B.A., E.C.E.
Individual and Family Therapist
Email: rosegardenwellness@gmail.com
Just Be You.
" If you've met one person with autism, then you've met one person with autism." Stephen Shore
#covid-19#mentalhealthawareness#therapy#psychotherapy
#children#adolescents#adults#parenting#autism
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