Hey amigos, Have you ever took special care of your mental health? Mental health is as much important like physical health. Its important to make our mental health a priority. In this curfew, many of us are under stress and lacking our mental health.
I have one more question.
Have you ever noticed the reply you get from your peers when you ask them how are you doing? Most of them would have mindlessly replied to you they are fine. Now I am posing the same question to you. Even before I can notice you answering me, you are fine, leaving a gentle smile behind. But the truth is we aren’t fine. None of us is fine now.
Humanity is sharing a crisis now. The crisis has changed everything. It has changed our routine. It has changed our lifestyle. It has reversed our economy. We, humans, are now facing more uncertainty. It’s a scary time that we couldn’t even hug our loved ones. We are not even practised to this. It’s entirely different to us, which leads to mental stress.
Mental health is the background of everything. We usually put in a lot of effort to manage our physical health. Some even invest to take proper care of their physical health. But many of us don’t have the habit of exercising to maintain proper mental health. Our bodies and minds are always coordinated.
The body can affect the mental state, and of course, the mind can affect our physical health. So, it’s important how well we manage both physical and mental health. We should learn to control our body and mind before it takes control of us.
I will certainly help myself by helping you to manage your mental stress during this curfew. Right now, we all want to run away from COVID. But we can’t. COVID is something like a threat hanging all time around. Though we can’t run away, we can make things easy.
Good Relaxation
Relaxation is the very primary way of getting out of our mental stress. We all need a break. Even it is a curfew, we are working from home. Every single individual has his/her duties and responsibilities that have to be carried out in some or other way to run his/her household. We should give a break to turn off our anxious state.
Empower relaxation to suppress anxiety
There are various approaches to achieve good relaxation. We have to pull ourselves from our daily routine and try out special things like dancing, singing and even laughing. WFH and LFH scenarios are normally enjoyable ones. But, this lockdown has poured in a lot of stress.
Well, I’ll tell you about two approaches that pull you out of stress.
Passive approach
A passive approach is something like hearing music, reading books or laying down for a while. It’s a kind of natural relaxation we often do. This kind of relaxation gradually takes us into sleep. Our mind seems to be completely relaxed in passive approach methods. But we wouldn’t have paid attention to what relaxation actually feels like.
Active approach
An active approach is a mindful approach to relaxation. It is much more active that involves us in enjoyable learning. An active approach needs your conscious mind to be aware of relaxation and feel it. Learning to play keyboard, dancing, cooking are some ways of active approaches. As we get more and more intimate with what relaxation feels like, we will actively involve ourselves in active approaches.
A balance between both these two approaches gives us good mental health.
News- A kind of stress feeder
The next thing that drags our minds into stress is news. No, I am not speaking about the news from which we gain much knowledge. Though we are aware of what’s happening around us in this world, we are also being mentally affected through the news in time like this.
This pandemic situation has caused many of us to get addicted to the news. Most of you would agree on it. Right?
Our brain feels the hungriness for news when it can’t predict the future with past events. Based on today’s scenario we really want to know the current health issues and steps taken by the government. Even the ones who were not showing eagerness in watching the news are now having an eye on it.
Even though news gives us much information, it is dangerous because it also continually reminds us of the lying threat. Whenever we turn off channels we can notice newsreaders Latha Venkatesan, Karthigai selvan, Nirmala and Rangaraj Pandey always warning us. Without our knowing, our anxiety system gets kicked up whenever we are exposing ourselves to the threatening news.
So yeah, watch the news. But we need to be careful and mindful of how we consume the news. I agree, we are not exposed to news the full day. But the threatening news remains aside in our brain and pokes us. It’s more visible now. Even after relaxing lockdown measures, educated people fear to step out. This fear lies inside us only because of the information’s and news we are being exposed to. But this precaution is necessary. It’s necessary to gain only the information that we need and flush out the rest. Pull your mind somewhere else after watching the news and get into other distractions that might help u remain cool.
We are now been caged. So powerful distracters inside our home help us get rid of such mental stress. Find things that you enjoy watching and thinking about.
Social connections
“Social Distancing”, I would bet you that now there is no soul unaware of this word in this entire world. Even trendy future moms would be naming their babies like “social distance Singh”.
“Practice physical distancing, not social distancing”
As the phrase suggests what we need to practice is to be physically apart from people but not socially. We have strong social networks today that can cope up with our mental health during this curfew. We have our basic needs like food and shelter. Thank god for we are not one among the migrants but have your prayers reserved for them.
Even though our basic needs are satisfied, we are living inside the walls. Regular interactions with our peers are what we are missing now. After basic and security needs, we search for social relationships. There is a kind of stress most of us are now experiencing. We need people around us. We need our friends, family and our loved ones near us. We are now in a situation where we can’t run for their needs. We can’t help them in an emergency now.
Social networks are helping us somehow to get rid of our missings. Now, we are relying on social networks to build our social connections. Physical distancing with social connectivity during this curfew is our biggest backbone and support. Till curfew vanishes, connect and share the love with your friends and family through our social platforms. Make love and spread happiness. A talk and virtual hug can maintain our mental state.
We have to wait for the warmth we are going to get after actually getting connected with our loved ones. That’s it, without more seriousness but with more care, we have to overcome this curfew.
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