06
May
2020
We all know how difficult it is to say goodbye to people we love and even more so when we are not able to touch them and have how idea how long it will be before we meet again. This is exactly what our adolescent students at Beau Soleil, for whom peers are so important, dealt with as the spread of COVID-19 meant they needed to return to their home countries. This is also what people across the world are dealing with as they experience personal and professional loss and grief, and await for their lives to go back to some “normalcy”.
Our lives have been turned upside down and it can be hard to accept when we look out the window and see a world that looks normal. We try to digest that social contact is dangerous, but we can't see the danger. “Surreal” is what many people say… The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging our psyches and the feeling that we have no control over the situation upsets us.
The good news is that there are some simple ways for us to look after mental health, working on our resilience and improving our ability to recover from adversity or change. Our levels of resilience can be depleted and some of the ways of ensuring we maintain good levels of resilience include;
- identifying and accepting our emotions linked to this crisis (sadness, anger, frustration, emptiness, anxiety)
- limiting our consumption of COVID media coverage
- establishing routines in our lives
- maintaining physical activity
- finding ways to distract ourselves
- connecting with others
Maintaining resiliency is like having a good immune system. The “healthier” you are, the stronger it is. So when we start to feel depressed, tired, anxious, we need to step back and try to replenish our energies and restore our capacity to be resilient through focusing on what we can do, not what we can’t. Here is a short list for you to think about, to take back the control in your life and to maintain a healthy level of resilience.
- Your beliefs
- Your attitude
- Your thoughts
- Your perspective
- How honest you are
- Who your friends are
- What books you read
- How often you exercise
- The type of food you eat
- How many risks you take
- How kind you are to others
- How you interpret situations
- How kind you are to yourself
- How often you say “I love you”
- How often you say “I thank you”
- How you express your feelings
- Whether or not you ask for help
- How often you practice gratitude
- How many times you smile today
- The amount of effort you put forth
- How you spend and invest your money
- How much time you spend worrying
- How often you think about the past
- Whether or not you judge other people
- Whether or not you try after the setback
- How much you appreciate the things you have