Civil unrest, pandemics, and other crises that force people to remain inside their homes for their safety can be stressful enough to cause breakdowns and mental health problems. When not addressed, these issues can bring a person down and lead to worst-case scenarios that could affect not just the person involved, but family members as well.
If you’re among the many people currently staying at home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, you’d do well heeding some tricks used by other equally affected individuals. Here are seven ways on how you can have peace during a crisis:
Step back
A crisis can overwhelm even the strongest persons, especially if they’re directly and severely affected by it. It’s also easy to let one’s emotion be the deciding factor on how one acts, feels, and thinks. On many occasions, this can lead to devastating missteps with far-reaching and catastrophic results.
As such, try your very best to take a few steps back to breathe and reflect on the possible consequences of your actions. By doing this, you can make better decisions based on logic and not on spur-of-the-moment emotions.
Have fun
Just because you’re in a crisis doesn’t mean you should wallow only in negative emotions and melancholy. Quite contrary, you should learn how to take things lightly at times and just try to have fun even while confined inside your home.
For this, you should invest in a home theater and entertainment system that would allow you to watch your favorite movies or series with your family. You should also have fun games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Walmart Bingo, Reverse Charades, and many others.
Establish and maintain a routine
When things around are falling into chaos, it can be hard to feel a sense of security due to the uncertainty of the situation. You can combat this by establishing and maintaining a routine in your household to achieve normalcy that could help your family feel secure.
Whether it involves scheduling movie nights during Fridays, gardening hours on Saturdays, and cookouts every Sunday, the idea is to do things predictably. This will give every family something to look forward to each day, thus making things look normal inside the household even if it’s a different picture everywhere else.
Learn quick stress relief techniques
Another critical crisis survival skill your family must learn is how to de-stress quickly. By learning and practicing quick stress relief techniques, family members can avoid suffering from anxiety attacks and mental health issues due to pent-up and unreleased ill emotions and thoughts.
Among the many stress relief techniques that you can do on the go include listening to meditative music, doing quick and light exercises, inhaling essential oils, and eating comfort food. Different folks have peculiar ways of getting their stress out, so you just have to do what works best for you.
Disconnect to connect
While it’s tempting to spend a big chunk of your waking hours scrolling through your news feed, it can only give you more reasons not to feel at peace in a crisis. Social media and websites may seem like excellent venues to stay updated with events around you but they can also be toxic sources of negative news.
You can counter this by doing periodic breaks from online news sites and social media feeds to get a breather from negativity. While you’re on your hiatus, you should turn in into the chance to reconnect with your old friends or relatives living far from you. Connecting with the people close to you can give you a much-needed sense of peace and security that would be indispensable in times of crisis.
Do a good deed, even remotely
Helping people, no matter how small the manner and magnitude may be, can work wonders for your mental and emotional well-being during a crisis. You can do it remotely, such as through donations to orphanages and other institutions that help people in need. If you have local organizations holding their community outreach programs, you can volunteer in whichever capacity you feel most comfortable, whether in terms of financial or man-hours.
Commune with nature
In Japan, they have a concept of ‘forest bathing,’ which they call shinrin-yoku. This practice of communing with nature by visiting forests is proven to have exceptional benefits to a person’s mental and emotional state. If you happen to live in or close to a mountainous area, you should try visiting it when you can to experience the calming effect that being close to nature brings.
Keeping your peace in the middle of troubling times may be hard, but it’s not impossible. With these tips, you can easily achieve it and find survival in a crisis easier.
