Working through lockdown - look after your mental wellbeing
Some people have sadly lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus. For many others that still have jobs, the prospect of continuing to work from home stretches further and further into the future.
Yes, some people prefer it ….. no stressful commute, more time to do other things, less spending on lunches and lattes. But for others, working from home can be distracting, lonely and draining. People admit to being constantly distracted by activity outside or by jobs inside - putting on loads of washing, for example, or scrolling social media. Every day is the same as the next, they say: stuck at home, which is also work. For those that are also juggling home schooling, it becomes even harder.
Many of them are experiencing the neurological consequences of this continued lockdown and the new way of working - chronic low grade stress, triggered by Covid 19. It sends our bodies into overdrive, creating cortisol and adrenaline to keep us ‘safe’. The energy our brains need for concentration, memory, collaboration and creativity is diverted to the more immediate need to ‘survive’.
This stress could be a key contributor to what experts are already warning will be mental health meltdown in the UK. In a survey by Delloites, 38% of workers said that lockdown has had a negative impact on their wellbeing. They are missing social interaction (45%), collaboration (31%) and networking (25%).
We don’t yet know when all this will go back to a better kind of normal, so what simple steps can we all take to manage our mental wellbeing while working from home? Whether you are isolating, homeschooling, leading a team or working remotely, or all of these, the following tips will help you manage lockdown more positively.
Stay Connected
Make time to stay in touch with friends and family, even when it’s not possible to see people in person. Yes, we can Zoom, or Houseparty or FaceTime if the WiFi can cope, but even better, pick up the phone and call. Schedule in catch ups, whether work related or not.
While many people are at home a lot more and time isn’t as scarce as it maybe was, it’s a great opportunity to catch up with people who we’ve been meaning to ring, or who we’ve lost touch with. A call can make your day as well as theirs - and it helps to get some respite from the barrage of bad news, reduces uncertainty and reminds us of the value of friendship.
When you check in with others, make sure you check in on how they’re feeling, listen carefully. And by opening up about how you’re feeling and the challenges you’re facing, you might help someone manage their own challenges.
Sleep
Getting enough sleep is vital. We all know the feeling of being sleep deprived, how you stagger through the day in a fog and can’t really focus on anything. Sleep is the absolute bedrock of our wellbeing during lockdown. You’re no good to you or anyone else without it.
Avoid working in your bedroom. If you must, then designate a working area. It's difficult to establish boundaries when we're spending all of our time in the same space.
Get up and go to bed at the same time each day. This regulates our circadian rhythms and helps us sleep, which has been a struggle for many people in lockdown. It’s tempting to stay up late watching Netflix, but it doesn’t help!
It’s good to plan in 30 minutes for a wind-down before you go to bed. Avoid screens or at the very least, reduce blue light exposure on your device, avoid work, lower the lighting. A warm bath can help - try adding magnesium salts, which reduce the levels of cortisol, which is the stress hormone.
If you find it difficult to drop off, try listening to a sleep story. During lockdown 2.0, I downloaded the ‘Calm’ app. My favourite sleep stories are narrated by Harry Styles, Idris Elba and Steven Fry. I was sceptical, but they really work!
With sleep routines sorted, establish set meal times and try not to let your kitchen turn into a hotel where everyone is constantly eating at different times of the day - that just creates stress!
Once you are sorted with sleeping and eating, you can look at fine tuning your daily routine to add in exercise, down time and time for activities you enjoy.
Structure within your working day
Structure is essential. It's never too late to establish better ways of working. Two-way dialogue with colleagues and setting clear expectations is really important. Agreeing what work needs to be delivered.- rather than just the expectation of being present - will make us less inclined to remain glued to our screens, ensuring our instant messaging availability status is green.
Spend a few minutes designing your day in advance. Get up at a set time, have breakfast, use your would-be commute time to read, exercise or listen to music, and then commence your day.
You shouldn't feel the need to be online constantly - no one used to spend the entire eight-hour day at their desks in the office. Breaks will make you more productive in the long run. Similarly, shutting down at the end of the day is important - close your lid, avoid looking at emails, and batten down the hatches for another evening in lockdown.
When the boundaries between work and home are blurred, it's more important than ever to avoid drifting into checking emails and continuing duties late into the evening. Try using a note in your email signature to let people know you respect their own working hours.
Keep moving
Gyms are closed and we’re only allowed out for exercise once a day, but it’s important to keep active. Go for a walk or exercise in the home if you can. There are so many online classes from HIIT to yoga, there’s no excuse, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. If you want to keep active, you can.
Connect with nature
Nature is restorative. It helps improve our overall mood, reducing stress and anxiety levels and makes us feel connected and happier. Whether you are in cities, towns or the countryside, getting outside and being mindful is good for us.
Notice and observe what you see. A great, mindful model is to ‘look for the rainbow’ - something in the natural world violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. Be creative!
Another tip is to focus on the beauty of something really small, say a leaf or an ice crystal, for a minute. Then focus on something large, like the skyline, or a bank of trees for another full minute. As well as connecting, psychologists say that this practice helps us deal with anxiety by reframing our short term anxiety to a bigger picture perspective.
Cut yourself some slack
We don’t need to be perfect! Sometimes just getting through the day is enough. So what if other people have done lots of self development, learnt Spanish, or whatever - that’s great for them but can make other people feel inadequate. It really doesn’t matter. What’s important is that we feel that we are in control of our world and feeling well.
We need to remind ourselves that it’s OK to have low days and to experience negative emotions from time to time. We experience them because they are a natural part of life. So, in lockdown, observe and notice how you feel and accept the feelings - it’s OK to have them.
Be kind to yourself - mistakes happen, we lose our temper, we snap and can be unreasonable. Just learn from these things and move on. Give yourself credit for small wins and get through the day if that’s how you feel.
Do something you love
Schedule in time each week to do something you love. Not necessarily every day, but something regular that’s just for you. It can be as simple as reading, playing music, listening to a Podcast or even just having a peaceful uninterrupted bath!
There are so many podcasts out there, it’s sometimes overwhelming to know where to start. To get going, I can highly recommend ‘Feel Better, Live More;’ with Dr Rangan Chattertjee. He is so easy to listen to and lots of easy, actionable tips for wellbeing.
Being creative is extra good, it diverts our thinking from constant news feeds and bad news, and creates positive messaging in our brains.
Reframe negative thoughts and worries
We are bombarded by distressing news, images and negativity and it’s very easy to get drawn into a negative spiral of worry, anxiety and negative thinking. Sometimes, feelings of anxiety can be constant, overwhelming and out of proportion to the situation. From a neuroscientific perspective, we are hard-wired to feel fear as our strongest emotion to ensure survival - so we need to be aware of that and have strategies to enable us to approach life more positively. Gratitude practice is one example of this.
There are things we can do to reframe unhelpful thoughts - firstly, recognise the thought, catch it as you’re thinking it. Then challenge it, take a moment to reflect on the thought. Then change it - think of a different way of thinking about the same issue. Obviously some things are completely outside of our control and we can’t change the course of the pandemic, for example. But we can change our response to things.
As an example (perhaps trivial but it was real to me) : at the beginning of lockdown, I was getting overwhelmed by the amount of laundry I suddenly found myself doing. It was causing me a level of stress which was out of proportion to the actual issue. But I stopped myself and reframed the issue - the reason for the laundry was that all my children were home and safe and well, something to be celebrated, not stressed over.
If you feel that worries are overwhelming you and taking over your day, set yourself a specific ‘worry time’ ….. go through your concerns, maybe write them down in a worry journal, but then let them go, knowing that you’ve acknowledged them and given them airtime.
And finally ….
I have included tips and strategies which I hope will help. Embrace the idea of embedding microhabits. You don’t need to change everything all at once - it’s better to change 10 things by 1% and stick at it, than change one thing by 10% and be unable to keep it going.
Keep these points at front of mind, they will really help!
hold on to the bigger picture and remember it will end
try to stick to a routine
cultivate a sense of achievement and take meaning from small tasks
nurture your relationships and keep connected
accept that some relationships will need to be adapted and negotiated
