Tips to Deal with Mental Breakdown during Lockdown

People these days are becoming aware about the importance of mental health. Lockdown and home quarantine is a period where we are able to give enough rest to our body on one hand but on the other hand we are stressed mentally. Our physical activities of daily living have come to a standstill, such as, travelling to work and to market for shopping. But our sedentary lifestyle has not made our thoughts sedentary. There are many thoughts entering our mind and these thoughts comprise of negative and positive memories. Ultimately, the negative thoughts start affecting your mental health.

Psychologists have conducted surveys on mental health affect due to lockdown. And most of the surveys reveal that during lockdown, people tend to get irritated, frustrated, depressed and anxious as to what may happen. Many employees are stressed due to increased “work from home” responsibilities. All this might be due to different situations in their life but because of having nothing to engage during lockdown, it becomes an indirect reason for a mental breakdown.

Communication always helps. Whenever you feel low, it is always better to speak out and express yourself. Different people have different perspectives about different things. When our mind is stressed and we are unable to focus, others can help us to find the right perspective and direction. Hence, it is important to speak out to someone you trust.

It is necessary to keep your mind engaged with something or the other. Below is the to-do list to engage your mind in useful things and overcome mental breakdown during lockdown:
1. Re-pursue your long-lost hobbies.
2. Do light exercises daily as physical activity is one of the best ways to distract your mind from negative thoughts.
3. Play board games with your family.
4. Attend live online sessions to learn about new things.
5. Start following a meditation routine.
6. Engage with relatives through live online sessions for mantra chanting.
7. Read a book that you were not able to read since a long time.
8. Learn ten new sentences of different languages on a daily basis.
9. Find out meanings of five new words that you have never heard of.
10. Listen to the relaxing sounds of nature, such as, chirping of birds, water or rain.
11. Engage in creative activities, such as, painting, writing poems, singing, learning guitar and dancing.
When you engage your mind in doing useful activities, the unnecessary thoughts and negative feelings do not have a space in your mind.

Watching news to get updates on COVID-19 is important but constantly reading those headlines and numbers of affected patients provokes negative thoughts. When you observe the numbers and statistics of COVID-19 patients, it becomes more difficult to forget them and it leads to anxiety. Our mind has a power to relate and connect things. When you watch or listen to something negative, it immediately relates to your negative memories and provoke them. The best way to not let this anxiety affect your mind is to avoid watching things that trigger your anxiety.

During such stressful situations, we keep on remembering our bad memories and tend to have all the negative thoughts in our mind. Hence, what we talk to ourselves in our mind is also negative. 'I am feeling very bad and stressful', 'I am going to get affected by things happening around', these are the sentences we often talk to ourself and eventually land up feeling low about everything.
At such times, it is important to check our self-talk and change it. Instead of all the above mentioned unhealthy self-talk, our self-talk should be more healthy, valuable for ourselves and most importantly, rather than defaming self, it should be motivating self.

Last but not the least, never hesitate to seek help when it comes to your mental health. Your mental well-being is ultimately responsible for your physical well-being too. Hence, if there are things which you are unable to figure out despite of trying solutions, it is always better to seek an external help. You can always search for helpline numbers online and speak to a professional. Now that there is a long duration of lockdown, there are helpline numbers specially for people who are suffering from stressful situations. These are mainly to calm people down during this period.

You can always devise out your own different ways to take good care of self. The above methods are just a few ways to help you out in getting a direction towards what you can do for keeping your mind stable in this situation. Everyone is going through a tough time and maybe if you look around you will realize that there are people who are going through much more. Feel good about yourself and utilize this time in a productive way! Tell in the comment section about what methods are you followingto have a stable mental health.