How to cope with stress

This post is written by Cansu Kandara, research consultant at the Feminist Hiking Movement.

• The problem: The sudden change in lifestyle and work practices over the pandemic has led to mental health issues for many people.
• Why it matters: Protecting our mental health is vital in times of stress; the pandemic has taught us coping strategies to take forward.
• The solution: Integrate coping strategies into your daily routine to help build resilience and protect against stress.

With the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first six months of 2020, many of us experienced working remotely and mostly from home for the first time. It was a new and quite extraordinary situation for many people who had been typically used to working in offices before the pandemic. People were now faced with new challenges to adapt themselves to this new working life and workflow. Those living with children, partners and pets now had to juggle home life with the responsibilities of their job.

Were you left languishing?

It has been widely reported that this ambiguity between work and private life over the pandemic has led to increased mental health problems, anxiety and burnout syndrome - it left many of us feeling like we were languishing. Conflict and communication problems increased in families and as a result, separation and divorce figures spiked significantly during the period. Many people sought the advice and professional support of psychologists, mental health workers, social workers and couple and family therapists as a result.

Our homes became places of anxiety, and work-related stress stayed with us 24/7, instead of being confined to the workplace. We saw how tensions, conflict and heated discussions between family members - between children and parents or between couples - increased and impacted people’s work. In an effort to prevent this conflict and pursue calmness, many of us - myself included - took part in online yoga sessions, practised meditation via YouTube videos and tried breathing therapies.

Strategies to take forward

Eventually, we started normalising the remote working lifestyle and succeeded in finding new ways to cope with the stressful and challenging situations in our daily lives, developing new tactics and strategies of resilience.

From my own experience of the pandemic and after reading many psycho-therapy and academic psychology articles over the period, the following actions helped me to find inner peace and altered my mindset and point of view, enabling me to cope with challenges.

• Practising daily meditation and breathing exercises
• Jogging or walking regularly
• Getting outside - particularly to the seaside and green places
• Trying to maintain a balanced diet
• Swapping coffee for herbal teas

They are actions which I’ll take forward in my life to help to protect me against future stresses.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)