COVID – How does it impact your mental health?

I think what I’m finding the hardest about being home, without any plan or notion as to what the hell I’m doing is the constant mental chatter that I can’t shut up. I find myself disassociating a lot of the time, and that combined with a continuous playback of not always such nice thoughts makes it very hard for me to distinguish what is real and what isn’t. It’s quite difficult to explain, you’ll either be able to relate to what I’m saying or you won’t but sometimes it’s really difficult to remain relatively okay. Just like everyone, these days are hard and I hope people are doing well, I guess some days are easier than others. When you get low but your low is VERY low, staying in one place doing the same routine every day doesn’t help. There is a lot of talk about how mental health is being affected by social distancing and it’s an important thing to discuss. I think what I enjoyed the most about travelling was that if I was climbing a mountain like this one at an insane altitude, I felt like I’d really achieved something. So my thoughts tell me some horrible stuff? I’ve just climbed a mountain which I didn’t think I was able to do! And the thoughts retracted. I found South America CHALLENGING and that really helped my confidence. I got fitter, I got more determined. Not only that, but I was really REALLY able to find some good people. Kind people who could relate, talk and share their stories so by the time we reached that mountain top we were jubilant on the physical and personal challenges we’d overcome. When the whole world fills like a difficult challenge to see through, when the majority of people are scared about what the future holds, I guess the feeling of community grows but it’s still hard. Being stuck in one place, with sometimes the only conversation you hear being the dark thoughts you avoided on the opposite side of this rainbow mountain, it’s hard to always keep positive. I’m continuing my self esteem course on Headspace which I’m hoping can help me distinguish between the rational and irrational thoughts and I’m trying to exercise every day so I can feel better. It will pass, it ALWAYS does.How do you keep positive when you feel low? ❤

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