Activities You Can Do At Home To Boost Your Mental Health

Our world has turned upside down in just a few short months. Everyone’s staying at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We’re longing for human interaction offline while social distancing measures have us sheltering in place. It can be a little unnerving to have our lives completely change over a short period of time. It’s definitely tough on our mental health. Luckily, the good old internet has got you covered with lists upon lists of things you can do from home in order to maintain your mental health during this time of isolation. Here are a few things you can do from home to boost your mental health, along with links to other helpful articles and resources. Check out this list of things you can do to stay sane while staying safe:

1. Monitor Your News Intake

   An article from Bustle suggests that you shouldn’t spend too much time watching or reading the news. Set boundaries for yourself and follow through. Schedule a fixed amount of screen time, and don’t go over it. The internet can be a great source of up-to-date information (as long as you fact-check your sources), but constantly absorbing all of the scary things going on in the world right now can put your body in fight or flight mode and raise your baseline anxiety levels. You’ll be hard-pressed to try and spend any of this newfound abundant free time relaxing.

2. Keep A Journal

   You’re bound to be going through a lot of emotions right now. We all are. That’s where the benefits of journaling come into play. Journaling gives you a chance to process these feelings before they overwhelm you. In processing your feelings, and the potential feelings of others, you may become less stressed and more empathetic. For more, see the list of benefits from Mellowed.

3. Practice Gratitude

   Whether you keep track of the things you’re grateful for in a journal or just reflect once a day on the things you are fortunate enough to have, as suggested by BestLife and Yale’s “Happiness Course”, can boost your mood, lower your stress levels and strengthen your immune system, among other benefits.

4. Stick to Basic Self-Care

   As one of the writers over at Self says, it’s important to take care of the basics: hygiene, eating, and medication. If you’re part of the population with a chronic illness or mental illness, you know this can be a challenge sometimes, but even the average Joe may be feeling like the bare minimum is difficult to maintain under the current circumstances. While sticking to routines like getting dressed and keeping in touch with friends is good for us, we also need to be able to give ourselves a little slack, too.

   [Related: Why Everyone Needs Self-Care]

5. Know the Facts

   Make sure you are getting the correct information from reliable sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Knowing the facts about how the pandemic might affect you and the ones you love from reliable sources like the CDC and the WHO can help reduce stress during this most uncertain of times.