In April this year, Peter Kiirya, a fine art teacher at St. Mary’s College, Jinja in Uganda committed suicide, a tragic event that sent shock waves in the spines of different teachers. It was highly speculated all over Facebook and WhatsApp teachers’ groups that it was due to the lockdown-induced effects, especially lack food that catalyzed his self-destruction.
Besides Kiirya, many other teachers are suffering from the psychological effects of unemployment like anxiety, depression, and stress, especially because they were caught off-guard, and some others don’t have a plan B.
However, being mentally healthy is vital for everyone in order to move forward in life and to prevent extreme effects like self-destruction.
Ways to Stay Mentally Healthy Amid The Covid-19 Challenges
The following are some of the ways that you can stay positive and rid your mind of all the negativity around you.
1. Stay sober.
For many people, the lockdown caused by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic meant the loss of their jobs, so many of them resorted to drinking and using narcotics so they could relieve themselves of the stress around them.
Honestly, this doesn’t work, and if it’s what you’re doing to remain calm, you better stop and find other ways to fight your anxiety. This is because being drunk will only relieve you for a short while, but when your sobriety kicks in, you’ll be back to your problems. And what’s more, you won’t be able to save any money because all will be spent on liquor, thus worsening the effects.
2. Take action.
Some of us have maintained their initial decision to wait for their governments to open the schools once again so they can resume business as usual. But to tell you the truth, things are not going to be the way they were before the lockdown.
As such, it’s better that you get off your couch before you’re forced to sell it. People are making money by resorting to other profitable ventures during this period, as they wait to retain their jobs in case their schools reopen after the lockdown is fully lifted. Therefore, resort to plan B, C, D until you have fully established yourself.
Being active always takes your mind away from the impossible to the possible. You always get to think about the betterment of yourself.
3. Avoid regrets.
To be honest, there’s a lot of things that all of us hadn’t done, but had planned to do this year. We all have been affected in some way, but all these Covid-19 related circumstances are beyond our locus of control. It doesn’t make any sense if we sit down and blame ourselves for things that we can’t change any more.
Personally, I decided to shift some of the things I had planned to accomplish and set them for 2021. The greatest opportunity we have is we’re still breathing, and that means we can always do anything we put our minds to. This lockdown is only delaying but probably not stopping us.
4. Stay positive and optimistic.
I know this is certainly difficult, given that we’re surrounded by a lot of negativity, beginning with the circumstances and the media. There’s no positive energy all around us, so we have to find it from within us. There are many ways that we can stay positive and hopeful that the future will bring something good for us. They include;
•Watching motivational videos.
I know this is highly underrated by many people, but that’s certainly because they are not open-minded. Being positive is really hard, and to some point, we just need it as much as a narcotic addict needs a few shots in their veins. There’s a lot of people on YouTube, like Jay Shetty and Ben Lionel Scott, for example, that will get you motivated every time you watch them.
•Surrounding yourself with positive people.
You have probably heard of the saying that when you walk with five motivated people, you become the sixth. This is absolutely true, because these people that you associate with will interact with you, and a point will come when you are exactly the same or even more than they are. The same applies to the negative people. You’ll become more negative if you imbibe what comes out of them.
•Reading motivational books.
This is almost like watching the videos, but the slight difference is that the book will give you delayed gratification, thus enhancing your other virtues like patience and focus. Also, you’ll have to read the book just once, but for a video, you’ll have to watch it over and over again whenever you want to feel motivated. Reading books is my personal favorite anyway.
•Prayer.
Many of us just can’t afford to be atheists at this moment in time. We have to leave some issues to whatever deity we believe in, according to our religions, so that we can worry less about what we can’t control. It, therefore, keeps us motivated and mentally healthy.
5. Talk about it.
Like everybody else, you need friends that can listen, pay attention, and motivate you or give you advice on how best you should move forward in life. Also, it is far heavier and disastrous if we keep all our troubles to ourselves.
As such, try meeting up with a couple of friends that you trust, and talk to them about your problems, so they can find ways to help you. Some will not help you financially but will talk to you in a way that keeps you moving. If you have no friends, try your religious leader or a professional counselor.
When you get stuff off your chest, it might not go away, but will surely stop tormenting you.
6. Work out.
In this, you don’t need to go to the gym, or buy treadmills and dumbbells and install them in your house. However, it’s ideal if it doesn’t affect your purse. Alternatively, there are lots of physical exercises that you can do from home, like push-ups, squats, and a lot more.
Physical exercises keep your heart healthy and will get the circulation of blood to your brain unaffected. This will keep you mentally healthy because some people’s anxiety results from improper circulation of blood to the brain.
Also, it will make you look good, so I believe it’s worth the try, now that you have all the time to do it.
7. Regulate your social media usage.
For many people, social media acts as solace because that’s where they get to find interesting content and get to meet good people. At the same time, social media might just look like a place full of angry people that don’t know what they’re angry about. What’s more, it’s overly demanding, especially when you’re sort of popular, to a point that you have to invest money and time to maintain that kind of popularity.
As such, a point in time will come where you will have to post much more about yourself, including stuff that should be kept secret.
To avoid the anxiety that might come from this whole affair, regulate your usage. If it’s just one hour a day, do it. If it’s right after you have completed the day’s work, do it. And set limits on what and what not to post, or else you’ll have let other people judge you basing on what they think they know about you.
8. Family planning.
The lockdown has been a really tough time, especially because parents have had to stay with their children at home without a source of income, or even a mere distraction to get them out in the morning and back in the evening. Due to this, many women have found themselves pregnant, which wasn’t planned or intended.
To avoid this and the effects that pose to come along with it, stick to the family planning methods available to you, so there’s no “accident of birth.”
Conclusion.
Some people believe it’s absolutely hard to be mentally healthy all the time. This might be true, but I personally believe that it’s a continuous fight, which all of us have to engage in. As we wait for the lockdown on schools to be officially lifted, let’s not be hard on ourselves, and always remember that suicide simply eliminates all the chances of things ever getting better.