7 ways to help your family’s mental health when you’re stuck indoors

Social distancing during the current situation means you’ll be spending a lot more time at home than you usually do. Unless you’re a key worker, you’ll be working remotely and you’re only allowed out for essentials or for one form of exercise per day. So, what do you do to help your family’s mental health while stuck indoors?

When you’re not used to spending so much time indoors, with your family, this may have a negative effect on your mental health. Nobody knows how long isolation and social distancing are going to last. It’s best to look after your family’s mental health while stuck indoors can help you feel the positive effects later on. Here are 7 ways you can do this.

Avoid negative triggers

If you know you’ve got triggers that create negative thoughts, try to avoid them during COVID-19. For example, see everybody’s photos of what they’re doing during quarantine can be bad for you and your family. It’s important to remember that everybody shares their best times on social media. It’s not an accurate picture of their life. However, if this creates negative thoughts for you all, try to limit your time on social media. This can help you remain focused on other more meaningful tasks during the day.

Read or watch inspirational content

Sometimes, you need the help of others to uplift your spirit and boost your energy. When you’re stuck in your house, try listening to some motivational content. You can even share what you find with other members of your family. Perhaps can read biographies of people you admire or watch inspiration speeches on YouTube. Some of the book series available for kids is wonderful for this – this set of books from Scholastic all have strong women in them. This list from Happy Hooligans focuses a little more on the best books for boys.

If you are looking for something a little more “you”, perhaps you can read more about Tej Kohli to find out more about him and how he became a success.

Keep in touch with family and friends

Regular socialisation is key to maintaining good mental health. It can help to improve feelings of wellbeing, as well as alleviate depression. Since you’re going to be adapting to a different lifestyle, contacting friends and family you normally see can help. It can provide a form of regularity and improve your mood during the long days at home.

Stay active

With nobody to judge you, it can be easy to lounge around and not stay active during the pandemic. However, after a while, this can damage your mental health. You can lose motivation and start to feel lazy. Take advantage of your once a day exercise allowance. Get out walking for just 20 minutes and you can feel energised and refreshed. In addition, try at-home workouts in your living room. Not only can this pass the time, but it can also keep your body strong and healthy.

Plan day-by-day

There’s no point in thinking about the past. In addition, it’s not productive to worry about the future. We don’t know how long we’re all going to be on lockdown. It’s going to be better for your mental health if you take every day-by-day. Create plans and to-do lists for the day and work your way through it. Live in the present and this can help your mental health in the long run.

Be kind to yourself

Don’t expect to manage everything with you and your family perfectly – it won’t be a perfect situation all the time. We all have to be realistic about what we can and can’t manage to do in a day. What we can achieve with ourselves, and our kids. Yes, we have lots of time BUT we also have a lot to do if we are trying to manage family life. And we are doing a lot of it in a completely different way. Don’t be hard on yourself.

If you find yourself thinking negatively about the day, or about something that has happened with the kids; perhaps they didn’t do all their chore, or the school day didn’t go so well – then take a step back. Take some you time wherever you can get it, acknowledge the feeling, and then move on. It’s OK to be worried, and disappointed, we all have off days, but tomorrow is another day.

Don’t expect to be the school or the teacher

We are all homeschooling at the moment in one for or another; whether we have young kids, or whether the children are at University. We are NOT all qualified teachers, we don’t have all the answers, and we don’t need to be giving them a full day of activities to get through.

We are their parents, and we just need to be there for them. To make them feel safe, loved and happy. If we can get the learning in at the same time – yay!

Do what works for you in homeschooling, and try not to be swayed by what you “think” everyone else in your social media circle is achieving with their kids on a daily basis. They probably aren’t…! 😂

Let us know how you are getting on with everything, and if you have any other ideas, do drop us a line. If you want some other thoughts on things to do – why not take a look at these?

If you are looking for more assistance on mental health while stuck indoors why not take a look at some of these resources as well?

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Take care and see you again soon – we hope.

Helen

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