Your mental well being

The outbreak of a disease doesn’t mean your life should come to a halt and your health should suffer. You should continue exercising and eating well. Get good sleep. Use relaxation techniques and listen to the experts and health care providers.

I’m feeling stressed, who can I talk to?

If over the following days and weeks you feel you are not coping, it’s important to seek help and professional support. Your family doctor is a good starting point. For support with grief, anxiety, distress or mental wellbeing, you can also call or text 1737 Need to talk? This service is free, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and gives you the chance to talk it through with a trained counsellor.

The Mental Health Foundation have new resources on their website to help us all get through this time.

Should I worry about COVID-19? 

Illness due to COVID-19 infection is generally mild, especially for children and young adults. However, it can cause serious illness and it is normal for people to worry about how the COVID-19 outbreak will affect them and their loved ones. 

We can channel our concerns into actions to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our communities. First and foremost among these actions is regular and thorough hand-washing and good respiratory hygiene. Secondly, keep informed and follow the advice of the local health authorities including any restrictions put in place on travel, movement and gatherings. Learn more about how to protect yourself here. 

What should I tell my kids?
Take a read of this article which has some really nice advice on how to keep your kids feeling calm when the world feels fragile.

Practical strategies:
Below is a guide (adapted from NZ Institute of wellbeing) to coping in the days ahead. These are some of the practical strategies that will help.

1. Choose where you focus your attention. Even at the best of times, humans are hard-wired to notice threats and weakness. During the worst of times it is more important than ever for our psychological health to tune into what’s still good in your world. Psychologists call this ‘benefit finding’ and it is a key resilience skill. For example start your day with thinking about some good stuff.
    

2. Deliberately seek out the people (and do the stuff) that make you happy. Research shows how vital experiencing positive emotions is for our resilience. Negative emotions are contagious, and prolonged feelings of helplessness are strongly associated with depression. Given negative emotions and experiences stick to us like Velcro while positive emotions and experiences bounce off like Teflon, aim to punctuate your days, evenings, weeks and weekends with as many positive emotion experiences as possible. This means connecting with people or things that provide you with a positive experiences.
    

3. Strong and supportive relationships are the number one predictor of wellbeing, across the lifespan. Maintaining those connections during times of crisis and challenge is more important than ever. Feeling isolated from others is strongly related to depression, anxiety and other forms of mental distress. If you can’t catch up with your key supportive people face to face right now, find other ways of doing so. And if you’re not used to using other options such as skype, zoom, or social media apps to call, find someone who can teach about this or call them.

4. Keep supportive daily routines or create new ones if you’re now holed up at home. “As Normal as Possible, as Flexible as Necessary”. Maintaining regular routines (meal times, bedtimes, exercise, work etc.) tells our brains it’s safe to dial that stress response back down and prevents us from feeling more anxious. But, unprecedented times call for unprecedented responses: be prepared to have your best plans change, and open-minded enough to conjure up or accept new and different ways of doing things.
    

5. Focus on what matters, and what you can control. Concentrate all your attention and resources (psychological, social, physical, emotional, knowledge) on the things that matter and that you can actually influence. Easy to write, hard to do, but worrying about things you cannot change will only upset you and frustrate you further.
    

6. Watch your media diet – keep using the “helping or harming” test. Take a good look at your media intake over a 24 period and ask yourself, “is reading these articles, watching these videos, or reviewing these headlines, helping or harming the way I’m feeling and functioning?” Don’t let those images, videos and notifications invade your day, your head, or your world. If the global news is making you feel overwhelmed, turn it off. Claim back some control by switching them off. Choose where you get your news updates from very carefully making sure these are reliable sources.
    

7. Find the right people to talk to. (Yes, the ‘helping or harming’ test applies to the people in your life too). Share your thoughts and feelings, but don’t get swept up in pointless speculation. Stick to the facts and avoid the drama queens. Keep asking yourself, ‘Is this conversation helping or harming me in my quest to feel good and function as best I can right now?’
    

8. Help yourself by helping others. This takes the attention off ourselves and we all need to feel useful and needed right now. The research is unequivocal: being able to give as well as receive is hugely important for our life satisfaction. How can you help vulnerable neighbours, colleagues, friends or strangers – emotionally, physically, practically?
    

9. Give your brain a holiday from Coronavirus. Avoid ‘rumination’ by giving your poor overly-busy wandering mind a rest by deliberately participating in seriously engaging activities. Be that the crossword, Netflix, following a new recipe, dancing, listening to music or a Podcast, reading, chatting on the phone, playing dress ups with the kids, drawing, or meditating, you’ll know your thing. This is the best way to turn off our running ruminating minds which otherwise can chew over worries, making us feel worse.
    

10. Have a ‘timed wallow’. No good ever comes from ruminating or wallowing in misery and self-pity for over a minute – put a timer on, and then phone a friend or find something really distracting to do (see #10 above).
     

11. Be kind to yourself and others. Remember everyone is doing their best to navigate these exceptional times. A little kindness will go a long way. A lot of kindness is even better (even to the drama queens).

The following are some more detailed coping strategies that you can utilise.

Slow Breathing Technique:

This technique can be used as the basis for managing your anxiety.

This technique is to be used at the first signs of anxiety or panic. Do this before tackling a difficult situation or any time when you feel tense or anxious.

1. Focus on your breath.

2. Breathe through your nose if you are able.

3. Work on slowing each breath, so that you breathe in for 3 seconds, and breathe out for 3 seconds. (This will give you a breathing rate of 10 breaths per minute.)

4. It may be difficult to slow your breathing this much at first, or you may find that it takes longer to breathe out than to breathe in. Do what feels comfortable. The key is to work on slowing your breathing.

5. Concentrate on making your breaths smooth and light. Relax your stomach muscles.

Continue breathing in this way until you are feeling calmer.

Sometimes you will notice that the symptoms of anxiety return after a short while. That’s okay – just do your controlled breathing again for as long as it takes to settle.

If you do these things as soon as you notice the first signs of over breathing, anxiety, or panic, the symptoms should subside in a few minutes.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Grounding Technique:

This technique will take you through your five senses to help remind you of the present. This is a calming technique that can help you get through tough or stressful situations.

Take a deep belly breath to begin.

5 - LOOK: Look around for 5 things that you can see, and say them out loud. For example, you could say, I see the computer, I see the cup, I see the picture frame.
4 - FEEL: Pay attention to your body and think of 4 things that you can feel, and say them out loud. For example, you could say, I feel my feet warm in my socks, I feel the hair on the back of my neck, or I feel the pillow I am sitting on.
3 - LISTEN: Listen for 3 sounds. It could be the sound of traffic outside, the sound of typing or the sound of your tummy rumbling. Say the three things out loud.
2 - SMELL: Say two things you can smell. If you’re allowed to, it’s okay to move to another spot and sniff something. If you can’t smell anything at the moment or you can’t move, then name your 2 favorite smells.
1 - TASTE: Say one thing you can taste. It may be the toothpaste from brushing your teeth, or a mint from after lunch. If you can’t taste anything, then say your favorite thing to taste.

Take another deep belly breath to end.

Anxiety Grounding Techniques

• Breathe slowly and steadily from your core.

• Call a friend and have a chat.

• Wiggle your fingers, tap your feet. Pay attention to the movement.

• Eat or drink something. Is it hot, or cold? Sweet, or sour?

• Meditate or use distractions like television or music to help settle down.

• Say your name or pick up a book and read the first paragraph you find out loud.

• Write out what’s going on.

• Take a shower/bath. Notice the sensations.

• Imagine yourself in a familiar, comfortable place.

• Take a look outside. Count the number of trees and street signs.

• Exercise

• Hold onto something comforting. Maybe a blanket or an old stuffed toy.

Quick muscle relaxation exercises

• Arms & Hands: Clench your fists and your arms out in front of you hold for a count of 10 ....then relax
• Legs & feet: push your toes downwards & raise your legs & stretch out in front of you hold for a count of 10 ... then relax
• Stomach: push out your stomach muscles take a deep breath & hold it for a count of 5....& relax

COVID new apps

The Ministry of Health recognises that the COVID-19 pandemic may be having an impact on people’s mental health and has put together some practical tips that can help people take care of their mental wellbeing during this time. These include simple actions like staying in contact with other people and sticking to our daily routines. You can find the full list of ideas on the MOH website by searching ‘COVID-19 taking care of your mental wellbeing’.
You might be interested to know that as part of the COVID-19 response, we have launched the following tools:

• Mentemia is an app developed by former All Black Sir John Kirwan that helps people monitor, manage and improve their mental health.
• Melon  is an app that provides a health journal, resources and self-awareness tools to help people manage their emotional wellbeing. Melon also has an online community for New Zealanders to connect and support each other and daily webinars for health and wellbeing.
• Staying on track is an e-therapy course for people experiencing worry and distress, which teaches practical strategies to cope with stress and disruption of day-to-day life due to COVID-19.

While online and digital tools play a key role in supporting mental health and wellbeing, we are also working on expanding telehealth services and ensuring appropriate support services are available as we all cope with moving between different alert levels. Here are some additional free resources which may be helpful.

Supporting Families offers free support, education and information for family and whânau affected by mental health and addiction, including support groups to engage with others who may be experiencing similar issues.The Mental Health Foundation offers information, support services and resources on a wide range of mental health and wellbeing issues, including a list of support groups across New Zealand. Healthpoint is a service that can provide help regarding referrals, services, or any health-related issues.

Further resources & support services

Trained counsellor. You can free call or text at any time to speak with a trained counsellor – it’s free and confidential. Simply text 1737.

Mental health foundation - they have lots of advice & tips as to what you can do to look after yourself
https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz  

National Anxiety Helpline: 0800 269 4389

Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or free text 4357 (HELP)

Samaritans: 0800 726 666