Self-Care During the Coronavirus

Self-care seems a little selfish when we are in a pandemic. But it also feels more necessary than ever before. We are all under a lot of stress. We are all doing hard things. Whether we are still working outside our homes or trying to work with our kids at home and home school at the same time. We are all feeling stress. We are all being asked to keep going in a reality that seems like something out of a low budget SyFy channel movie. We all need a little self-care more than we know.

Self-Care During the Coronavirus

Vitamins

I’m taking my daily stress relief vitamins which I feel like help me from being too anxious and keep me focused on work. I’ve been taking these since mid-December and I feel like they really help.

Sleep

Once the kids are asleep I feel like all of my worries come flooding back into my mind, making it really hard to sleep. I’ve been taking melatonin to help sleep for a few months, it works really well and helps clear my mind and fall asleep and stay asleep.

Exercise

Since the beginning of the year, Yoga has been a great source of stress relief for me. It clears my mind and gives my body a chance to focus on being strong rather than all of the other things going on in the world. I do Bulldog Yoga which is free for the first 30 days and then 12.99 after that. I love that their workouts are fun and have great playlists. I can’t help but smile when doing Yoga to a Britney VS Justin playlist.

Social Media

Social Media is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, I love how connected it keeps me. On the other, it’s a lot to take in and with the news cycle the way it is it can be really overwhelming. So I decided on a compromise and deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone. That way I can only access them through my computer which definitely helps me to tune out when I need to.

News

We don’t watch much news in our house. I don’t like cable news or the 24-hour news cycle. I read articles, usually in the morning and then I tend to try to watch the Governor’s briefing or find a recap of it. But then I try to take a break for a while. You do not need the news on all the time. Things are changing quickly but not that quickly.

Activities

Sometimes the best way to clear my head is to give my hands something to do. I’ve been working on puzzles, building Legos with my kids and reading more. Adult coloring books are another way to keep yourself busy.

Cleaning

Cleaning just makes me feel better. It’s something in my environment that I can control and again it keeps my hands busy.

Music

Putting on some music and dancing and acting silly with the kids is a great way to relieve some of the stress of this situation. If you use a fire stick for your TV you can get Disney Sing-a-long songs complete with words.

Beauty

So my beauty routine has basically gone out the window and I don’t know when I’ll get my hair done again. But I do suddenly have some time for all the face masks and bath bombs that I have accumulated over the years in hopes of doing something relaxing. Here is one of my favorites and this hand mask is amazing for all the handwashing going on.

The biggest stress relief I’ve found when all of this fails is friendship and connecting with people. When my worries and anxiety start to get to me I reach out to friends or I call my mom. Just touching base with my people and knowing that we are all feeling this makes me feel better. Knowing I’m not alone goes a long way to helping me feel a little bit better.