3 Simple Tips to Help Reduce Distress
Reflecting back upon the year 2020, we find ourselves in awe of people’s strength and resilience and ability to embrace and adapt to the chaotic nature of a world-wide health pandemic. This sentence encapsulates the outcomes however does not quite encompass the challenges and hard work individuals undertook in order to ‘survive’ what will forever be referred to as the COVID-19 year. Liaising with friends, family and colleagues scattered across Victoria, common themes emerged highlighting strategies employed to facilitate positive mental health and wellbeing. Whilst, we thankfully see easing of restrictions and overall morale increase, individually, we periodically experience elevated distress, anxiety and depression and having a well-developed stress management tool kit is essential. Below are a few simple, tried and tested strategies useful in reducing distress.
1. Controlled Breathing. When experiencing anxiety, our sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear, otherwise known as our ‘fight or flight’ system originating from cavemen days. An easy effective way to reduce anxiety is to trick the body into calming down via controlled breathing. A simple way to encourage engagement in controlled breathing is with the use of your opened hand facing outwards. Gently tracing your index finger from your other hand you breath in as you reach the top of the thumb, breath out as you trace down the inside of the thumb, breath in as you trace to the top of the index finger, then breath out as the trace the inside of the index finger. Completion of all five fingers activates the parasympathetic nervous system, encouraging you to calm down and relax.
2. Behavioural Activation, which is essentially clinical jargon for ‘get moving’ and ‘get doing’. When people experience low mood, they can additionally lose motivation and energy, resulting in a tendency to cease engagement in activities they once enjoyed, that once lifted their mood. Behavioural activation seeks to encourage an individual to engage in a low-level small activity in order to boost motivation, induce a sense of achievement and also experience pleasure. Undertaking low level activity, for example a brief walk around the block, allows someone to engage within their environment and take their mind off possible current stressors.
3. Grounding. An effective strategy to help reduce anxiety and encourages a sense of calm. Grounding is designed to ‘ground’ you in, or connect you with, the present moment. Feeling overwhelmed due to stressors or elevated anxiety, often results in focusing and worrying about future events. Allowing yourself to connect with your current environment, encourages you to be mindful of present day. A simple trick to facilitate grounding is via the use of your senses. Naming three things you can (1) see, (2) hear, (3) touch, and (4) smell.