Our mental health is just as important as our physical health, but it is often overlooked when considering our wellness routines and care. As a result, it can be harder to maintain good mental health due to its often neglected and less visible place in our overall health. As more people find themselves working from home for increasingly long periods of time, isolated from their coworkers and other support systems, many find that their mental health has been challenged more so than ever this past year.
With many businesses choosing to keep employees at home, at least for the foreseeable future, it draws the inevitable question: How will continued isolation affect our mental health in the long term?
While some people find working from home a relief, others may struggle with feelings of isolation, loneliness, and other negative emotions resulting from a lack of regular human interaction. Maintaining your mental health while working from home is essential. Today, we will take a look at some self care tips that will help you manage your mental health while working from home.
Find a Routine
The lack of any actual routine can lead to boredom, stress, and even mild depression for many people. If you’re already suffering from depression, a lack of routine can make it worse.
When you work outside the home, you usually have some routine that tells you when to start and stop the day. But when you’re at home all the time, it can be easy to lose the structure that helps us stay focused and separates work time from personal time.
Try getting up at the same time every day and make an effort to establish a routine to start your workday. Maybe you’ll shower, get dressed, and have coffee, just like you would if you were going out of the home to work. Make sure you set yourself an end of the workday routine, too, so your brain knows it’s time to put work away for the day and focus on personal time.
Set Up a Workspace
You don’t have to have a separate room for an office to create a workspace at home. Just pick a spot in your home and dedicate it to work. Having a dedicated workspace helps you with your routine, and it also enables you to distinguish between work and home time.
Take Screen Breaks
If your work involves lots of computer time, you can find yourself feeling tired and burned out more quickly. If you’re filling your free time with more screens (your phone, social media, television), it could affect your mental health and overall physical wellbeing.
Give yourself time throughout the day to get away from the screens. Take a walk outside, grab coffee or lunch, sneak in a quick workout, or just spend a few minutes out in your garden. These mini screen breaks help prevent fatigue and other issues that can arise from too sedentary a lifestyle.
Get Social
Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you have to give up socializing. While the pandemic has made it more difficult to socialize in person, there are still plenty of online options to help you maintain work relationships.
Utilize meeting apps to ‘meet up’ with coworkers for a virtual lunch date or pick up the phone and give them a call after work. Social interaction is an integral part of keeping mentally strong. It’s easier to cope with stress and overcome adversity if you have a solid social circle, so find ways to maintain those relationships when working from home.
Get Active
Physical activity isn’t just good for the body. It’s good for the mind, too. Make a point to get out and get active whenever you can, even if it’s just a quick walk or a few minutes spent dancing around your home.
Being active can help release endorphins that boost your mood and regulate your body’s normal functions. Plus, you’ll feel better mentally if you take care of your physical well-being, so look for small opportunities to be more active every day.
Try Not To Be Too Hard On Yourself
Working from home, especially if you live with others, can be challenging. Distractions abound, and it can be tempting to put off work to do other things. While this isn’t a good idea all the time, do be kind to yourself if you find yourself giving into distractions.
Modern life is filled with distractions, and even if you live alone, there will always be something more interesting than work vying for your attention. It may help to try and limit distractions by working in a location with fewer distractions. If you have children or pets that need your attention, you may have to resign yourself to the fact that some of your day will be taken up by their needs, and that’s okay.
It’s also okay to ask for help. Suppose you suddenly find yourself responsible for taking care of family members while working from home and managing your household. In that case, you may want to speak with your boss about decreasing your workload, at least temporarily, so that you don’t become overwhelmed. At the end of the day, no job is worth more than your mental health.
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Assurance Health & Counseling Center believes that you and your health are what matters. Our membership plan is simple – members get unlimited access to our medical providers for one low flat monthly fee.
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Membership includes unlimited office visits, same-day appointments when you’re sick or injured, and 24/7 telephone access to our providers. Labs, X-Rays and medications that are purchased through us are at OUR cost. We don’t sell them for profit – and you’ll be shocked to see how affordable healthcare can be.
We also offer counseling to all members – because we believe in taking care of the WHOLE person. Contact us today and learn how a membership can help you live a happier, healthier life.