How to Improve Well-being When Stuck at Home

The importance of selfcare can not be overstated. This is true all of the time and whether you’re reading this during the global pandemic (in lockdown) or are housebound for any other reason (many forget that there were those who lived this way before pandemic was a thing), having a few ways to improve and manage your personal well-being when you feel like you are stuck at home is critical.

If you take a moment and stop to think about it; it’s much easier to get trapped in a false productivity loop (wearing yourself down but not achieving much) or fall into a pattern of doomscrolling (actively finding things to feel sad, or mad about) when stuck at home long-term. Fortunately, home can be the perfect place to incorporate some much-needed wellness techniques and keep that body and brain; happy, healthy, and able to do things.

Get Physical

This is great advice. If you are able. Sometimes it isn’t though, is it? And that can be for physical reasons or mental. However, if you have the means and the motivation a little exercise can help a lot.

This doesn’t mean rigorous; you can set your own pace. In actual fact (yoga helps), it doesn’t even need to be exercise as such, intimacy is just as good! A nice, warm cuddle with your partner or get can be wonderful for your overall health.

Think About Your Environment

If you’re working from home, or spending a lot of time idle, then a little greenery and some fresh air can be a real boost. This can mean spending a little time in the garden, or just having a desk with some greenery on and a window view.

Generally, embracing nature as much as possible will help here. If you like to read, then a nice well-lit space with natural light and an outdoor-y kind of feel with have an immediate calming effect on you as a whole. The same can be said in creating such an environment for most hobbies and forms of relaxation.

Embrace Your Hobbies (or Try Some New Ones)

It’s good to keep your body and brain busy, but not too busy (you don’t want to burnout after all). So, if you find yourself felling down by being stuck at home then one thing you can do improve that is pick up a few of your favourite hobbies.

Whatever you’re into, put some time into doing what you find fun. It will get you away from the doom and gloom of your social media timeline and put your attention somewhere else for a while.

If you’re not really feeling your current hobbies, then why not try learning a new skill? There are so many ways to do that right now.

Nap

Sleep is great. I love sleep! Of course, sleeping too much can be a sign of other issues, but taking a little nap can make you feel really good when it’s used a little treat and if you’ve been having trouble sleeping then sleep deprivation can escalate feelings of stress and anxiety.

Changing Your Mindset

Have you ever heard of the 4 A’s? Avoid, alter, accept, and adapt. It’s a mindful technique for those struggling with stress and it comes down to this:

• Avoid: Identify things that are causing you stress and avoid them. This can mean knowing when to say no, blocking or avoiding problematic social media channels and not putting yourself in situations that are detrimental to your health. Naturally, this applies to the home too.
• Alter: If something is bringing you down, or impacting your well-being and you can’t avoid it, can you change it? Will telling a loved one you are struggling help? Can you do things differently? Sometimes, the answer is yes!
• Accept: We are not meant to be all controlling creatures and sometimes things are not in our control, but that’s OK. We cannot change the global pandemic, a disability, or the reasons we are housebound. We don’t have to like it, but we can’t change it. So, sometimes in life you just have to accept things (at your own pace, when you are ready). How you do this will vary between people.
• Adapt: Feeling like you can’t cope, that you are trapped or that there is no solution is one of the biggest stressors of all. In 2020, most of the world felt this way, but it’s not a new thing by any means. Learning to know when you need to adjust and reframe your thoughts is one of the biggest builders of positive well-being. This means knowing how and when to exit a negative thought loop, learning that you don’t have to be doing things all of the time, taking time to count your blessings and thinking about how you think (and what you think about).

Stephen King once said in his book On Writing, that every writer has a toolbox and what we put into that toolbox is up to us. The same is true of well-being. The 4 A’s are powerful tools in protecting our mental and emotional health. They’re useful (of course) in all aspects of managing wellness and should be used in the home also.

Therapy

Remote working is a thing and therefore so is remote therapy (aka teletherapy).

The feelings that come from situations like these are complicated and difficult, as are the reasons you are housebound. Truthfully, no post will be able to help you navigate the complexities of your own individual situation and context but having someone to talk to, might. If things are particularly bad, then this is an avenue that might be worth exploring.