When you are stressed, overwhelmed, fatigued, exhausted and anxious it’s safe to say that your body is letting you feel it. You may find yourself having trouble with regulating your emotions and that’s fair. The pandemic does increase a lot of emotions for everyone including anger, anxiousness, depression, and even loss. You may be impacted by many new challenges or stressors daily and have no idea how to manage them all. Here are a few things that may be able to bring some peace to your day to day challenges.
We must consider challenging a stressor is to understand the true power of the stressor. Ask yourself, do you have any true control over this situation? Do you have the power to make changes to the situation at hand or correct it? If the answer is no, you must find peace with that stressor that there is nothing you can do and it is out of your hands. If you do have control over the stressor, try coming up with a realistic plan to assist you in completing that task. Don’t be afraid to ask for support if necessary and try to be kind to yourself when setting realistic expectations.
I recommend exploring and applying emotional regulation techniques. When we have the ability to gain control of our emotions we tend to be able to navigate through life better. But the true question is how do you regulate your emotions? Ways to regulate your emotions can be simple but may not look the same to everyone. When we say regulate your emotions, we mean a way to simply calm yourself down, bring you back to the here and now, get you to relax the tensions in your body. It can be as simple as taking deep breaths, counting backward, meditating, listening to music, eating a sour candy, or focusing on a distinctive calming sound or light. By doing this, you are forcing your body to lose focus on the negative distraction and to find a more positive one that you now have control over. Doing this technique not only allows you to not become so reactive but it allows you to control the way you respond.
-Monique Hill, B.A. | Thrive Counselor
Thrive Counseling Center 