Managing Mental Health During The Quarantine

What is up you guys? Tyler, you're Wandering Therapist here, on a beautiful morning in March—even though we've got snow on the ground out here at the Bud Phelps Wildlife Management area. I'm excited to be here with you guys today. It feels so good simply just to be outside. I know you guys are all probably struggling with the quarantine right now. Yesterday I had two of my daughters almost in tears because they haven't been able to see their friends or play with them for a while. At my house things are kind of feeling a little bit tense even though we've been enjoying a lot of the change of pace by playing games with each other and spending more time with each other and having actual family dinners which we love to do, but I don't get to do very often. So I just want to talk with you guys a little bit today about how to manage mental health in a time like this, where inevitably all of us are going to have levels of anxiety or depression because of the stress that we're feeling. Because of the changes and the uncertainty that is going on in our world it's really normal for us to feel those things. I was talking to one of my groups the other day and we were talking about the role that depression and anxiety play in the process of addiction. And it's very common. It's something called a co-occurring disorder, where we actually have a mental health problem—depression anxiety or something else more significant—and we come to treatment looking for help for an addiction. And what we need to do is we need to treat all of it because the co-occurring part —the depression or the anxiety—is actually a factor that contributes to the acting out part of the addiction. And thinking about how to try to help manage mental health in a time like this, where you're supposed to stay home as much as possible, I just had a few thoughts that might be helpful for managing mental health. The first is that even though we have a stay home order in many of our states right now, I think it's OK to still be outside and be in nature if you're by yourself or in a very small group or you can still keep some distance. I would encourage any of you if you have access to the power of nature that you build that into your life as regularly as possible. This space out here is big enough to hold all of your stress. And if you'll come and actually experience and let yourself have just a moment in the great outdoors, the pressure can start to come off of you, and you'll actually realize that some of that anxiety and tension and stress that you're feeling or that depression and that feeling of being low or you would just want to stay in bed all day that will start to lift the more you can spend time in nature. It's hard to go get out and go to the gym these days because a lot of the gyms are closed. And I was just thinking that you still have access to working out at home which is hard to do. We still have the ability to go outside go for a walk, go for a jog. The other thing that I think we could build into our normal day to day lives is is that when you're going to go stand in line at the grocery store for your toilet paper today, park at the very back of the parking lot and give yourself another hundred or two hundred steps to get into. The store get your heart pumping a little bit get a little bit of extra exercise and allow yourself to get that brain chemistry flowing that comes from moving. You'll also probably a little bit happier when you're standing in line and you realize you're the last person who didn't get a pallet of toilet paper. So the other thing you can do is is that right now with everybody being locked up in their house there's a tendency to eat differently, eat a lot more, and to eat a lot more unhealthily. And taking some time to build into your diet and make sure that it's happening; to have lots of healthy vegetables and fruits all of the colors of the rainbow, those things are really good for mental health instead of the bread and the flour and the prepackaged stuff that most of us are eating now, at least I am—I’ve been doing terrible at my own meal plan lately, and I think it's largely because of the stress. But it really makes a difference to work in some broccoli or throw some kale into a smoothie or to get some type of fruit or vegetable going. And the great thing about that, you guys, is that if you go to the store all the shelves are bare except for the stuff that's good for you. So you can pick that stuff up you can continue to put that into your day to day living it will help boost your chemical in your brain that will allow less of that depression, less of the anxiety, and give you a greater sense of peace of mind. So just a few thoughts you guys. We live in a culture that was already not very good at managing our mental health because we drive to the front row parking spot and take as few steps as possible, and we get in our car and drive across the parking lot to the KFC and go through the drive thru and get greasy fat food and then we wonder why we're depressed and miserable all the time. A few simple changes in our lives can actually make a big difference over time and how we feel about ourselves and how we see the world we're living in. You guys these are interesting times we're living in. I happen to believe that there is a lot of opportunity inside of the stress that we feel and the pressure and the uncertainty that we that we have. If we can stop and pause and take a few deep breaths and realize that life is still really good. It may look different. It may feel a little bit different but we still have everything at our fingertips that we need to thrive. And in a lot of ways we as human beings we have built in mechanisms to handle our stress and all we have to do is let our bodies do their jobs and be grateful for what they're doing. And we're gonna make it. It's going to be OK. Thanks guys, have a good day.