How to Support Yourself During the War? Psychological Advice

The war changed the life of each of us and it had a cat­a­stroph­ic effect on the psy­cho­log­i­cal state of many. For full recov­ery, we need years of work, and most impor­tant­ly — vic­to­ry. But we sug­gest not to wait for bet­ter times and start chang­ing the sit­u­a­tion for the bet­ter right now: let’s focus not on the final goal, but on the small steps that bring it clos­er. Chan­fash­ion I have pre­pared for you a selec­tion of sim­ple tips that will help you feel bet­ter and take care of your men­tal health right now.

The first priority is your own safety

It’s hard to talk about med­i­ta­tions, breath­ing exer­cis­es, and moti­va­tion­al pod­casts when your life is in dan­ger 24/7. We do not under­take to give spe­cif­ic advice, because each sit­u­a­tion is very spe­cif­ic for each indi­vid­ual fam­i­ly.

Physical comfort

Accord­ing to Maslow’s pyra­mid, the foun­da­tion of human needs is breath­ing, sleep and food. There­fore, we advise you to start your recov­ery with the adjust­ment of these very first needs, as far as pos­si­ble:

Sched­ule

Our body likes sta­bil­i­ty in small things and respect for the dai­ly rhythm. Try to eat, go to bed and wake up at approx­i­mate­ly the same time every day — this will help to relieve a lit­tle of the back­ground phys­i­cal ten­sion, and there­fore improve your men­tal state.

Hot food

If pos­si­ble, try to eat a full meal, espe­cial­ly hot and first cours­es, and drink warm tea. It is not only the ben­e­fit of reg­u­lar food for diges­tion, but also the fact that hot food and drinks send sig­nals to the psy­che to calm down.

Full sleep

To cope with stress, the body needs suf­fi­cient rest. The need for sleep may increase com­pared to peace­time, and this is absolute­ly nor­mal, because the load on the body and psy­che increas­es. If you have trou­ble falling asleep due to exces­sive stress, you can use sleep­ing pills. For exam­ple, mela­tonin, which has a mild effect and helps the body feel sleepy.

Body signals

The body itself will tell you what it needs, your task is to lis­ten care­ful­ly and, most impor­tant­ly, lis­ten. Do you feel that you can­not cope with­out this choco­late bar? Allow your­self and enjoy it, with­out lis­ten­ing to the remorse. Just yes­ter­day you want­ed to move moun­tains, but now you can’t get out of bed? Give your­self time to rest and get some sleep, ful­fill­ing only the most impor­tant oblig­a­tions that can­not be post­poned to the next day.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many of us are used to forc­ing our­selves to do some­thing, silenc­ing the sig­nals of our own body, and are not in the habit of treat­ing our­selves with the nec­es­sary empa­thy. Even those who have already embarked on this path in peace­time are now fac­ing “set­backs” due to cat­a­stroph­ic stress.

Try to treat your­self, your body and psy­che with under­stand­ing and com­pas­sion: right now, even lying in bed, each of us spends an incred­i­ble amount of effort to under­stand what is hap­pen­ing, adapt to new con­di­tions and save our­selves. Of course, we can’t be as pro­duc­tive as before, more often we can’t pull our­selves togeth­er and deal with emo­tions. This is nor­mal, give your­self the right to react the way you react. And final­ly, eat that cake if you want 🙂

Daily rituals

Our psy­che loves sta­bil­i­ty. We have already men­tioned this when talk­ing about the sched­ule of the day. In addi­tion to the most impor­tant things, try to add to the sched­ule some pleas­ant rit­u­als that you can per­form with a cer­tain fre­quen­cy. For exam­ple, an evening cup of tea with hon­ey on the bal­cony in silence and with­out a phone, a morn­ing walk in the near­by park before break­fast, 20 pages of light read­ing of a book before bed. Choose only pleas­ant things that real­ly improve your mood and allow you to rest from emo­tion­al swings and a con­tin­u­ous flow of infor­ma­tion.

Body care

Pay­ing atten­tion to one’s own phys­i­cal com­fort will pro­vide more resources for the psy­che, which are need­ed for reflec­tion and expe­ri­enc­ing cur­rent events. Take care of hygiene, even if you don’t have the strength to get out of bed: fresh breath, cold water for wash­ing, aro­mat­ic soap — these lit­tle things will help you get out of the som­nam­bu­la state lit­tle by lit­tle and not expose your own health to addi­tion­al dan­ger.

If you have already dealt with ele­men­tary things and rou­tine, go to the next lev­el. Take some time for self-mas­sage after a bath or show­er, stay in hot water a lit­tle longer than the nec­es­sary min­i­mum, make a face mask or scrub. These small attrib­ut­es of a nor­mal life will help both the body and psy­che to under­stand that life has not stopped, and will also improve the mood. Allow your­self small joys as much as there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for it.

Rest and digital diet

Lim­it your time on social net­works and news feeds. For exam­ple, set aside two “approach­es” for half an hour a day, when you can ful­ly immerse your­self in the info field and mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion. It is bet­ter not to watch the tape right before going to sleep and imme­di­ate­ly after wak­ing up — at these moments the psy­che is more sen­si­tive and vul­ner­a­ble to fakes and over­ly emo­tion­al posts.

Impor­tant­ly: there are sit­u­a­tions and peri­ods when the safe­ty of an indi­vid­ual or his loved ones depends on time­ly infor­ma­tion, or there are impor­tant events in the life of the coun­try and the world. Of course, at such moments, def­i­nite­ly not for dig­i­tal diets! How­ev­er, in more or less calm peri­ods, try to lim­it the time you watch the news.

If you feel that after watch­ing the news, a pan­icky mood and rest­less­ness are grow­ing, start a rou­tine: drink warm tea, breathe fresh air, warm up your body with a few sim­ple exer­cis­es.

Home care

You have prob­a­bly heard the opin­ion that order in the head begins with order around. No mat­ter where you are now — at home, in a hotel abroad, in the vil­lage of rel­a­tives or in the cen­ter of immi­grants — try to add a lit­tle cozi­ness to your cur­rent home. You should start with clean­ing, and then you can move on to pleas­ant lit­tle things. Fluffy slip­pers, soft tow­els, a per­son­al cup with a fun­ny pat­tern — such things do not require a lot of mon­ey, but they will lift your mood every day and add cozi­ness, even if you are not at home.

In addi­tion, clean­ing has a med­i­ta­tive effect on many peo­ple now: it is a very under­stand­able activ­i­ty that dis­tracts from dif­fi­cult thoughts, pro­vides mod­er­ate phys­i­cal exer­tion and pleas­es with a quick and vis­i­ble result. Try it, maybe you sud­den­ly became a new fan of home rou­tine? 🙂 Even if not, a tidy home or a tidy pri­vate cor­ner in a tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion will help you feel much bet­ter.