How to Maintain Your Mental Health While Working From Home
While many people enjoy the ability to work from home regularly since the start of the pandemic, it can be highly stressful for many others. The combination of feeling isolated from coworkers, on top of their friends and family, as well as the added stress of trying to chase down information and updates on projects can add up over time.
This is why many employers are beginning to realize the importance of promoting resources and tips to help improve their staff's mental health in various ways. If you've found that you're more depressed or stressed out from working at home, you can use these tried and true methods for improving your mental health.
The Vicious Cycle of No Sleep-Stress
There is a strong connection between how much sleep you get, and how much stress you feel. This has been true even for people who do not necessarily have a high amount of stress coming from external sources. When you don't get enough sleep, you start to feel more stressed and anxious, making you less likely to be able to get a good night's sleep.
If this sounds familiar to you, you need to start doing whatever it takes to get a better sleep. Taking sleeping pills, cutting out caffeine, exercising regularly, stop eating junk food, use noise cancelling earplugs, buy a weighted blanket, or try delta 8 CBD supplements. Once you start getting better sleep, you will notice that your mental health will improve significantly.
Never Underestimate the Value of Exercise
There is also a well known connection between exercising regularly and your mental health. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins, which help induce a sense of happiness and euphoria. This is sometimes called the "runner's high". Exercising regularly helps keep those hormone levels higher, which can also help suppress or overpower the hormones that more negatively affect your mental health.
In an indirect way, exercising regularly helps by removing smaller sources of stress that can pile on top of your work-related anxiety. It improves your health, your self-confidence in how you look and feel, and helps cut down on health issues like pain, fatigue, and weight gain.
The Hidden Potential of Meditation
A newer method for improving your mental health is meditation. More specifically, mindfulness meditation has a growing amount of evidence that practicing it regularly can act like exercise for your brain.
One study found that practicing mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helped prevent relapses in depression as effectively as taking antidepressant medication. Mindfulness meditation can also help reduce regular stress and anxiety, as well as better manage diagnosed issues like clinical anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is something you can combine with yoga, or practice once per day. This practice trains your mind to not pay as much attention to external sources of stress.
It's important to note that while the above three methods can have a positive impact on your mental health, you can combine them to get the best possible improvement to your mental health. If you are facing a mental health crisis, always seek out professional help to get you into a better place mentally. These tips will help you manage your mental health so you don't reach your breaking point.
