What’s helping you survive COVID induced stress?

[AmandaHugenkiss]

Apologies if there has already been a thread on this topic but I couldn’t find one.

It’s been an absolutely awful year, and tonight’s announcement has just made it worse. Personally I’ve been struggling to sleep with stress, and my usual coping mechanisms haven’t worked.

My boss (an amazingly supportive lady) has discussed mindfulness with me and showed me mindfulness jars which her children have been making at school with water and glitter. Amazingly, they help! I’m trying to use it between meetings at work. My jar has purple glitter in it. 😁

I’ve also discovered ASMR which I watch on YouTube to help me sleep. It’s been a god send. It helps me detach from everything whirling in my brain.

What are you doing that’s helping you cope? Yoga, walking, baking? Share your strategy with me please!

Trying to focus on what I have in my life which is actually good. Also, the fact others are in a worse situation to me.

Getting outside
Going to the gym (allowed here)
WhatsApp
Remembering how my Nan must have felt when she was off to do a nightshift in a munitions factory where they could have been bombed, leaving my baby uncle with her sister where they child haves been bombed, and her not knowing if my grandad was alive or dead while he was fighting in the far East.

Digital art. I'm not very good but whilst I am drawing a picture it takes my mind off everything else.

Running, my weighted blanket, St John’s Wort, berocca and vitamin D (the tablets are more for my SAD though so I take them every year, but this year they are especially necessary).

I’ve also discovered ASMR which I watch on YouTube to help me sleep. It’s been a god send. It helps me detach from everything whirling in my brain.

I started listening to the Get Sleepy podcast and absolutely swear by it now, so much so I've just signed up for their premium subscription as I couldn't be without it now. It's saved my sanity when I haven't been able to sleep during lockdowns.

Walking.
Nice food.
Music.
Gratitude.

Knitting
Gardening (well, planning what to do next year)
Listening to the radio (I think Zoe Ball has been brilliant throughout this, wasn't so sure before)
Making chutneys and sloe gin
Getting outside
Chatting to DD
A bit of Whatsapping with friends
Online exercise classes
Avoiding miserable threads on here
Just generally looking for the cheerful and joyful parts of life like dancing round the kitchen to Xmas tunes

Eating, wearing cosy clothes, spending ages and ages perfectly doing my makeup, putting on all my expensive jewellery to wear at home, just cuddling my kids for ages, sorting shit out, reading, jack Daniels, doing hair masks and shit, and constant online shopping

Not bloody DH tonight, that's for fucking sure. He'e been Mr Stress all bloody day and appeared surprised that I got upset when the afternoon's various announcements threw a spanner in our Christmas plans.

On the de-stress side:
Walking and training the dogs
Alcohol
Chocolate

I did the Couch to 5k app during the first lockdown and have kept it up and am running around 5km 3 times a week. It's been one thing that's kept me going - the sense of achievement has been very helpful for my well-being. Also, as someone said earlier, massively lowering my expectations as to what to expect. We don't know what's going to happen or when and I'm fed up of being disappointed and having to cancel plans - it's so much easier not to expect anything and just live day by day...

Alcohol
Baths with fancy products
Escapism fiction
Jogging

Walking
Going to the beach
Mindfulness
Pilates
Hiit
Swimming
Dancing and singing
Going for longer than necessary drives
Baking
Crochet
Spending too much time on my phone
Drinking too much alcohol
Smoking, giving up and then starting again about a million times since March
Coffee
Chocolate
Crisps
All the fucking cheese
Long bubble baths
Reading (when I can concentrate)
Lots of phone/video calls with friends
Letting my toddler listen to cbeebies radio in bed in the morning when I've been up half the night unable to sleep

I've just watched the 2019 version of Little Women and it's totally taken my mind off things.

Honestly I just switched of from it all
I walk
Garden
Read
Declutter
Speak to friends
Face masks
Bubble baths
Make nice food
Hot chocolate

Working all hours.
Sadly my job is covid related & requires me to do media work about covid, but hey ho.

Jigsaw puzzles.

Running (slowly, post C25K)
Hot baths
Cuddles
Podcasts to go to sleep to

When things are really bad and nothing else works, I just take the hit, let myself feel how grim everything is, and then almost physically suck it up and make myself move through it, and start doing something practical and necessary.

@Poorlykitten

Bill and Oti made it better for a brief time....

Yes! Bill and Oti are a little bright patch in a dark year.

What else helps?

Staying positive and actively seeking out the good things (would recommend the good news thread on here)

Eating rubbish and drinking red wine.

Escapism fiction.

Sleeping too much and working too much.

Taking things one day at a time.

How do you make the glitter jars? They sound fabulous.

Ah yes Bill and Oti, so pleased for them.

An hours yoga every morning at 7am - it really helps me connect with the present moment and start every day off on the right foot.

Online shopping-am definitely getting a chemical kick from clicking the buy now button.

2 really long weekly walks, with a friend. 12km today

Having nice candles and skincare and fresh sheets and having a shower every morning.

I've gone from working in an office with an hours commute each way to wfh since March so really make a point of appreciating the little benefits that have arisen from this change - house is cleaner, I see kids in the morning, dd comes home for lunch, kids don't have to go to a minder after school.

Prayer, walks and alcohol.

Sometimes in the reverse order, more fun that way!

Right now? Baileys and Maltesers.

In the summer, it was the flawed belief that things would get better and I genuinely felt that way around August time. Now it's just knowing that I've dragged myself and my family through nine months of shit, I can do it for another nine months at least.

Alcohol to the point of numbing stupidity. Comfortably numb..
Breaks up the other state of screaming horror.

Prozac

Gin, wine, cheese, bubble baths with music blaring and Gok Wan isolation nation and my disco ball