Stress, anxiety, depression and poor mental health are being talked about in the media, and among your peers and all over social media a lot more during this 3rd lockdown. The good side of that is that people are talking about it. the bad side is that we are having to think about how we feel so much more than ever without the necessary skills to navigate the pitfalls of doing it too much.

When you hear that we are all struggling over and over it is easy to just believe that you should feel that way too or to check ourselves and how we feel way more than before. That sudden increase in introspection is going to bring up uncomfortable feelings that can be unfamiliar, make us question if we are having normal feelings or if this is a “mental” issue. We can start to believe that feeling low is our M.O. and forget that it always was, a part of us anyway, and that we always flowed between feeling happy, sad, elated, disappointed, fearful, calm, overwhelmed and many other states of mood that we didn’t examine and focus on, they passed and we were mostly unaffected by them.

What we do when we focus on a negative emotion can be to freeze in that state, overthink it and it takes more than ever to get us out of that temporary mood or thought process. If we didn’t have the skill set to work with our tougher feelings before we won’t learn them easily when they become so much bigger in our minds now that we are looking at them. I don’t think suppressing feeling is good in most cases but it is good to realise that what you feel is normal, going to pass and can be a good thing in the long run. If we are given the opportunity to express our feeling to a professional, like you would if it was a pain in your chest, you can negotiate this period with at least a view of how to feel about your feelings. Which is often not how we think we should.

Uncertainty, change of career, lifestyle, more time to introspect, fear of the future, loss of position, less outdoor time and watching negative media can all cause introspection to become a negative experience so some good advice is to learn new ways of thinking, gaining other perspectives and studying human behavior. There is so much information out there so check your sources. Take action! Learn what makes you, you! Absorb yourself in information that gives you an idea or understanding that your moods and impulses, fears and hopes are really normal human behavior and you are going to be fine. A therapist online or in person can do this for you, it’s a big part of what some of them do, normalise our feelings, which is such a relief.

Chat to any of the team via email or book a short telephone chat with Dr Alvina Grosu to asses which style of therapy/therapist might work best for you.

View and book here. thenaturalclinic.ie