Psychology Today: 6 Calming Strategies for Dark Times

"The news almost always focuses on disasters and crises. News organizations are well-aware that fear keeps viewers engaged.

If the anchor chirps, “Happily today, all the children arrived home safely,” most viewers will shut off the TV and go eat ice cream. So bad news plays non-stop. Bad news guarantees viewers.

Lest you think otherwise, I fully acknowledge there is plenty to fear; there are perilous issues in our world. However, living your life in fear hurts your mental health. Living your life in fear creates anxiety, depression, and panic. Fear also affects our physical health, leaving us more prone to illness, cardiac disease, and cancer.

So, if you would like to reduce fear and embrace calm, here are six strategies to help:

Limit TV/radio news: It is important to be informed, but you don’t need to be informed all day long. Try to keep it to a minimum. Another tip: many people find reading the news to be less jarring.

Listen to music instead: Music fills the air around you with beauty instead of gloomy tragedies. Listening to songs you love will lift your spirits.

Notice the good: Our brains naturally focus on problems and worries. That is how we evolved, and it has kept our species alive. When we dwell too long on negativity, our bodies tense, our cardiac system goes into overdrive, and our immune system shuts down.

Get outside: Walking, breathing, seeing the flowers, and waving at neighbors all bring me joy. Nature grounds us. The enormity of the blue sky, majestic trees, pounding waves, distant mountaintops, all these sights remind us that we are but a small part of a vast and beautiful universe.

Make your garden grow: I don’t mean an actual garden (although gardening is an excellent hobby if you enjoy it). The wisest plan is to tend his own garden, meaning to build a good, meaningful, and healthy life for himself and his wife.

Tending one’s garden does not necessarily mean turning your back on the world. Hopefully, our gardens grow, and we feed each other from what we create.

Embrace hope: Humankind has endured many dark times. People have survived world wars, plagues, enslavement, and many more horrors. We are more resilient than we fear. Hope is what carries us through the darkness. Having hope doesn’t mean pretending that everything is great. It means holding out hope that things can turn out okay someday.

Hope can sound naïve, but the bedrock sustains us when we suffer. Hope fuels our energy to keep pushing on."

Read the full article here!

Reflection:

What are some of the habits that help calm you down?

*I calm down by meditating for a while and later repeating my mantra which is "All things shall pass..". It helps me*

#Calmness #Hope #Stress #EmotionRegulation