If you want your car to be reliable you have to service and maintain all of its parts – engine, tyres, fuel, inner and outer parts etc.
Imagine you are a machine and none of the parts of this machine are maintained or looked after well. This machine is overworking every day. It is inevitable that eventually it will break down. We are a human machine, and depression can occur when that machine has broken down. You may be maintaining one aspect of your human machine or none. To ensure you do not break down you have to be maintaining all aspects of yourself. These are physical, emotional, mental and social.
Physical: it is common knowledge that we should be having regular exercise and eating healthily. The hardest part is switching the knowing to the doing. Do this by taking baby steps. If you cannot get to the gym, then grab your coat and go for a short walk for 10 minutes. Next day build it up to 15 minutes and so on. Walk on the spot as you watch TV. Run up and down the stairs. Anything that will get you moving briskly at regular intervals in the day.
If you cannot manage three healthy meals, aim for one a day and then build from there. Or commit to drinking more water or cutting down on alcohol and caffeine. All these steps will nourish your physical body and increase your limited store of energy.
Emotional: It is easy to overlook the tirade of emotions that are felt as you are battling with the practicalities and the multiple demands on you that a crisis brings. The most common ones are sadness, anger, hurt, guilt, frustration, fear, uncertainty, confusion, disappointment and helplessness.
Imagine a bottle within you filling up with some of these emotions since the critical event. Is your bottle full? If so, how are you going to empty it.? The easiest way of doing this is by writing out how you are feeling every day. You can write unsent letters to the people concerned with the emotions or imagine they are sitting in an empty chair and verbalising your feelings at them. Both these techniques will help you to ‘empty’ your emotional bottle safely and without any repercussions from those people. Doing this everyday will ensure it does not fill up again.
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Mental: With lots of things to attend to, your mind would be racing and on overdrive. It is important to calm and slow it down. Find solitude in your day a few times and practice breathing and mindfulness.
These are covered in my two books – ‘Stress to Success in 28 Days’ and ‘Stress to Success Stories’.
Social: Make sure you speak to someone from your circle of family and friends every day. It may not be for any practical help but just so as you feel connected with other people and the outside world. Strike a conversation with someone in the park or in the shopping queue. Instead of withdrawing from the world, be proactive in staying in touch and having regular human face to face connection.
It is pertinent to have a holistic approach to your self-care where mind, body, spirit, and relationships are nurtured equally and frequently for optimum health, energy and presence of mind. Otherwise, there is a risk of our human machine, faltering and breaking down eventually.
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Hansa Pankhania is an acclaimed author and renowned coach and speaker on wellbeing, stress prevention and resilience. In this exclusive column, she will be presenting cost-free, simple, natural coping tips that can be integrated in a busy routine at home and at work to sustain a stress-free, joyful and successful life.