Getting enough exercise can sometimes be difficult. You may have trouble fitting it into your schedule or finding the motivation on a cold and rainy day. It can be particularly difficult to get the motivation to get up and get active if you are feeling depressed or down. Around one in five Dutch people suffer from depression once in their lifetime. Nevertheless, various studies show that exercise has a positive effect on your mood. Furthermore, it has shown that people who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from symptoms of mental illness, such as depression or anxiety. 

Exercise against depression

Many studies have shown that exercise can be a protective factor against depression. Those who exercise regularly have a lower chance of being depressed. Studies have even shown that exercising can reduce symptoms of depression, comparable to therapy or antidepressants. 

Exercise does not only directly influence your mood, but also can be very beneficial indirectly. Think about making a new friend at your local sports team, or getting some fresh air and sunlight during your lunchtime walk, or even working off your stress and anxieties at the local gym. In addition, people who exercise more often feel better about themselves. They are more confident and have a more positive self-image, compared to those people who do little exercise. 

Positive effects on your body and mind

We have all heard how exercise is good for our physical health. Exercise for example ensures that our respiratory system and blood circulation function well. It strengthens our immune system and can help to form a good sleeping pattern.

What you may not realise however is how exercise is beneficial for our brain and stimulates the growth of nerve cells in the brain, which improves your ability to learn. 

What’s more, exercise has been shown to reduce inflammation in the body. This is good news because there is increasing evidence linking inflammation with depression and anxiety. 

Finally, there is evidence that exercise boosts neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) such as serotonin and endorphins which have a positive effect on our mood and motivation. All these factors can contribute to boosting your mood, motivation and mental health, and in turn, also reinforce each other. For example, a good workout in the sun boosts your mood and motivation, making it more likely that you’ll go out and exercise again. This creates a positive vicious cycle instead of a negative one.

Make it a habit

It is important to make exercise a habit. The sooner you make it a habit, the quicker you will notice the benefits and the easier it will become. Evidence seems to suggest that even small amounts of exercise can make a difference, for example going for a 15-minute jog. 

Exercise doesn’t only mean playing for your local sports team or going to the gym. Exercise can be done in many forms, even for example through household chores or cycling to work.  It is important that you choose a form of exercise that suits you best. Participating in a sport or taking up exercise that you enjoy, can make each day a little better and easier.

Ask or challenge a friend

All types of exercise appear to have a beneficial effect on people’s mental, physical and emotional health, and the benefits of adding it to your daily routine cannot be understated. Do you have trouble fitting exercise into your schedule? It can also help you, for example, to meet up with a friend and exercise together. Having your friend come with you can provide that extra bit of motivation to get active. 

You can use the NiceDay app to see how many steps you take each day. Switch on the pedometer and challenge your friends, family or colleagues to see who can take the most steps.

Don’t forget that small steps can go a long way!

Christmas is coming! Although it should contribute to happiness and peace on earth, it is mostly causing stress. Crowdy shops, forced politeness towards your family and preparing Christmas dinner. Let’s do it different this year! We will give you some tips.

Your family
Family members asking you whether you already made a promotion at work, if you are dating someone or live in a decent place already. It will only make you feel worse. It is not pleasant when your family is rubbing it in when you’re not feeling well. But keep in mind that they mean well, they probably only ask because they feel like they should. Prepare what you are going to answer and ask questions yourself. By asking questions you will shift the focus away from yourself.

Christmas presents
It seems like it gets more and more difficult every year, what kind of presents should you buy?! So many products, yet so little choice: we already have everything! However, you do want to give a little something to the people you care about. But isn’t it even more fun to give a voucher? You can spend as much money as you want, but experiences are priceless. Watch a movie with your dad, have an afternoon tea with you mother and take a weekend trip with your partner. Nice for the receiver and for yourself!

Christmas dinner
Are you the host of this year’s dinner? Then take it easy: Keep the mains simple and add little snacks, like Christmas bon bons and appetizers. Choose meals you can prepare the day before, like soups, vegetable curries and Christmas cake. Next to that, the supermarkets offer a lot of ready-made dishes which you would not even notice coming straight from the shelves. Scroll through Pinterest for some extra inspiration.  

Escape the crowd
Why not start Christmas shopping now! Webshops will be so overburdened, you will probably not have your last minute present in time. The shops are getting emptier and emptier and the crowd will not make you feel any better. Do not do it to yourself, be prepared. And why not: buy some stuff for next year too.

Be happy
Christmas brings so much fuss, but in the end it is all about being happy. Try to set all of your problems aside and enjoy the moment. Enjoy the people around you and be thankful for what you have. At Christmas life will be on hold for a while!

Glimmers of light: sometimes big, sometimes small. If they are there, that is your call.

Goals: Are you suffering from (extra) stress during the Christmas season? Write down your feelings in the ‘Feel Goal’, describe what caused the stress and find out how to solve it.

Discovering new places, meeting new people and accepting new challenges. It might feel exciting for some, but scary for others. We’re usually not very fond of change. When something changes we want to have as much control over the situation as possible. But why do we dislike change this much? Why do new things make us feel anxious?

Routine

People like routine. Our lives revolve around routine, because it causes as little stress as possible. Fixed bed times, fixed lunch times; it helps us to go about our day without having to think about it. Not having to think about it will cost you less energy. Beside, your body gets used to the stimuli you receive during these fixed moments. In short, life is easier when every day is the same!

Change

It costs time and energy to get used to a new situation. New situations bring unexpected challenges like meeting new people or having to do things you haven’t done before. It requires adaptability and responsiveness. Because you don’t know what to expect, the chance that something will go wrong might feel a lot bigger. In addition, new situations can cause a certain amount of fear; being in a new situation means having less control, which can feel be uncomfortable.

Worst case scenario

It is completely natural that you might experience some anxiety in new situations. However, when you feel anxious your body is preparing itself for danger. This causes you to prepare for the worst and possibly makes you worry about all kinds of things. Since you are the only one you have any control over, you will probably start worrying about yourself: Am I making the right decisions? Have I prepared enough? What if I do something weird? How long am I going to drive myself crazy with these thoughts?

Chill out!

Instead of trying to predict the future, try taking a look at the past! How did you handle new situations in the past? How did that turn out? What was your first day of elementary school or high school like? How was the first day at a new job, your first love or your first car? It probably took some time to get used to, but eventually it turned out fine. We tend to underestimate our adaptability. And don’t forget, others will understand how difficult change can be. Don’t be shy to ask a little help if you’re new and still adapting. Everyone will understand you can’t hit a perfect score on your first day. Take some time!

NiceDay

Do you have a big change coming up? Why don’t you try filling in a “Thought record” in the NiceDay app? Describe your worst scenario and see how challenging your thought in step 2 and 3 make you feel.

Do you feel anxious a lot and want to learn how to let go? Have a look at this blog, where Esther explains how you can easily learn to meditate.

Anxiety can be an unpleasant, uncomfortable, and sometimes scary experience.  Nevertheless, it has the important job of protecting us from perceived danger and therefore is an emotion we all experience from time to time. What can happen, particularly if you are suffering from an anxiety disorder such as panic disorder and generalised anxiety disorder, is that you become anxious or fearful of the anxiety itself, leaving you stuck in a vicious cycle. In this article, I hope to clearly explain this cycle, how it emerges and explain some of the things you can do to break it. 

Anxiety response 

Anxiety is a normal psychological and physiological response humans have in reaction to a perceived threat. Its function is to prepare us to respond to threats and reduce potential harm.

Physical symptoms

Physical symptoms characteristic of anxiety preparing our body for ‘fight or flight’ can include:

• heartbeat racing
• sweating
• feeling tense
• feeling dizzy or light-headed
• increased breathing or hyperventilating.

Psychological and behavioural symptoms

There are also psychological and behavioural symptoms that occur as a result of anxiety that help us deal with the threat:

• You begin to engage in negative thinking (catastrophizing).
• You worry or ruminate about the potential threat. You try to come up with possible solutions.
• You will monitor and pay attention to the potential threat to avoid danger.  
• You will try to control, remove or flee the threat. 

When there is a real threat in our environment these responses can be very helpful in solving problems or minimising the danger. However, when the ‘threat’ is anxiety itself, these responses can lead to more harm than help and can lead to you feeling stuck in a vicious cycle. Take a look at the one illustrated below:

Sourche: the vicious anxiety cycle – medium.com

Anxiety resistance

In some cases you may begin to fear the anxiety itself; you experience anxiety about anxiety symptoms. This can e.g. be a result of not understanding anxiety properly because you have had a scary or negative experience with anxiety. Or because you experience anxiety frequently. For example, after suffering a panic attack which can be frightening and overwhelming, you can begin to fear the symptoms you’ve experienced during the anxiety or the panic attack.

Your brain then treats anxiety and anxiety symptoms as a ‘threat’. As a result, your brain and body respond accordingly:  

• You begin to catastrophize and worry about the anxiety. For example, you may have thoughts such as ‘’all this anxiety is going to drive me crazy’’, ‘’I am going to experience a heart attack’’ or ‘’I am going to lose control’’. Leading to even more anxiety.
• You begin to monitor for anxiety and check whether you are experiencing any symptoms, putting all your attention on your symptoms. 
• You try to control or get rid of anxiety. For example by avoiding situations which make you anxious or carrying out behaviour or rituals which make you feel safer. In this way, you do not learn that it is okay to experience anxiety.
• You may ruminate on what caused the anxiety and any future problems you may face because of the anxiety. 

Unfortunately as a result of your anxious response to the anxiety and putting so much focus and effort on it, your anxiety only increases and it reinforces the idea that the anxiety is a ‘threat’. Your brain will treat it accordingly, leaving you stuck in a vicious cycle of anxiety about anxiety, only making things worse.

You can break the cycle!

To break the cycle you can teach your brain that anxiety is not a threat by changing the way you respond to anxiety. By your brain no longer viewing anxiety as a ‘threat’, it will eventually get used to the experience of anxiety (normal response), start filtering it out and get ‘bored’ of it. So what can you do? 

• Challenge your negative or catastrophic thoughts about anxiety. Anxiety will not drive you crazy or kill you. You can try reassuring yourself with more neutral realistic thoughts. 
• Exposure, exposure, exposure. By exposing yourself to anxiety, anxiety symptoms or scary situations, you slowly learn that anxiety does not harm you and that the tension eventually will decrease.
• Practise acceptance and letting go of control using Mindfulness. Paradoxically trying to control or avoid anxiety often has the effect of only making it worse, especially in the long run. Practising mindfulness can help you to be aware of your negative thoughts and emotions non-judgmentally and experience them for what they are.  

Professional help

Do you experience fear of anxiety, or do you identify with the vicious cycle above? Professional support can make it easier to break through this cycle and practise the exercises above. See here for more information on treatment with NiceDay. 

Now that corona seems to be under control, another major and unpredictable event is taking place: the war in Ukraine. The war creates a certain threat that we have no control over. You don’t know what is going to happen and this creates uncertainty and can cause anxiety. Because nobody has complete certainty about anything, it is difficult to let go. This can all weigh very heavy on you. You can compare it to a bucket of water that is slowly running over. It isn’t strange if you’re starting to notice your bucket is flooding. Luckily, there are several ways to empty your bucket and I’ll tell you how!

Focus on you

In uncertain and stressful times it is extra important to take good care of yourself. This means eating healthy, getting enough sleep and exercising enough. If you’re feeling stressed your body produces the hormone cortisol. In short term, cortisol is very useful; it helps us survive. But if you’re stressed for a longer period of time, the high amount of cortisol can cause an imbalance. Exercise helps your body to produce all sorts of happy hormones, such as endorphins. Endorphins attack cortisol, which causes you to feel less stressed or rushed. So, exercise will make you feel less stressed!

Relaxation

Next to getting enough exercise, also make sure you get enough relaxation. To get more rest mentally and physically you can try breathing exercises. When you feel anxious, your breathing goes up which produces a lot of adrenaline. This makes you feel rushed. When you slow down your breathing, you automatically calm your body and mind.

Talk about it

Talking about your feelings is also a form of self-care. You don’t have to deal with all your worries alone. What is happening in the world right now affects us all. And because of that, you are not alone. People are social beings and this means we need each other. Find someone you can trust and talk about what keeps you up at night.

Distance

Knowing what goes on in the world is good. But at the same time, it is important to allow yourself to take a step back. Watching the news can cause you a lot of stress. Limit the amount of time you spend watching or reading the news to one moment per day. Try to select one source to get your information from and make sure it is a reliable source. There is a lot of fake news and misinformation going around and this is often clickbait, which will only strengthen your feelings of anxiety.

Decide upon when you want to watch the news. My advice is to avoid watching the news in the mornings and evenings. This will prevent you from having a stressful, and possibly, negative start and end of your day. When you watch the news at night, you increase the chance that you will take it to bed, which can lead to sleeping problems.

Control

We have little to no control over the situation in Ukraine or any other countries that are at war. This can result in feelings of powerlessness. Luckily there is something you can do! You can participate in fundraising campaigns for people who have fled Ukraine or donate money to Giro 555 for example. There are many ways to still contribute.

Find help if necessary

Know that what you’re feeling is okay. I hope the above tips will give you some relief. But if you’re looking for more support, you can always visit your doctor for a referral to a psychologist. You don’t have to do this alone!

Your mind is constantly racing with thoughts. Whatever you do, your thoughts follow you everywhere, commenting on your next move. Take a moment by yourself, or take a short walk around the block and notice how your thoughts constantly have something to say. Making judgements about yourself and others, informing you, telling you what to do next, among other things. When you’re greatly affected by your thoughts or always take them as ‘truth’, they can become overwhelming and can even impact your mental health. For example, it can contribute to anxiety or depression. By defusing our thoughts we can reduce the impact they have on us. In this blog, I will talk about what thought defusion is and how you can practise it. 

Defusion

Fusing with your thoughts is when you’re not able to see the difference between you and your thoughts. We take our thoughts for reality and find it difficult to see another perspective. 

Defusing from our thoughts is a concept from ACT. It means creating a distance between yourself and your thoughts and learning to detach from thoughts, memories and ideas. Instead of always seeing the world through or from your thoughts, you look at your thoughts. Instead of letting them push you around and taking ‘hold’ of you, you see them for what they are; nothing more than words or pictures in our mind. 

Stress

Often our thoughts are useful and help us to solve problems, or protect us from danger. It is no wonder they have become such an important and influential function. Nonetheless, sometimes they are not helpful and cause undue stress. For example, think about anxious thoughts you might have in anticipation of something that makes you feel nervous, like “I am going to embarrass myself”. Or thoughts you might have after making a mistake, such as “I am such a stupid person”. By recognizing thoughts for what they are and distancing yourself from them, you can respond to them accordingly. You can identify whether these thoughts are helpful or even realistic.

Think of yourself as the sky and your thoughts as clouds passing by, or of changes in the weather or climate. Notice how your thoughts also float by just like clouds, some move faster than others and may take different sizes and forms, but the sky always remains the same in the background.

Practising defusion

Right now, you may think this is easier said than done! Nevertheless, there are a few small exercises you can put into practise each day to help you defuse your thoughts. Remember it may be difficult at first, but practise will help it to come more naturally and easier to apply in your daily life.

• Regularly take a moment to step back. Notice your thoughts, and ask yourself if the thought you are having is helpful. Does this thought help the situation? How is this thought making me feel? 
• Try saying a thought that is causing you distress out loud. You can practise this by saying it in a silly voice, or impersonating someone famous. You can even try singing it! How does it feel hearing your thoughts like this? What impact does it have?
• Practise mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to being in the present moment and observing non-judgmentally. Practising mindfulness regularly can help to foster defusion. You can read more about mindfulness here and find an exercise that best suits you. Headspace also has a lot of useful exercises. 

Still a little confused how defusing your thoughts can help? This video explains the concept of defusion with the help of a Sushi train!

Mental illnesses may seem like a rarity, but they are more common than you think, mainly because they are often invisible. They include, for example, depression, anxiety disorders, addiction or eating disorders. You might hold the door for someone in a wheelchair, but mental illnesses aren’t usually as visual. A mental illness can go hand in hand with a decreased quality of life. Daily life is more difficult for you and you can feel very little or no motivation to get up and do something. As a result, people withdraw and isolate themselves.

Mental illnesses have a huge impact on a person’s life, that’s a fact. But does this also mean that people with a mental illness can no longer do anything or that their lives come to a standstill? No, certainly not! You can be living with a mental illness, but still, have a good life. I’ll tell you how with these few tips.

Tip 1: Be aware of the three basic elements every day

Sleep, nutrition and exercise are the three basic elements of life. When one of these elements is out of balance, you’ll notice in both your physical and mental health. So, it’s important to make this a real priority in your life! Not used to paying a lot of attention to these three elements? Start with small steps; for example, go to bed around the same time every day and get up at the same time every day. Eat a healthy and varied meal three times a day, and make sure you go outside and take a walk every day (even if it’s only for 10 minutes!).

Tip 2: Stay in touch!

When you suffer from mental illness, you may tend to isolate and cut yourself off from your environment. You may feel that you are a burden to your environment, or think that you are protecting those around you by isolating yourself. But please know that the opposite is true! How would you feel if your close friend or family member was going through a rough time? Would you want your friend or brother to reach out to you, or would you rather have them withdraw and be alone? Companionship can bring you so much. Mental illness doesn’t go away the moment you talk about it with someone you trust, but it does relieve the pain. You feel heard and supported; that’s what it’s about.

It can also help to contact people that are also going through a mental illness. This helps you feel understood because you come into contact with people who are going through or have gone through the same thing as you. This makes you feel less alone.

Tip 3. Psycho-education

By reading psycho-education you gain more information about mental illness and the associated complaints. Try to read as much information as possible; the more you know, the better you understand yourself. Write down what your current complaints are and what you recognize from the information you read. On niceday.app you can find several libraries, where you can find and read information about several mental illnesses. Feel free to take a look there!

Tip 4. Avoid narcotics

A glass of wine or a joint before going to sleep; in the short term it might seem to ease the pain, but in the long term (or the next day) you will feel more miserable than ever. When it comes to drinking alcohol, the term “hangxiety” may sound familiar to you. With hangxiety, a combination of a hangover and anxiety, you not only suffer from nausea but you can also be overcome by fear, excessive worrying or even panic attacks. Alcohol and drugs can amplify existing psychological problems (and can cause them), so my advice is to stay away from them.

Tip 5. Get out of your head.

You have about 40,000 thoughts every day. Especially if you are someone who worries a lot, you probably notice that the thoughts keep piling up. This causes you to feel uneasy. Writing is a great way to get out of your head. Put your thoughts on paper and look at them from a distance. Writing ensures that you learn to look at your thoughts or situation from a different perspective, literally and figuratively. In addition, writing down your thoughts on paper or in an app helps you to put them down afterwards and to let go of your thoughts more easily.

Give these tips a try and observe the effect it has on you. It is important to give yourself some time to absorb all of the tips.

Psychological help

If you notice that these tips don’t help you and/or if you notice that your situation is deteriorating, please don’t hesitate to contact your doctor. They will make sure you get the help you need. Would you like to know more about a treatment via NiceDay? You can do this at several mental health care organisations, click here for more information.

Good luck!

People that struggle with illness anxiety disorder or health anxiety (formerly known as hypochondriasis) are continuously scared of having a terrible disease such as cancer. Ordinary feelings that you might experience in your body like a cramp, a little lump, or an itch, are a confirmation that something is wrong and that it is time to panic. Symptoms such as a headache, a sore throat, a muscle strain, or coughing are quickly seen as severe or even deadly diseases. Even after visiting a doctor to check up on these symptoms, the fear of having a serious disease remains. People with an illness anxiety disorder are looking for reassurance, but often don’t find it. This can have a worsening effect on their fear.

Recognizing illness anxiety disorder

How can you recognize illness anxiety disorder:

• an unusual amount of attention towards ordinary symptoms
• constantly worrying about having a possible disease (for at least 6 months consecutively)
• avoiding or obsessively looking up information about diseases
• spending a lot of time on checking your body, and developing preventive behaviour such as washing your hands and avoiding sick people or hospitals
• regularly visiting a doctor, not believing the doctor’s advice, or avoiding the doctor out of fear for diagnosis 
• asking for a complete body check-up, like scans or even operations
• exaggerating the effects of an actual disease

Symptoms

At times when the anxiety predominates and a panic attack arises, people experience the following symptoms:

• palpitations
• shortness of breath
• tingling or a numb sensation
• a dry mouth, nausea, an upset stomach, vomiting or diarrhea
• headaches, flushed cheeks, or fainting
• the sense of not knowing who or where you are
• a feeling of losing control, losing your mind, or dying

Panic attacks are one of the core symptoms of illness anxiety disorder. The problem is that these ‘regular’ symptoms of panic attacks could be perceived as symptoms of serious diseases. The fear of diseases often goes hand in hand with feelings of gloom or depression. People feel dispirited and helpless. They assume the worst, although they rarely dare to say it out loud.

Where does the fear come from?

In some families, anxiety disorders are quite common, but it isn’t exactly clear why. Anxiety disorders seem to be hereditary. However, the way someone deals with feelings of fear and physical symptoms seems to have been taught. Upbringing, education, and experiences in the past have a part in this.

Treatment

An illness anxiety disorder can be treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy, a proven effective treatment. Over two-thirds of the people with a fear of disease benefit from this method, sometimes in combination with medication. During this treatment, the focus is on confronting the feelings and symptoms in the body, without doing body checkups or asking for reassurance.

Therapy can also exist from:

• relaxation and breathing techniques
• learning to put thoughts about diseases in perspective
• learning and reading about their condition, self-help literature
• informational meetings

NiceDay

Are you or do you know someone who is constantly living in fear of having a serious or life-threatening disease? Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Visit your local doctor for advice or a referral to a psychologist. Or click here for more information about treatment via NiceDay at various mental health institutions.

Here you can read our psycho-education about dealing with illness anxiety disorder.

Your thoughts are incredibly powerful! Think about the placebo effect; if you think you’re receiving medicine that works it can make you feel better, without it being medicine. But this also works the other way around; if you’re having anxious thoughts in certain situations, these thoughts can make you feel even more anxious. They will alert your body to go into an alert state, and you might end up in a vicious circle that is difficult to step out of. Your thoughts affect your body and how you feel.

Positive affirmations

To train your mind to look at situations and challenges more positively, affirmations can help. Affirmations are short sentences or statements that you repeat to yourself (preferably aloud) every day. Maybe you already do this unconsciously, for example by saying “I can do this” to yourself in a difficult situation. But also think of phrases like “I am enough” or “I am strong enough to carry on”. It can be anything! It may feel a bit crazy at first to say this out loud to yourself, but know that you can be your cheerleader! After all, you would also say this to a friend, right? Then why not say it to yourself! And, the more you say this to yourself, the more you believe it. That is the power of your thoughts.

Your anxious thoughts against a positive affirmation

When you notice anxious thoughts arise in certain situations, you can write those down for yourself to gain more insight into them. For example, anxious thoughts at work such as “Others can do this better than me”, or “I’ll never be as good at my job as my colleague”. Or, when you’re in the supermarket “I’m going to have a panic attack”, or “I’m going crazy”. To counter those thoughts you can use a positive affirmation. This can help you the next time you’re in a similar situation. 

When you practice positive affirmations, your anxious thoughts and feelings won’t suddenly disappear and they don’t have to. All you’re feelings are valid. Precisely by feeling them, you create space to use your affirmations.

Examples of affirmations for anxiety

• I can handle this situation

• I am strong enough to work on my anxiety

• I will be brave today

• I know anxiety is temporary

• The anxiety will pass

• I trust that I can do this

• I feel calm and relaxed

• I have proven I can do this before

• I will let go of my negative thoughts

• I am grateful that I can am moving forward in my recovery

• Through my brave efforts, I keep getting further

• I make room for relaxation in my life

Tips when using affirmations

• Choose the affirmations that give you strength and that make you feel something. Those are probably the most helpful for you!
• Write down your affirmations and hang them in plain sight or turn on a daily reminder in NiceDay.
• Each time you see your affirmation, speak it out loud to yourself for the greatest effect.
• Formulate your affirmations positively and avoid words like “no”, “not”, “none” or “never”. Your brain does not recognize these words. The thought “I’m not having a panic attack” might still make you anxious. It is better to use “I can handle this situation”. 

NiceDay

Are you ready to get started with affirmations? Choose an affirmation that gives you strength and set a daily reminder in NiceDay with the affirmation in the title, so that you are often reminded of this. Download the NiceDay-app here.

Life is full of changes and they come in many forms. We can experience changes at our workplace, such as a promotion, in our relationships, such as a breakup or a pregnancy or changes in our mental or physical health. All of which, positive or negative, can be difficult and stressful to process at first. Have you ever noticed how big transitional periods in our life are often associated with anxiety or fear? Think about moving out from your parents for the first time, or starting a new job in a new workplace.

Sometimes we know changes are going to happen and actively work towards them. But, sometimes they may come as a shock or surprise and we may not be able to directly control the consequences. A very real and relevant example of this is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The changes in society we have all had to undertake have come as a shock, with very little time for us to adjust to the new rules. By learning how to better cope and process change, you will reduce your chance of suffering from anxiety or depression. 

Below are 4 tips to reduce the stress associated with big changes and advice on how you can better process and adapt to change.

1. Acknowledge your feelings

Often change comes with some form of loss and leaving behind what we are familiar with can be stressful. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that a lot of people have lost their jobs! Furthermore, a graduation or a divorce may mean that you lose some of your social circle. Acknowledge these feelings and give them space, it is normal to feel sad even if the change is ‘positive’. Take some time to reflect, and allow yourself time to adjust to the changes. It can be helpful to write down your feelings, or ask your friends and family for support and practise some self-care. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it. 

2. Assess the situation

Sometimes we get ‘stuck’ and ruminate on things that we have no control over, wishing that they were different. In the long run this only causes more pain and distress. Instead, try to focus on the things that you can control. Look at what aspects you can change to improve the situation for yourself, and search for the new opportunities that may have arisen. Be proactive in the right areas. Accepting the new situation and its associated stress, and focusing on things we can change, can give us feelings of empowerment. 

3. Change your perspective

When undergoing stress or loss, you may have a lot of negative thoughts running through your mind. In moments of uncertainty, our brain usually defaults to a negative perspective. In the past this was probably evolutionary advantageous! Be aware and actively critical of these thoughts, try to challenge them. Often negative thoughts cause more undue stress than is necessary. With a bit of practice you can learn to change these thoughts into more accurate and helpful thoughts. Try to focus not on what you have lost, but on what you have gained. This may take some time so be patient with yourself, remember that processing change is a gradual process!

4. Find a routine

It can be helpful to keep to a routine. A routine can reduce uncertainty and increase feelings of familiarity, helping you to feel more comfortable and relaxed. For example, going for a run every evening can give you an ‘anchor’. It will give your brain an opportunity to rest and recuperate. Finding something that you are familiar with and made you feel good in the past, can be a good way to deal with negative feelings associated with change. 

NiceDay

Big changes in life often come with stress and anxiety, this is normal. But, they can also be a great opportunity for self-growth, learning and experience. If you need help processing a big change don’t hesitate to contact the NiceDay team, we will gladly support you with this process!