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What a strange new normal we seem to have found ourselves in! I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones during all this because I am an essential worker-which means my daily routine hasn't changed as drastically as many of yours!
However with that being said my anxiety has taken a huge battering ram to my wellbeing, and I have found myself constantly on edge, or full-on snot crying and hyperventilating. Because I know I am not alone in these feelings I thought it would be nice to share a wee lost of the things that I have been doing in an attempt to distract my overthinking brain.
5 Things I've been doing to keep me sane:
1) Diamond Painting
I fell in love with diamond painting before the world went completely to pot, but it's definitely something that I have been using to relax me since.
Diamond painting is basically just Paint by Numbers but instead of using messy paints, or risking running out of ink before you're finished, you use these tiny little diamantes.
In the end, you are left with a sparkly picture that looks great on the wall or even just in a scrapbook.
They also make great gifts- my mum loved the rainbow kitty cat I made her for mother's day.
There are so many places you can pick these up without leaving the house, like Amazon, eBay, and if you don't mind waiting Wish have 1000s. Here's some I've done recently:
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| Gustav Klimt- The Kiss |
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| Mickey & Minnie Mouse Silhouette Kiss Against a Pink Moon |
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| Starry Night-Van Gogh |
Good old-fashioned no-nonsense colouring books are an excellent way to relax your brain. There is so calming about making sure you don't go over the lines, and if you're anything like me you'll take great pleasure in thinking up all the different colour combinations. Now I know I said "good old-fashioned" at the start of this but I do love a colouring book that some might say is unexpected, which is why I added some wonderfully "ADULT" ones to my Amazon wishlist-which my mum very kindly bought me! I'll add the links for these below [AFF]. This is my favourite page I've coloured so far.
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| Fucked Up Mandala from Shut The Fuck Up Colouring book |
These are the three books that I've been working on the past couple of weeks [AFF]:
3)Relaxing Baths
Look I know we don't need lockdown as an excuse to take a nice relaxing bath, but honestly, it's the perfect excuse for some you time! Especially for the parent's amongst us! Working from home, trying to keep up with online school work, bloody PE with Joe, and constant noise would get on top of even the most laidback person! I have none of those things but there are three of us in this flat and sometimes I just need to be on my own for 20 minutes or so.
Baths are also great if you are in pain which I know I have been a lot more lately. Living with chronic pain has simultaneously prepared me for lockdown life, whilst also making it harder because my condition is directly tied to my anxiety and stress levels. So my baths have been an absolute Godsend!
My ideal bath involves hotter than hell water, Epsom salts, a good bath bomb (preferably Goddess by Lush or Moon Dust by Miss Patisserie), burning incense (I'm having a major White Sage moment right now), some candles, a couple of grounding crystals, and either a good book or a binge-able TV show.
What makes the perfect bath for you?
4) Baking
One look at Twitter or Facebook tells me that I am absolutely not alone in spending my time in the house mixing up yummy things in the kitchen! I've yet to give in to the banana bread craze (but that's mostly because I'm allergic to bananas) but I have been banging out cookies and brownies, and cake on the regular. Or at least I was until every shop in my local area ran out of Muscavado sugar!!
A great thing to come out of this whole situation is that many companies, who have been forced to close, have been adapting and sharing the recipes for their most popular products online. I'm not naive enough to think this is anything other than an attempt to keep them at the forefront of everyone's minds for when they can reopen-but I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when I could be putting my own homemade version of Pret's cookies in my own mouth instead!
5) Rewatching Old Favourites
I don't know about you but when I am in an anxious state I always veer towards home comforts, and things I know really well. So instead of picking up new shows, or sitting down to watch new films, I will pop on something I know like the back of my hand and let the familiarity of it wash over me. It's almost like a reminder of easier times! I'm going to do an actual post on what we've been watching over the last couple of weeks so be sure to check that out!
I will ask this though: what is YOUR happy place movie or TV show? What is the thing you will watch over and over again?
I have been working for most of this lockdown but for the last three weeks I have been on annual leave and these things have been keeping me sane throughout-without them I think I'd be bouncing off the walls for sure!
Ooh and I have a bonus one:
Bonus) Blasting Taylor Swift
There is something about Taylor Swift's music that just calms me right down. Even before all this kicked off I was overplaying Lover on spotify whenever I could. Of course Taylor might not be the one for you, but I promise nothing is more cathartic than picking a really good playlist and just dancing it out!
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