Spill's Guide to Coping with Current Events

This post was written by Spill, a startup providing mental health support to organisations - By Graham Landi, Spill Counsellor

👉🏽The non-stop news cycles available to us every day can be overwhelming. This year, there continues to be a stream of unsettling news stories that can impact us in many ways. Mental health support providers, Spill, asked one of their therapists Graham to set out some practical approaches that may help.

Just as we seem to have moved past the worst days of Covid we find ourselves facing the uncertainty of a number of events impacting communities across the world. For many of us trying to maintain some semblance of emotional balance is being stretched to its limits.

Inevitably, we’re going to be affected by these events occupying our minds, work-related or not, so here are some ideas to help navigate through these difficult times.

📰 News & Socials

You'll be lucky to hear much that lifts your spirits in the news at the moment so limit your exposure to it in order to regain some emotional strength.

I check once in the morning and once in the evening. If anything I need to know about happens in between I know I'll hear about it.

No good will come from constant analysis of a situation nobody can accurately read.

Don't let yourself spend too much time on social media either because the randomness of posts can actually be quite triggering if you're watching someone make a pizza in a sandwich toaster one moment and then seeing tanks roll through city streets the next.

Be kind to yourself and avoid overstimulation.

❓ Certainty

We all want certainty but there isn't any. It's worth remembering this.

If we can accept that uncertainty is all there is, we find ourselves able to manage much more easily.

Rather than focusing on what might happen and what could result, remind yourself that if any of us had been told what was coming at us with Covid in late 2019 we would all have been thrown into a panic, and yet here we are, still going.

Think about all the challenges you’ve already met and overcome in your life. We're all more resilient than we realise.

💙 Acceptance

One of the most powerful and effective ways of dealing with uncomfortable emotions is to accept them.

Let yourself feel what you feel without trying to push it down or away.

The more you resist the more powerful fear and sadness become.

Sit with your emotions and let them wash across you. It will become evident that whilst they can be intensely uncomfortable they will not harm you. Realising this will take some of the sting away.

As ridiculous as it sounds it's often worth setting aside specific time to worry about the things that make you anxious (just 15 minutes will do). I refer to it as "worrying on your terms" because it prevents so many intrusive and anxious thoughts from hijacking you when you are busy with other things.

💊 Destructive Soothing

It's easy when we feel emotionally strung out to start soothing ourselves in ways that are unhelpful.

Eating junk food, not getting enough sleep, preferring to stay up late watching TV or gaming, drinking too much, recreational drug use, can all seem like an attractive haven to help us feel comforted when in reality they will increase underlying anxiety.

Remind yourself of the principles of good self-care. They will see you through.

• Eat healthily and regularly
• Take proper breaks
• Keep sensible and healthy boundaries between work and personal time
• Get enough rest and sleep
• Stay in touch with your friends and family
• Get outside for some exercise every day
• Maintain the healthy interests in your life that bring you joy

✍️ Journaling

If you are finding it hard to get started with the day because your head always seems full of anxious and difficult thoughts try this.

Every morning as soon as you wake up, write three pages in a notebook you keep by your bed.

Your writing doesn't have to make particular sense. It's just you dumping out onto the page whatever it is that is in your head.

Don't worry about the language you use, the punctuation, the spelling, or the flow. None of this matters.

Do it every day for a couple of weeks and see what impact it has on your anxiety.

✋ Control the controllable

I often encourage people I work with to separate the things that are making them anxious which they have no control over from those that they can influence.

Although the things you can influence might be small and significantly less worrisome than news across the world, taking action on them will at least give you a feeling that you are not powerless.

⚖️  Balance

It might seem like a fanciful idea at the moment but the world really isn't unremittingly bad however much it seems so.

When we are exposed to constant stories of death and destruction is it any wonder that we begin to lose hope?

Part of maintaining a healthy emotional balance is finding ways to remind yourself that there is still beauty, wonder, and hope around us however hard it is to see.

Everyone will have different ways of tapping into it but doing so is vital to keep yourself positive.

Personally, when I walk the dogs in the morning I make sure it's just me, them and whatever nature serves up. The predictability of the natural world as the seasons change really is a tonic for even the most anxious mind.

💁🏽  Helping out

As time moves on there will almost certainly be ways to support the people whose lives are being most directly affected.

Taking part in initiatives to help can be real mitigation to feelings of anxiety and hopelessness.

You might be able to get involved as an organisation or you might suggest that your teams take individual responsibility for helping in any way they can in order to improve their sense of wellbeing through acts of kindness for strangers.

Most of all though it's important that you treat yourselves with kindness and compassion.

Listen to your instincts and try as much as possible to give yourself whatever it is that you need whether that be a rest, a chat, or an opportunity to focus on something else for a while.

It is rarely events themselves that floor us, it is mostly the way that we deal with them in our minds.

[If you’re a people manager and are leading a team of people going through this, then please access this version of the article]