Looking after you
Our lives can be extremely demanding at times. A balancing act trying to juggle everything may mean that we forget to take care of ourselves. Prioritising your own wellbeing is important.
Self-care comes in many forms and what works for one person may not work for another. For some, the act of being online and taking some time for themselves may be enough. Self-care is a good place to start when thinking about health and wellbeing and there are many different podcasts you can listen to, videos or TED talks you can watch and apps you can download which will guide you through self-care exercises including mindfulness and meditation.
Many fitness professionals are also making their exercise classes free online which range from yoga and Pilates which will help strengthen your body and focus your mind to high intensity interval Training (HIIT) which will get your heart pumping.
Internet trolls
Internet trolls are people who want to provoke and upset others online for their own amusement. They make intentionally inflammatory, rude, or upsetting statements online to draw strong emotional responses from people or to steer the conversation off-topic.
You’ll find trolls anywhere online, including on social media and they are quite common. The best way to handle a troll is to ignore them with the hope that they will become frustrated having not received a response and go somewhere else on the internet.
Don’t take a troll personally. These people spend hours trying to upset people and their comments should not be taken seriously. They are not worth losing sleep over. If a troll becomes a problem, you can also report them to the site’s moderation team. This may help to dissuade them from trolling on that site and could result in the troll being temporarily suspended or their account might be banned entirely.
Mental health and the news
It may be useful to limit the amount of time you spend reading or watching things which aren’t making you feel better or to decide on a specific time to check in with the news.
In addition, we don’t want to avoid all news altogether so that we can keep informing and educating ourselves if new information comes to light. If we want to read the news we should ensure we access reliable, quality information about it that doesn’t attempt to sensationalise it.
'Just as you can avoid the news you have the power to seek out comfort and avoid situations and conversations that are doing more harm than good. Leave situations that you find overwhelming.'
Talkspace, 2020