A lot has changed in the last several months. The schedule you knew and had come accustomed to was drastically impacted by the stay-at-home orders and closures of schools and offices. You recovered time that was lost to getting the kids dressed for school, preparing lunches for the kids and yourself, along with commuting to school and work. How many times in the past did you say “If only I had more time” as a way to validate to yourself why tasks weren’t getting completed and hobbies set to the side?
Now that time is more abundant in many people’s lives, they are finding themselves feeling uneasy. As a society, we often keep ourselves busy with tasks. To sit and do “nothing” doesn’t feel normal. We move from task to task to ease some of the uneasiness we experience with being inactive. What you might be noticing is that the issue wasn’t a lack of time to do things, but you were continuously keeping yourself busy with tasks as a way to decrease any uneasiness and anxiety you were feeling. Are you now feeling uneasy and anxious because of the extra time you have, and being unsure how to fill it?
While picking up hobbies and finding projects around the house can be helpful, this is also a good time to work on being ok with doing nothing. As you find ways to accept the absence of always being active, you will find that once your free time is decreased again, you will actually free up mental and emotional space to be productive in more areas of your life. The more you need to fill your time, the less time you give to yourself.
Focus on living in the moment and accepting where you are right now. When you start to feel anxious and uneasy, that is when you have looked for things to do in the past. Work on sitting with the feelings of uneasiness and not needing to fill the time with a task. Create new habits and use this time to practice them. When the stay-at-home orders are lifted, how do you want your day to look? Habits take time to develop. Instead of moving from task to task to stay busy and fill the new-found time, work on developing a new habit and practice it. You don’t always need to be busy.
One habit you can pick up is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be fully aware in the present. When you are mindful, you are free of distraction or judgement. You don’t think about what needs to get done, or how you should be doing something else. You accept where you are right now. Oftentimes, people will have a thought come into their head and interpret that as a cue they should do something with that thought. They latch onto the thought and start to think about what it means, why it came up, and what they need to do with this thought. This leads to overthinking and unproductive worry. They find themselves trying to problem-solve the purpose of the thought, but come to no conclusion because there was no problem to be solved. Being mindful means allowing the thought to come up, accept it, and allow it to move on.
Mindfulness is an excellent tool to help you be present in the moment and free from expectations and assumptions you place on yourself. However, like with all skills, it takes practice to be effective and efficient. As you think of ways to fill your free time right now, consider developing the new habit of mindfulness. Learning to be ok with the absence of activity takes practice and work on your part, but will bring great rewards once your schedule is again filled with getting the kids dressed for school, preparing lunches for the kids and yourself, along with commuting to school and work.
If you find your mental health is being affected by all of the changes, it is best to seek help sooner versus later. At Mindset Therapy we provide mental health services in Texas and Washington from trained professionals, via telepsychology, which allows you to attend the appointment from the location most convenient for you. Visit Mindset Therapy at: https://www.mindsettherapyonline.com to learn more about the services offered and make an appointment. Also visit our YouTube page for the Mental Health Minute series that provides quick pieces of information for common mental health issues.