Friday 01 May 2020
The team at INFANT would like to assure all of our community that we understand how challenging a situation we now find ourselves in.
Our Clinical Psychologists, Leanna and Margaret have identified a number of tools and resources to help you deal with any additional stresses in your lives. We will share some bitesize tips with you every week through the INFANT website and our social media channels.
There are no quick fixes but there are things that we can do to remain focused, calm, and positive and to and keep moving forward.
Please let us know if you find these resources useful!
Keep it Simple and Structured (KISS)
Maintaining a daily routine can help you preserve a sense of order and purpose in your life despite the unfamiliarity of isolation and quarantine. Try to include regular daily activities, such as work, exercise or learning, even if they must be done remotely. Integrate other healthy pastimes as needed. Spend time on things that make you happy!
Over the next few days try using the KISS approach.
- KEEP: Make sure each day has a beginning, middle, and end. Children cope better with stress when it is introduced in predictable ways, such as daily routines and normal activities: getting up in the morning, getting dressed, breakfast, school work, fun-time, bedtime routines, eating healthy, drinking healthy, getting enough sleep and doing things that you enjoy.
- IT: Be clear about your priorities for each day. What is important to you, what needs to be done? For most of us controlling our behaviour is easier than controlling our thoughts and feelings. So our number one aim is to take control of our behaviour, plan, structure and accomplish.
- SIMPLE: List the tasks you need to complete and celebrate the little wins for the day. Keep it simple and focus on what is important for you and your baby.
- STRUCTURED: Now is a time when it is particularly important to have structure to ensure a productive day. Structure your day, have a plan, try and stick to routines especially when children are involved.
Useful Apps
- Mind Shift is a mental health app designed specifically for teens and young adults with anxiety. Rather than trying to avoid anxious feelings, Mind Shift stresses the importance of changing how you think about anxiety. It can encourage you to take charge of your life, ride out intense emotions, and face challenging situations.
- Self Help for Anxiety Management might be perfect for you if you’re interested in self-help, but meditation isn’t your thing. Users are prompted to build their own 24-hour anxiety toolkit that allows you to track anxious thoughts and behaviour over time, and learn 25 different self-help techniques.
- Happify Need a happy fix? With its psychologist-approved mood-training program, the Happify app is your fast-track to a good mood. Try various engaging games, activity suggestions, gratitude prompts and more to train your brain as if it were a muscle, to overcome negative thoughts.
- Headspace makes meditation simple. Learn the skills of mindfulness and meditation by using this app for just a few minutes per day. You gain access to hundreds of meditations on everything from stress and anxiety to sleep and focus. The app also has a handy “get some headspace” reminder to encourage you to keep practicing each day.
- Calm provides people experiencing stress and anxiety with guided meditations, sleep stories, breathing programs, and relaxing music. This app is truly universal; whether you’ve never tried meditation before or regularly practice, you’ll find the perfect program for you.
- Smiling Mind is a way to practice daily meditation and mindfulness exercises from any device. Smiling Mind is a unique tool developed by psychologists and educators to help bring balance to your life. This is really helpful during times of stress and is a fun and unique way to help you put a smile on your mind.
