Confinement and mental health: goodbye, guilt!

This article is a contribution by Faustine M. Thanks very much to her!

It has been about a month since France entered into lockdown. A difficult situation to handle, that can bring with it an array of mental health worries. According to a study by The Lancet published on the subject, confinement can have as a consequence emotional disorders, depression, stress, insomnia and even symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

For my part, I tend to be anxious, and my confinement accentuates this anxiety, which tends to be reduced when I find myself in an environment that is familiar and where I am well supported. A phenomenon that could be explained by a “destabilization of our spatial, social and economic bearings”, that is responsible for an “increase in anxiety”, according to the psychiatrist Christophe Debien, pole responsible at the National Centre for Resources and Resilience in France (CN2R), interviewed by Les Echos (in French).

So, what can we do to better deal with lockdown?

I don’t have a universal answer to this question, given how different it is for each individual.

These past few weeks, I have seen a plethora of suggestions, tips and programs about how to motivate oneself flourish on social media. If putting in place a routine and activities that you enjoy is more important than ever during lockdown, be careful, equally, that these do not become obligations.

This is a piece of advice that I give you, having a tendency myself to make overly long to-do lists, to the point of turning activities that I enjoy into chores.

It’s a reality: lockdown can increase the mental load, especially amongst women. According to an Ifop poll, 49% of (French) households are arguing more about the topic of housework division.

So, if it’s not your thing, there’s no point in trying to force yourself to keep up an exercise routine, to read your entire library to cultivate yourself or to turn yourself into a chef.

And you don’t need to feel guilty about this. You don’t have to turn your lockdown into a self-improvement course. You don’t have to be productive on a self-development level.

However, what is important during lockdown, is to take care of yourself. Think about things that are ACTUALLY good for you, and not things that you feel obligated to do. The WHO recommends (article in French), during periods of stress, to listen to oneself and do activities that are relaxing. If exercise makes you feel good, allows you to let off some steam, then do it! If meditation makes you feel good, do it! If clearing up, sorting, cleaning your space makes you feel good, do it! But if you prefer to play video games… do it! Do things for yourself, and not because you feel you should do them. And if that isn’t your thing… then don’t do it!

Careful, I’m not advising you spend your days in bed in the dark for the rest of lockdown, either. Quite the opposite, setting up a routine is crucial, as advised by the psychiatrist Clément Guillet, speaking on France Info (in French):

“The priority is to maintain a healthy lifestyle, that is to say to keep a sleep cycle that corresponds to what we are used to. It is essential to continue to have routines in the long term to preserve one’s mental health.”

Lockdown really shakes up our habits and bearings, and it’s important to build new ones.

Getting out of bed, having a shower, cooking a meal that you like, is already something, and you can be proud of yourself for managing that!

Try to get up, eat and go to bed at regular hours to structure your days.

If the smallest task feels like an ordeal, you can take note of every little thing that you do manage to do, even if it feels ridiculous to you (getting dressed in the morning, making some coffee) and be proud of yourself for having accomplished it. That’s the idea behind a done-list (list of things you’ve done), that I discovered in a book titled "La Charge mentale des femmes" (the mental workload of women), by Aurélia Scheider, that changed my life. Whilst I have a tendency to feel guilty that I’m not doing enough, the practice of writing down, at the end of the day, all the things I have accomplished, even the most basic, allows me to realize that I’m already doing a lot.

So there you go for letting go of guilt! And if you want to keep reading my work, you can go and have a look at my article on hyperconnectivity.