Looking for advice for coping

[Animalsarebest3]

Hi everyone,

I am brand-new here. I am currently experiencing a lot of anxiety. Im currently having to work from home (not by choice) and it's all I can ever think about. My husband and I live in a small apartment, so it is difficult to really separate work from home life right now.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to stop myself from thinking about work so much, it would be appreciated! I try to exercise before work and that seems to help on work days, but nights and days off are hard.

Thank you,

Em

[uni]

Hello Animalsarebest3, and welcome! I'm sorry it has taken several days for a reply to your post, I somehow missed it.

Thanks for sharing about your anxiety. And congratulations on doing exercise, that doesn't always come easily!

Regarding anxiety, I've been having more than usual lately, and can relate at least somewhat to your post, although I don't work from home (I'm retired). I do live in a smallish place with no real yard to escape to, just a balcony.

I used to sometimes have trouble shutting the "work" button off in my brain, to the point where I'd dream at night that I was working and no matter how much I did, I was always running late. Then I'd wake up exhausted, as though I'd actually been at work.. I tried all sorts of techniques, some of which helped, and eventually the dreams happened way less frequently.

One helpful thing was to read, particularly an escapist fiction type book that took my mind to a completely different place. Another was to phone a friend and tell them I needed a distraction from the work stuff, so we'd talk about other things. Sometimes I journaled all about work to get it out of my system, and that made it easier to set it aside and move on. I came on the forum here too, just to vent and send the work vibes out somewhere instead of keeping them in my head. It was good to get feedback from others and just connect with non-work people. Music is another good thing, everybody has their favourite kind and as a non-musician I've been absolutely amazed at where listening to music can take me.

I don't know if anything that helped me will help you, but trust me there are ways to get that squirrel out of the cage for a while, although it may take some trial and error to find them.

[AJ]

It's tough when you work from home and don't have a lot of space there to separate 'work' from 'home' life. I always found it challenging to leave my 'work brain' at work, and I didn't even work and play in the same sandbox. Having done my daily exercise long before work, after work was time to relax, body and mind. A great start for me in the evening was and still is comedy TV. A half hour of ha ha usually does it. Having said that, when I was working, I never found that I had enough time to enjoy the down time because there was always the next day of work to think about. Still, the shift even for just awhile helped.