Tak­ing Care of Yourself

With the unfold­ing COVID-19 cri­sis, mak­ing deci­sions to pri­ori­tise self-care has nev­er been more impor­tant for the rur­al and remote health work­force. So many folk rely on us for all aspects of well-being. As a work­force, it is impor­tant to active­ly deal with the wor­ry and stress asso­ci­at­ed with the grow­ing con­cerns about our own, our loved ones as well as our patients and clients’ health.

The impor­tant thing here is to make choic­es. In terms of main­tain­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al bal­ance it is impor­tant not to let feel­ings of over­whelm stop you from being proac­tive. Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, stick to your nor­mal rou­tine. Alter­na­tive­ly, cre­ate some new rou­tines and try to main­tain these sched­ules as much as possible.

Of course, a reg­u­lar Mind­ful­ness prac­tice is help­ful. Apart from cen­tring and ground­ing you, Mind­ful­ness helps to allow you to wit­ness and acknowl­edge how you are feel­ing. It slows down rumi­nat­ing and assists with prob­lem-solv­ing. Tak­ing time to sit, think and reflect in any­way that res­onates for you such as med­i­tat­ing or writ­ing in a jour­nal, is not wast­ing time, it is max­imis­ing your chances of coping.

In this time of social media it is impor­tant to find a bal­ance in terms of the amount of time you spend access­ing infor­ma­tion about the impact of the virus. Of course, it is impor­tant to stay informed but equal­ly impor­tant for our men­tal health is that you choose cred­i­ble sources of infor­ma­tion. Lim­it­ing the amount of time you access this type of infor­ma­tion will help to con­tain your fears.

Iso­la­tion of course, is not a new chal­lenge for many rur­al and remote health pro­fes­sion­als. But it will be new for some and come with some addi­tion­al restric­tions for oth­ers. Don’t allow your­self to get bored as this will lead to neg­a­tive think­ing. Stay busy, read, write let­ters. It is so impor­tant to stay con­nect­ed with friends and fam­i­ly, both for you and for them.

Final­ly remem­ber that CRANAplus Bush Sup­port Ser­vices is avail­able ²⁴⁄₇ on 1800 805 391. We are hap­py to talk you through sur­vival strate­gies or just to chat.