Stay Safe; Stay Well. How I am coping with my self-isolation anxiety

We are a few weeks into lockdown, and although I have found it a challenge, it has enabled me to discover new ways of coping with life stressors. Usually, I live in London and work as part of the lovely SANE team. However, I have moved back to my small hometown for lockdown. For someone with anxiety, a drastic change of routine can be detrimental to mental health. When I first moved back, I was agonising over the lack of structure, colossal change, and the fear that we are under this pandemic. I would continuously lose sleep on the awful consequences of the Coronavirus, in which every single channel on my TV would repeatedly remind me. With all this never-ending time given to us, I would also stress about not doing enough with it. On my social media feed, people appeared to be uploading masses of content during this free time - creating tik toks, baking cakes, producing youtube videos, and the list goes on. I thought all these people have their lives on track, and then there was me who was struggling with this massive change. A couple of weeks after the lockdown began, I decided to ditch the news and constant social media scrolling, and have a new positive focus - I decided to purchase a skipping rope. It was the best decision I made; I try to complete 30 minutes of skipping a day. I would be deep in my thoughts and enjoying seeing sunset transforming into the night sky - a very calming 30 minutes to myself. I have come to the conclusion that it's okay not to be 100% productive. We are amid a pandemic, and if my body doesn't want to do 30 billion things a day and achieve five years worth of goals in the space of 6 weeks, it is okay. We can use this time to reflect and relax and meditate. In our usually hectic life, we don't get time like this. So, I've used this time to binge-watch all the shows and films I never had time to, as well as catching up with friends and family. We have our own timelines, and we are our own person and should work around our bodies rather than what we believe society wants us to do.