Engage with family and friends. Exercise and move. Get your juices flowing. Remember to take time for you…snuggle with your cat…play with your dog. Use your brain, exert yourself mentally and physically. Build yourself up to prepare for the world after the Delta variant subsides.
After all this time with isolation and social distancing, it may have been simplest to just tumble onto the path of least resistance and watch TV, stay alone, play online games. But you need people. You need your pets. Relationships are a function of the human organism and they’re extremely important to your wellbeing. They help you to move forward with joyful resilience.
We offered a blog about brain fog recently…. You know it’s not that surprising so many have developed brain fog in our current situation where we don’t talk as much about our challenges, seek the support of friends and family, or spend as much time outside as we did before.
That Delta Variant Just Had to Jump in and Spoil Our Re-Entry
Wouldn’t you know it? Just as the pandemic seemed to be subsiding with the advent of so many people vaccinated, here comes the Delta variant stirring up more trouble.
But let’s take heart. No one expects this variant to last that long. Use fresh air to your advantage. Meet with friends in the fresh air until the virus status shifts. We just need to be patient a little longer, get vaccinated, wear our masks, use hand sanitizer… and hold a steady position against an infection that’s been so widespread that our global response has resulted in changes in our culture like we have never seen before.
Even though Delta is severe, contagious, and deadly for people without vaccinations, for most vaccinated people who contract it, it’s like a summer cold. So the easy solution? Just get vaccinated. Like we did with polio, we’re conquering this terrible virus and we’re close to getting life as we knew it, back. Or at least something close to it.
Global Changes Altered What Looks Normal
So yes, we’ve seen major changes in our lifestyle and surroundings. Social distancing patches on the floor in businesses. A huge part of the workforce has been working remotely (at home) for the last year. Restaurants only serving for drive through and pick up. Changes we never could have imagined, right? We never could have. And now it’s routine.
And that’s ok, as long as those changes are helpful to us. Like remote working can be good — but don’t let it separate you from human interaction. Whether you meet with others online or behind a mask, do meet. Go forward with joyful resilience.
Don’t let the changes caused by this pandemic make you forget how to engage. Don’t let your interactions become flippant, superficial, or without connection.
Volunteer in person with a mask or online and by phone without one. But do connect.
You need to connect!
And others need to connect with you. How do you dig deep and intertwine with others? How do you get past listening passively, to empathizing, caring, and helping? It’s interactions on this level that make your life richer and more resilient.
Which brings up another discussion. Managing relationships as they bloom again can be a little tricky, if you remember. So think about this:
Rule of thumb: when their actions infringe on your values that keep you feeling safe, they’ve crossed a boundary.
Dr. Henry Clout, who wrote the book Boundaries, said it like this: Boundaries show you where someone else ends and you begin. You may have a parent or sibling or friend who feels they need you to prop them up. But if it happens too often, you begin to feel like you’re in a cell. That you’re controlled by someone other than yourself.
Those boundaries can exist between you and your parents, you and your children, you and your friends, you and your relatives.
Relationships, to be meaningful, need to be balanced. You need to know your decisions are yours, that you are not manipulated to make others comfortable.
And you need to know that when you feed those relationships, to strengthen your bonds of friendship, each person involved comes away with helpful, supportive, and happy feelings.
If your friendships aren’t providing this type of relaxed support, give and take, and respect, maybe you’ll be happier with better friends…you know?
Because of boundaries, you get to choose what sort of friends you embrace. Then you can go forward with joyful resilience intact, feeling safe, and spreading yourself around to more people.
So exercise that power.
And you can push forward with joyful resilience to a life that fulfills you.
Kick frustration to the curb.
After 17 months in the throes of the pandemic, complicated by depression, anxiety, trauma, as well as increased alcohol use and substance use…you now can get down to the cobwebs and clean out your life of people and activities that aren’t helping you become stronger or more resilient, and replace them with people and activities that are.
Has your use of alcohol or substances increased during the pandemic? Kick ’em to the curb with IV ketamine treatment.
Another look at Alcohol and Substance Use
You might ask yourself whether the incidence of alcohol use and substance use increased for you in the last 17 months. If they didn’t, that’s great. But for many people, the boredom, the worry, the fear, the loneliness, all contributed to more use of alcohol and substances.
And if that’s the case, take a close look at whether your friendships contribute to that or not. Because engagement, fulfilling friendships, family relationships, and having healthy activities includes people who also have healthy lives. People who can do their part in keeping a relationship with you rewarding.
Consider using this shift in the pandemic to conduct your own house cleaning in your life. Start fresh with a new outlook. You can be free to move forward with joyful resilience after IV ketamine treatment.
And…if relationships don’t work, or substances get in the way, or depression makes it too hard to exercise, remember that IV ketamine treatment can possibly offer hope for for challenges like these, and help you get a firmer footing for what lies ahead.
A welcoming place for restoration when you need IV ketamine treatment.
At Innovative Psychiatry, our patients sometimes express their fears about being able to function well once the pandemic ends. We encourage everyone to exert themselves in their lives… reach out to friends and family online or with masks, use safety protocols but engage with others. Even engage with your pets!
When you come in for treatment, you’ll be led to a private, comfy room to help you get the most from your treatment. You’ll find the air in the offices is clean and pure, because we’ve installed technology that removes all viruses, bacteria, and mold from the air and surfaces in every room. Plasma cell technology, designed by NASA and the Department of Defense, works around the clock to keep the air and surfaces clean. We want you to relax, settle in for your treatment, and know that you’re safe from infection when you’re here.
And if you find too many obstacles to your moving forward, like substances, social anxiety, trauma, depression symptoms, and you can’t seem to get around them…then call us.
Let’s put our heads together and consider IV ketamine treatment and whether you might be a candidate. If so, we can make an appointment for you within just a few days to get your treatment started.
Meanwhile, practice good relationship skills. And good living skills.
And expect your life to get better and better and better. Joyful resilience better.
To the restoration of your best self,
