Stress in any form may cause a major impact on healing and recovery. The mind may experience a high amount of mental stress while navigating with the already established challenges due to the illness or injury. Prolonged headaches, digestive problems, changes in sleep patterns, etc. may be indicators of the ongoing stress experienced during these times. When battling stress, the body may also experience changes in mood and emotions.
Managing stress may be an individual concept. However, there certainly are many techniques and guidelines to help alleviate the stress while recovering. Identifying what factors lead to stress may be the ideal first step. Once there is clarity on the cause of stress, it may become easier to focus on what solution works to manage that cause of stress. Stress may be beneficial, however understanding when to cope with it and when to manage it may be the underlying solution to it.
Based on my lived experience, I’m sharing 5 ways that helped me manage stress, build the right habits and focus on a speedy-recovery.
- Creating a healing environment – The environment that I surrounded myself with created the biggest impact on my healing. I was not able to create a stress-free environment. However, I was able to create an environment with the right surroundings which aided in my recovery. I surrounded myself with people who engaged in encouraging communication with me. I provided myself with inspirational knowledge in the form of video, audio, books, etc. This helped me create an environment that not only supported my recovery but also accelerated it.
- Maintaining a steady sleep pattern – Sleep may probably be one of the first factors to get affected when dealing with an illness or an injury. Medications, restricted body movements and mental stress may affect sleep adversely. Regularizing sleep patterns may be a daunting task even for healthy individuals. My sleep pattern was drastically disrupted during the illness. I barely slept for 2-3 hours everyday. Not getting enough sleep led to many other challenges for me. I started having digestive issues, disorientation and was not able to focus on anything. I realized that listening to a certain song allowed me to fall asleep. I defined a time each day to listen to that particular song and created a sleep time habit for me. Once I was able to identify this, the habit made the sleep pattern steady for me.
- Practising gratitude – Often the importance of counting your blessings is emphasised. This has definitely been true in my scenario. I found the practice of gratitude very effective in my healing. I was thankful towards all the people I was surrounded by, especially my caregivers. Having heartfelt gratitude towards their love, care and support helped me be peaceful within. I considered myself fortunate to be able to afford and possess all the things I needed for my recovery. I put my faith into the almighty and prayed for blessings each day. This whole gratitude exercise allowed me to be strongly connected to my own soul.
- Letting nature heal you – Nature can be an indigenous healer. It can be highly therapeutic. I found a lot of solace when I spent time with nature. Being surrounded by plants and birds not only allowed me to experience fresh air but also the peace I was looking for during this stressful time of recovery. Gardening became a physical activity for me which started healing me mentally. To be able to see a plant grow made me feel connected to my own self growing through this recovery process. The energy that I drew from nature was immensely satisfying for me and helped me in healing mentally.
- Focussing on Self-care – In the chaos of healing faster and recovering at top speed, it was of utmost importance to ensure that I was aware of not making the mistake of ignoring all the other functions of my body while focussing only on the one that needed my attention. I ensured to exercise and keep moving as and how my body allowed, completed daily breathing exercises, kept my body hydrated and nourished, kept my mind occupied with hopeful thoughts and gave the mind and the body the rest it deserved.
Stresses may be completely individualistic when it comes to an illness or an injury. However, in this blog, I have tried to share the topmost stressors during these times and techniques that worked for me to reduce those stressors.