Being at home in quarantine can feel strange and difficult. Psychologist Johan Waara offers tips and advice for coping with it better.
Photograph: Matton
Many people are currently living in quarantine, working from home, doing without many of their usual entertainments and limiting their social contacts. This can feel strange and difficult. How are you to deal with it? Here are some practical everyday tips from psychologist Johan Waara, lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University.
"Living in quarantine, cutting down on social contact, and not being able to enjoy the company of colleagues can be difficult for many reasons, but – most of all – because we are forced to break with our normal patterns of behaviour. This feels unsettling," says Johan Waara. "Behavioural changes are always hard but when they are forced on us, they are even more difficult."
Here Johan Waara offers some practical tips on how to stay motivated when working from home, how to avoid feeling isolated, what to do to stave off boredom – and what you should think about when you are living with someone, can´t meet other people and risk getting on each other's nerves. And how do you avoid being paralysed by anxiety?
"Take one day at a time, try not to think too much about the future," says Johan Waara.
