Focusing on your emotional health

Experiencing COVID-19 can impact your emotional health as well as your physical health and it can take time to recover emotionally from an illness.

Symptoms can include:

• Anxiety
• Low mood
• Sleep problems
• Fear
• Memory loss

It’s not unusual to experience feelings of stress, anxiety (worry, fear) or depression (low mood, sadness). Ongoing symptoms of fatigue, breathlessness and sleep disruption can further impact your mood and sense of self. You may find it difficult to do the things that you once could do very easily.

Your programme

The emotional wellbeing components of your recovery programme have been designed by our clinical experts, based on the evidence we have about COVID-19 and what we know can help with rehabilitation and recovery. The programme includes educational information, practical activities and techniques you can follow to address ongoing difficulties and support your recovery in the following areas:

• Mood changes: managing anxiety and low mood
• Problems, memory and thinking clearly solving
• Rebuilding my ‘sense of self’

Everybody’s experience of COVID-19 is different, and everybody’s recovery will be different. Some elements of the programme may be more relevant for you than others, and some of the skills and techniques described may be easier to learn and apply than others. The key to recovery is to go through the programme at your own pace, focusing on the areas that will help you return to a good level of health and wellbeing.

Resources

The Emotional Wellbeing section of the journal will help you understand how COVID-19 can affect your emotional health and guide you through activities and techniques to help your overall recovery.

The webinars will support the content in your journal. Look out for the webinar symbol on various pages throughout the journal.