How to Protect Your Mental Health During Stressful Times

According to Hadas Wilf, an NLP master who teaches at Pardes Hanna–Karkur College, there are several practical steps people can take to protect themselves from falling into depression or sadness during periods filled with distressing news and events.

Wilf offers simple tools that can help people manage the emotional impact of what they see and hear during challenging times.

Reduce Exposure to News

Wilf’s first recommendation is to limit exposure to news as much as possible.

“First and foremost,” she explains, “try to reduce watching television, reading news reports, and similar sources. The fewer disturbing images we see and the fewer difficult stories we hear, the better.”

At the same time, she acknowledges that people need to stay informed about important developments.

“The truly important information will reach us anyway,” she says. “But if you do choose to watch the news, it’s very important to take breaks from time to time.”

Give Your Eyes and Mind a Break

Wilf emphasizes that a break should involve more than simply looking away from the screen.

“It’s not enough to just turn your eyes away,” she explains. “Make sure your eyes focus on something completely different.”

Looking at calming elements in the environment can have a powerful emotional effect.

“Look at a blue sky, or at green plants. These kinds of sights have a direct emotional and psychological influence on our brain.”

Reframing Disturbing Images

If someone has been exposed to disturbing images, Wilf suggests techniques drawn from NLP to reduce their emotional intensity.

First, ask yourself whether the image you saw appears in your mind as a moving scene or as a still picture.

“If the image affected you deeply, try mentally freezing it,” she explains. “Once it becomes a still image, you can begin to manipulate it.”

For example, you can imagine turning the picture into black and white, making it look like an old photograph. You can then imagine the image moving farther and farther away from you, gradually reducing its emotional impact.

Changing the Way Sounds Affect You

Similar techniques can be applied to disturbing sounds or voices.

“You can mentally play the sound faster or slower, run it forward or backward, or stretch and distort the sound so that it loses its meaning,” Wilf explains.

These techniques can change the way the brain processes the experience and reduce its emotional power.

Don’t Stay Alone with Your Feelings

Talk and share what you are experiencing.

“Speak with others,” Wilf advises. “Share what you feel. Don’t stay alone with it.”

Talking with friends, family members, or supportive people can help relieve emotional pressure.

Use Breathing to Calm the Body

Wilf also recommends reconnecting with the body through balanced breathing.

This involves inhaling and exhaling for the same length of time. She suggests inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.

Balanced breathing helps regulate the body’s stress response by calming the nervous system.

A Simple Exercise for Children

For children, Wilf suggests a playful breathing exercise.

Ask them to imagine smelling a flower and then blowing up a balloon.

In practice, this means taking a slow breath in through the nose, as if smelling a flower, and then slowly breathing out through the mouth as if inflating a balloon.

“This simple exercise helps balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems in the body,” she explains, “which helps calm the nervous system.”