Best Ways to Distract yourself

One thing you can do to cope with emotions is to keep a journal and jot down your thoughts. It’s okay to keep an emotional journey where you can force your thoughts on the paper. This way, you would be able to distract yourself and explore your emotions, even if it's loneliness, sadness, or anxiety.

Keep a journal allows you to acknowledge that you are adjusting to your emotions and trying to cope. All you got to do is write everything about how you are feeling, shut the journal and do something well. I usually go by this coping mechanism and it has helped me a lot.

Anchoring phrases means grounding yourself to your current scenario. It goes something like, “My name is XX. I live in New York, USA. Today is Thursday, Feb 5. It's 5:53 in the room. I am sitting at my desk writing “The Best Ways To Distract Yourself.” You get the drill, right?

Visualize a daily task that you enjoy or one that you don’t mind doing. For example, if you like doing laundry, then think about how you would put away a finished load. “The clothes are warm and soft. They smell great. They feel light in the basket. I am spreading them on the bed and handing them in the closet.”

Picture yourself leaving any painful feelings behind. Gather the emotions, ball them up, and put them in a box. Or walk, swim, or run away from those painful memories. You can picture your thoughts as a song or TV show you dislike and change the channel. Or think of turning down the volume. The scene is still there but you don’t have to listen to them.

Look at a photograph or a scene in detail for 5 to 10 seconds. Try to remember it. Then turn the picture over and recreate the same picture or scene in your mind. Do this with as much detail as possible. Or, you can mentally list all the things you saw in the picture.

Think of an activity that you often do during the day. Like making coffee, playing any musical instrument, or a task from your work. Go through the process of doing it in a step-by-step method and imagine that you are explaining this process to someone else.

Think of a book passage, a poem, or a song that you know by heart. Recite it quietly in your head and try to distract yourself from the environment around you. If you can’t, try reciting the poem, singing the song, or reading the passage aloud. This will help you to focus the energy in one place.

Focus on how you are pronouncing the words and the shape of each letter and the words on your lips. Try to visualize each letter and word written on a page.

Choose one or two broad categories like “name of the plants”, “ice cream flavors”, or “football teams.” Make a mental list of all the names and sub-categories you can remember from each category.

Make yourself laugh by cracking a silly joke. If you don’t have one in your mind, try reading it off a popsicle stick or a candy wrapper. This way you will not only be entertaining yourself but others around you too.

If you are at home, you can distract yourself by watching your favorite comedian or a video of an adorable animal making funny moves. Think of anything that makes you laugh- be it a person, an animal, a moment, or a joke.

Numbers can help you distract easily. This is possible even when you are not a math person. You can try any of the following:

Running through a times table in your head.

Counting backward from 100

Choosing a number and thinking of 5 ways you can make the number. For example number 6. 2x3 = 6. 5+1 =6, 6x1 = 6, and so on.