Due to the new COVID-19 pandemic, it has not been easy to carry on with daily life as before.
Many of you may be feeling stressed out, and your daily life tends to become monotone; you may be saying, “I don’t feel energetic for some reason.
In such a situation, it is advisable to use the “behavioral activation” technique to keep your mind energized.
Behavioral activation is a technique to keep your mind energized by increasing the number of activities that lead to a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment.
Currently, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has issued guidelines to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 infection by avoiding the “three Cs” (closed spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings).
If you want to know more about the “three Cs,” please click here.
Even in such a situation, it is essential to do “safe activities avoiding the three Cs” to maintain mental health.
Increase the number of activities that make you feel good
You may not be able to do what you want to do (get together with all your friends and have a meal or drink, karaoke, go to the stadium to watch baseball or soccer, etc…). But if you do not do anything, you are going to get more and more depressed.
However, it is not well known that people lose mental energy if they do not do any activities.
For keeping your energy up, it is important to increase the number of activities that give you a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment, even if you don’t feel like doing anything under these circumstances.
Which came first – the chicken or the egg?
Have you ever heard the saying, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” It is often used as an example of the question of causality. This is also true of the relationship between one’s “feelings” and “behaviors”.
Which do you think come first, your feelings or actions?
If you put them together, it looks like they’re both. However, it is said that of all the feelings and behaviors, it is the “behavior” that we tend to change on our own. As in the case of “behavior first, feelings later,” based on this assumption, we can make a difference in our feelings by slightly changing our behavior.
Reflections
Now that you understand about behavioral activation
Over the next few pages, this website will be showing you how to use the “behavior → feelings” flow to increase the amount of time you spend feeling good.
In the next article, the website will explain in more detail the mechanism of “why inactivity makes me feel less energetic.”
