As Covid-19 continues to spread ruthlessly across the globe, governments have enforced lockdowns in countries to slow the infection rate. And this has meant restricted movements of people and work from home. As the globe’s population practises self-isolation and social-distancing, the lack of the familiar can lead to further stress and mental health issues. Establishing coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety and depression during these times is crucial. Healthcare practitioner and counselling psychologist, Nkateko Ndala-Magoro, through the South African Depression and Anxiety Group’s Facebook platform, lets us in on five self-help strategies to deal with depression.



Get active: “It is hard I know to stay active while you are confined. The benefits of staying active is the release of feel good hormones that are in contrast with the hormones that exacerbate depression. Being active also helps regulate your heart beat; for people suffering from anxiety, the regulation of breathing might help with the severity of the anxiety/panic attack.”



Take time to sleep: “I know people are already feeling like they do not have any more positions of sleep because of sleeping too much during lockdown. I encourage that people get as much quality sleep as possible in this time. Sleeping has benefits on our health and wellbeing in general, let alone on our mental health on many levels.”



Read: “Keep yourself busy by reading. There is a wealth of information in books. There are many online platforms including Amazon, which have made available e-books for free. Read self-help books and fiction to escape the reality; and any other books that interest you.”



Learn a new skill: “This will also keep you interested as mastering something new takes a lot in terms of focus and energy.”



Connect with loved ones: “Connect with your loved ones via video chats. Journal and work on things you have been meaning to work on to give you a sense of accomplishment.”

Man self isolating at home

5 Ways To Cope With The Self During Isolation

It was an experience easier to drown in than describe – one of Romi Vidmar’s many hypnotherapy sessions in his small office in Northcliff, an affluent suburb in Johannesburg, South Africa.
As we meet, cars drive past on the busy road. Vidmar asks if I want to experience hypnotherapy.
I sit up straight on the black office chair, my hands on the brown armrest, and Vidmar makes suggestions in a calm voice.
“Visualize your wrist on the right arm. Feel it, imagine it and nod your head when you can. Imagine everything I say is happening because it would actually happen,” he says.
He makes some more suggestions and everything he says happens, until I am in a hypnotic state.
As he speaks, there is a sense of calm, vaguely familiar, akin to the countless times I found myself lost in thought, absorbed in a zone, or simply, daydreaming. The session lasts less than 10 minutes but has the effect of two hours of sleep.
“You are of supreme confidence,” he says as he closes the session.
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Even though I had started the session as a sceptic, I feel more relaxed than I have ever been. As I pen this article, I still remember his soothing instructions. Twenty one days later, I feel more confident and have a brighter outlook on life.
“With hypnosis, the human mind goes into an even more relaxed state than meditation. The physical body becomes completely relaxed but the mind remains active,” says Vidmar, a software programmer who has always been interested in understanding how things work. The human mind is one of his major interests.
“I was very interested in hypnotherapy and started doing some research. It wasn’t easy because there wasn’t enough information and most of what was there was confused with entertainment and spiritualism but I discovered, through reading academic work, there is a solid basis for the hypnotic state which you just experienced now,” he says.
<div id="attachment_34398" style="width: 511px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34398" class=" wp-image-34398" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Romi-Vidmar-e1510734243740-300x199.jpg" alt="Romi Vidmar hypnotherapy" width="501" height="332" />Romi Vidmar (Photo supplied)</div>
In 2000, Vidmar trained to be a hypnotherapist and started practising.
“With hypnotherapy, I am able to understand the human mind and help people suffering from depression, anxiety, wanting to lose weight, stop smoking, gain confidence and many other things. For example, with people who have been abused, we help them not to forget but bring some degree of comfort so that they can be able to continue with their lives,” he says.
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According to Vidmar, hypnotherapy is witnessing a big boom in town. He sees eight patients a day at R800 ($60) for a one-hour session. Most of his clients, he says, just want to be happier, deal with depression and other mental issues, stop smoking or lose weight.
“Prescribing medication may be a lot quicker but the medical industry should explore hypnotherapy as a much more sustainable solution. Eighty to 90 percent of my clients see a change after the first session and they come back five or 10 years later but in that time they refer other people.”
Amanda Hoole (name changed to protect identity) is one of the many who claim hypnotherapy helped.
“I had many issues because I was abused as a child and I had a bit of a rebellious energy. I smoked a lot and was an alcoholic. Over the years, I have had hypnotherapy about six times. Now alcohol and cigarettes smell and I can’t stand them. I am even able to keep a job, which is something I couldn’t do for many years,” she affirms.
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According to Vidmar, this effect is possible because hypnotherapy also comes with suggestibility, so much that it was used instead of anaesthesia more than 200 years ago.
“Some medical doctors even train so they can use hypnotherapy when treating patients, for example if a child is afraid of the needle or for women going through childbirth.”
He says hypnotherapy helps by interacting with the subconscious to address the whole mind rather than just treating the symptoms. Through the words used in the session, Vidmar says hypnotherapy replaces trauma with positivity and suggestions create long-term improvement.
“You are even able to deal with unresolved feelings. With hypnotherapy, we can go down to the deepest level of these traumatic experiences, memories and stored emotions to release them from the mind and body,” says Vidmar.
In fast-moving 21st century Africa, hypnotherapy may hold the answer to mental wellbeing, or could at least be one of the options to relieve trauma and stress.

Is Hypnotherapy The Answer?

Depression and anxiety are highly stigmatized in the boardroom and top executives have become masters at keeping it locked down, going to extreme lengths to hide such problems.
In the fast-paced corporate world, if you are falling apart, you dare not show it. But is that a good thing?
Recent research has shown many successful women are victims of stress as they strive to balance work and family. But even as children and careers collide, women need to prioritize their wellbeing.
Take 40-year-old successful corporate woman and mother of two, Nicci (surname withheld for confidentiality), who says she experienced “a ridiculously heightened sense of anxiety” possibly linked to post-natal depression after the birth of her first child.
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“I was 36, I was trying to run a business, a home and look after my baby. I remember feeling isolated, alone and incompetent, and being an established business woman, that was a terrible feeling,” she says, echoing the thoughts of many like her.
“I have learned there is no such thing as the perfect balance between a career and motherhood. This is a myth propagated by the media and there is no way women are achieving this holy grail. There are times when you have more time for your career, then something happens and bang, you have to pay more attention to your family. It’s also important to note that a man who has a successful wife often simply assumes he will also have the perfect wife and mother and it is our complicity in this which adds to the pressure. We, as women, try and do it all,” says Nicci.
Dr Colinda Linde, Chair of the Advisory Board at the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), and a practicing clinical psychologist, feels modern working women have no role models when it comes to managing the demands of a career and family life.
“Even if our mothers worked, few had careers which resembled those of today and the demands of parenting have also changed, with children’s schedules often as busy as those of their parents. In a dual income household, it mainly still falls to the woman to run the home. This leads to feeling divided and not really being present in the moment – when you are at a school event, your phone is still beeping and when you are at work, your home or issues with your children may also be on your mind,” says Linde.
Over time, this leads to stress and burnout. She says while women learn to rely on other women such as housekeepers or mothers to help with child-rearing, they tend not to expect their partners to take on domestic responsibilities.
“There is a trend emerging where men are doing more to help in the home than their fathers did, by a significant amount, but it is still a relatively small part compared to the typical female portfolio of duties,” says Linde.
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Falling Off The Cliff
Richard Hawkey from Equilibrium Solutions, who has worked with Linde and has conducted substantial research, reveals findings where anxiety, depression or burnout, while highly stigmatized as a sign of weakness, are more than common, with women more affected than men.
Hawkey, who calls himself ‘the recovering banker’, says he slipped into severe clinical depression in 2010 after 15 years in a top position in the finance sector.
“As a senior manager, I had no idea how damaging stress was, or that if you are a Type-A personality (achiever, driver, controller), there isn’t necessarily a slow decline to warn you the cliff is approaching – you simply fall off the end one day. I was happily married, with great children and a house in the suburbs, along with all the trappings of success, so how could I have a breakdown and become depressed?”
Since then, he has recovered and is finishing a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology, and also set up his company Equilibrium Solutions, which in partnership with several doctors, has designed Vitals Software, a confidential online stress self-awareness and management tool.
He gathered and analyzed data from 2,500 respondents surveyed via this online resource. Most were white-collar workers, 98% from South Africa.
Hawkey says key findings, such as 37% complaining of unexplained chest pains were “worryingly high”, as was the 50% of respondents ‘living for Fridays’, highlighting high levels of apathy
and demotivation.
He adds women consistently scored higher than men in the manifestation of various symptoms.
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Hawkey says the situation may well be worse than indicated by the findings, as anecdotal evidence reveals executives are self-medicating, won’t use Employee Assistance Programs and will take two weeks of leave pretending they are ‘going on holiday’, but in fact are booking into a psychiatric unit.
“This anecdotal evidence is quite terrifying. Executives will pay for such treatment with cash and will not use their medical aid in order to keep the problem hidden,” he says.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people across the globe suffer from depression, with less than half receiving treatment due to a number of barriers, a prime one being the social stigma attached to mental disorders.
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More Pressure For The Top Brass
While women trying to balance a career and family are expected not to show any weakness, Hawkey adds that women in the upper echelons of management are particularly under pressure, as they have to appear tough and if from a historically-disadvantaged background, have to prove themselves beyond tokenism, while at the same time shoulder the burden of family.
“My advice to women who are feeling overwhelmed is to speak to someone you trust. It’s important to know you are not alone,” he says.

Tag: Anxiety

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