Managing Anxiety Through COVID-19
Today marks my 9th day of working from home, practicing social distancing, and essentially self-quarantining other than essential trips. For some of you reading this, you may have started before me and have been doing this longer. Many states and major cities in our country are issuing stay at home orders (called shelter in place some places) so if we weren’t practicing social distancing before and only leaving the house for essential reasons, a lot of us are now. Regardless of your opinion or stance on this pandemic and how it is being handled, these are truly uncertain times. If there is one thing anxiety hates, it’s uncertainty. Even if you are not anxious about contracting COVID-19, there is a lot of uncertainty in how governments are going to respond as the pandemic progresses and what the world will look like after. In addition to that, as I noted in my last post, our nervous systems pick up on how others are feeling. At this point in time, it’s not just your community or just our nation that is on edge. It’s the entire globe. We can all feel that, and having awareness of that will help us check in on “Is all of this feeling mine or am I picking up on the energy of everyone else right now?”
This pandemic is also requiring many of us to be patient and to be comfortable with being bored sometimes… These two things are difficult for many people, but especially during a time of crisis. Keep in mind, this crisis is unique because it’s not something we can really see, run from, or fight in the traditional sense. It’s a virus, and our primary method to fight it is to stay in our homes and disrupt our daily lives. Add conflicting beliefs amongst the people, a divided government sending mixed messages, financial stress, limited resources, and media overflowing us with information we need to research to ensure it’s factual, plus many of us are worried if we will even have a job if we haven’t been laid off already- Yes, we are going to feel anxious and exhausted. However, we can own that and not panic. That’s right! We can feel anxious and concerned but not panic and not be hypervigilant at all times of day and night.
Panic: sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior
Hypervigilance: an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect activity. Hypervigilance may bring about a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion.
Above are the definitions of panic and hypervigilance. I’ve spoken about anxiety in past posts and have explained how it’s a natural, biological response that motivates us and drives our desire to survive. As a clinician I see anxiety as helpful up until a certain point. A big part of my job is helping people assess if their anxiety is being helpful and reasonable or unhelpful and unreasonable. For example, helpful anxiety reminds us to do our best work, whereas unhelpful anxiety tells us we will lose our job if our work is not perfect- which can lead to hypervigilance and/or panic. Now, hypervigilance and panic have their purposes and their places. If we are in a dangerous situation, hypervigilance could save our lives. Panic makes us go deep into our amygdala (survival part of brain) and all we can focus on is how to get out that situation. These can be very helpful in some life or death situations, however this is not one of those situations.
What I mean by that is, our primary way to stop this virus is to stay home as much as we can. Panic will not serve us here… we saw that with the toilette paper. I could see the argument of being hypervigilant when out doing necessary errands and work, however we could just be vigilant in the sense of practicing social distancing and necessary precautions. That is to say, as long as we are following the recommended precautions of washing our hands regularly and covering our mouths when we sneeze or cough and practice social distancing, we can remind ourselves “that’s all I need to worry about and I’ll be fine”.
This brings us back to assessing helpful vs. unhelpful anxiety. My biggest recommendation is to know the facts. In order to do this, it’s important to pace yourself. Your mind is like a sponge with information. It can only take in so much at a time and at some point you won’t be able to take in and process the information if you take in too much at one time. I’d recommend sticking with CDC to start and then find other sources that are credible. Looking at your state’s local CDC department may also be helpful so you can be aware of what is going on in your community.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html the link has helpful and factual information about the virus and ways to take precautions and stop the spread. Remember, be intentional with what you are looking for and why. This will help you not get caught in other headlines.
Self-talk is a very powerful tool. How we talk to ourselves and knowing the narrative in our minds about what is happening is extremely helpful. Our thoughts and emotions are intertwined with our behaviors and decision making. We have the time, so I would encourage you to practice mindfulness and introspection. This can look different from person to person. Some people prefer guided meditation, which you can find on youtube or apps like Calm, other prefer to find a quiet space to be with themselves. The point is to sit with your emotions and notice the thoughts being generated by the emotion. Be careful not to run with the first thing that comes to mind. Work on being curious and going deeper with your thoughts and feelings. For example, often times we will find we are feeling anxious but if we go deeper, we realize we actually sad or that sadness or another emotion are driving the anxiety. Once you know your narrative, you can engage it by first trying to understand it (honoring the emotions by understanding why they are there), followed by validating yourself (self-compassion to avoid a shame cycle because shame prevents us from feeling safe), and then problem solving or rationalizing the emotion to help reframe/change the narrative to something more helpful.
I’d recommend doing the same for anxiety around the economy, job security, how the government is handling this, and what the world will look like after the pandemic has passed. We can’t know what the future will hold, that anxiety is valid, but we can foster hope. We can have hope in knowing this could change the world. We can have hope that assistance is coming to support and help us all through this (Congress is working on a relief package right now). We can use this time to connect with loved ones via video or with the people we live with. This is a unique opportunity to work on ourselves and our relationships because we are being forced to slow down and not be distracted by going out and to other places. I say take advantage of that in whatever way feels right and healthy for you. We can also focus on what we can control and take space to grieve and accept what we cannot control. We can be upset at how unfair a lot of this is and still know we will figure this out and need to roll with what comes at us.
In addition to that, I’m sure many of you have been seeing the articles around keeping a routine, exercise, get outside while practicing social distancing, and using deep breathing and stretching to help destress. I would recommend doing all of that along with being mindful and introspective with yourself and being intentional on what and how much information you are taking in.
That’s all for now. Feel free to comment with how you are taking care of yourself and taking advantage of this time or any questions you might have on what I wrote about today. Also, links to self-care ideas during the stay at home order are also welcomed in the comments!