8 Tips on How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Staying Grounded During Times of Social Isolation and Fear

How to Stay Calm During COVID10 Outbreak | I’m not a scientist, a doctor or a politician; but what I am, is human. The threat of a new virus spreading throughout our planet is a terrifying reality. It has killed many people, as well as caused panic and hysteria for many others. Maybe you have found yourself detached from the fear, but are more or less feeling stir crazy being stuck in your house, questioning whether or not you should meet up with a friend for a cocktail or even go to the grocery store. On whatever level you find yourself physically or emotionally impacted by COVID19, your life is disrupted.

Now what do we do?

My advice for staying (or becoming) calm during a trying time of social isolation and unknown is to find the silver lining. Not to be insensitive or to minimize anyone’s experience, but more or less trying to help reframe the fear that can often be debilitating for many of us. Ask yourself, “What can I personally learn or even gain from this misfortune?” It is important during these times to self reflect, to understand what it is that you are really feeling and to challenge yourself to not avoid, but work with the things you can’t change.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak : Tip #1

First off, this is a great opportunity to start learning how to detach from your obsession with control. You’ve more than likely been conditioned to believe that the more you do the more you can control any outcome in your life. Right now especially, you may feel completely anxious, helpless and scared because it is obvious you can’t control any of this. It is OK to feel scared about what’s happening; it is something unknown in our lifetime.

The thing you have to remember, is our anxiety is bred on unknown experiences. We need to learn to allow anxiety to be a normal part of the human experience without trying to fix it. Without judgment, obsessing over it’s cause or without complete avoidance of it altogether.

The second we try to fix our anxiety, is the second we dismiss our emotions. The second we dismiss our emotions, is the second we make our fears even louder and more irrational. The second our fears become irrational, we feel completely tormented by them and then we are stuck in panic. Bottom line, don’t try to control anything right now. Accept that control is an illusion. Realize that most likely one of the biggest fears you are struggling with is less about the virus and more about what you can’t do to stop it.

It’s time to remind yourself that this is not your responsibility to fix (because one person can’t possibly fix this), but your responsibility is to help. This can look like honoring the social distancing no matter how uncomfortable, donating money, food or toilet paper, supporting local businesses by ordering take out, etc. Do your part without feeling the weight of fixing it.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #2

Take this opportunity to be socially isolated as a meaningful time to reflect and explore things about yourself, your home, your partner, your children in ways that you are always “too busy” to do. When do we ever give ourselves a substantial amount of time to just reflect? To be bored? To be so present that you feel every little noise inside of your body? If this sound incredibly uncomfortable to you, I’d challenge you to ask yourself, why? Be grateful that on some level, during a moment of social isolation, is calmness in its rawest form. We can cherish this moment to breathe and take it slow. We need that, in a world full of GO GO GO.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #3

Keep perspective. After you’ve allowed yourself to feel your feelings, write down all the logical pieces to this outbreak and give yourself permission to remind yourself that this too shall pass. Generations prior to our’s have struggled with chaos and have managed to pull through; we will all pull through this chaos too.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #4

Change your habits. Period. During this time of social isolation, you may start to realize how much your phone alerts you of upcoming news breaks or you may become more aware of how many hours you may spend scrolling through endless content on social media. Even if you follow “positive” people on social media, you cannot get away from the bombarding negativity that is generated through ads or stories.

Your habitual relationship to your phone is making you more fearful, less empowered and way more susceptible to feeling lonely and depressed!

Turn off all alerts, take a break from social media and if you need a positive distraction, find a show on Netflix because at least you can “control” its content!

You should also limit the amount of COVID19 exposure you have; if you’re more sensitive to what you are watching/reading/discussing, limit yourself to COVID19 news to once a day for 20 minutes to stay up to speed with what’s happening without absorbing so much that it becomes a detriment. You will be ok not knowing EVERY hourly increase of the number of people affected by the virus, or how many points the stock market has swayed. It’s time to live smarter, not harder and ask yourself which of your habits are actually contributing to the fear, isolation and loneliness and which are supporting you and your mental health.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #5

Use this time to nurture your faith. Faith doesn’t have to be religious, (although it can absolutely be), but it can mean you find space to deepen your beliefs in a higher power, energy, protection, guardian, support, and/or comfort. This can be incredibly soothing to us in moments of feeling out of control and/or lost. If you are unfamiliar with what faith means to you, try initially reading about different types of spirituality/religions to gain a knowledge on practices and values that may speak to you. If you are more logical of a person, focus on your faith in science and technology; the resilience of the human species. Whatever you need to help ground you.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #6

If you aren’t wanting to spend much time with friends and family in person, be sure you FaceTime, text or call often. Maybe plan to watch a funny movie together, even if you’re afar.

Whether you live alone or with people, start creating traditions. Text your friends daily horoscopes and discuss it later in the afternoon, at 3pm stop and drink a cup of tea, try to meditate daily? Whatever it is, this could be a good time to implement a daily tradition that becomes sacred.

If you are in a relationship and live together, plan intentional time to actually sit and talk to each other. I have included a fun Communication Activity to inspire some intimate communication.

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #7

Go on a walk or jog in your neighborhood and find 5 things that you’ve never noticed. Practice mindfulness daily. It is pretty eye-opening when you start to realize how many things are in your daily environment that you have never seen. This can even go as far as freckles on your partner’s face, spices in your cabinet, your dog’s antics. What is around you that you have never really noticed?

How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak: Tip #8

Bottom line, be grateful. We often forget to appreciate the luxuries of our life– we want something, we get it. We aren’t often told we can’t have something, let alone can’t go somewhere. So take a moment to reframe your “needs.” Do you have shelter? Do you have clothes? Do you have love? Do you have food? Do you have water? Do you need that specific brand of hand sanitizer or that 15th box of cereal? Do you need to get out of your house to enjoy dinner? Do you need immediacy and instant gratification? It is so easy to sit in the fear and negativity in moments like these, but it’s OK to look out your window and truly appreciate the beauty that still exists if we choose to see it. In moments of scarcity, we can truly identify what our real values and needs actually are.

Gratitude is the antidote to fear. So count all the amazingness that surrounds your everyday.

Take a moment to really appreciate all that we take for granted daily.

All and all, plan to cook a meal that takes more than an hour to prepare, deep clean your closets or clip your dog’s nails. Have sexy time with yourself in a hot shower, or ask your partner to join. Do the things that we often avoid because we “don’t have time.” Do the things that you “wish you had time for,” because now, you have no excuse.

And… wash your hands!

The post How to Stay Calm During COVID19 Outbreak appeared first on Modern Love Counseling.

What Traveling Has Taught Me About (My) Values.

I enjoy traveling. As I think many of us do. We can feel free to be our true authentic selves, not worrying about calorie intake or emails. It’s a feeling of release and ease.

I recently traveled to the West Indies with my adorable husband. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect, but we knew we were up for an adventure.

The moment we arrived, our exhaustion from the full day of travel instantly deteriorated. We immediately felt excited, thankful, and oddly, at home. We struck up a conversation with our lovely taxi driver, Lambert. He was naturally genuine and real, and we felt he was truly interested in teaching us about their community. As he drove through the windy roads, honking at 90% of the cars that passed or the people walking by, he stops in mid sentence to explain, “We honk to say ‘hi’ to our friends here. Not for any other reason, just want you to know, we don’t use our horns in the same way most do.” We laughed, but then I had an immediate flashback from the previous week. While on my way to work, I got honked at by the impatient person behind me, when I didn’t notice (within the millisecond) the light turning green, I’m pretty sure I saw a finger, too. I thought to myself, “Hmm… definitely not the same usage where we come from!” He told us about the political election that was coming up, the drug issues that were unfortunately common in the area; he even told us about his personal life. So real. So open. For the 30 minute taxi ride, we felt as though we experienced more than just transportation, rather we made a true friend. 

We always knew there was something about the American culture that did not necessarily speak to us, but we weren’t exactly sure what that meant. We started figuring it out as the trip continued to expose our inner values and we began to connect the dots of what our passions really are. I started to grasp how much “power,” social status and cultural norms impact our society. I started to truly realize how much people everywhere suffer, yet, when we are, we tend to build defenses around us rather then reach out to community, family, or friends. This was opposite of how I perceived the natives and they embodied this message of peace, kindness, and support. I learned from a few natives, that they were envious of our American rights and opportunities. This makes sense… as their government hasn’t always had their economy’s best interest in mind.

At the same time they expressed this, it also made me feel as though the things they envy about us, are ironically the same things that prevent us from genuinely connecting and often times, feeling truly fulfilled.

Generally speaking, we have the rights to opportunity that many don’t have; we can go to university, start businesses, make investments, etc. In comparison, we have the resources available to us to be financially successful, to save money, to buy expensive stuff.

We (as Americans) seemingly crave success, and ultimately demand respect and positive reinforcement, yet ironically, we rarely know how to genuinely give it due to our insecurities.

My clients often come to me saying, “You know Alysha, I am extremely successful in my career, I make great money and can afford to live in luxury. I did what I was supposed to do; I got an education, scored a fancy job, got married, had children. I even have a golden retriever named, Max. But… There is something inside of me that feels untouched. I don’t feel truly fulfilled with my life. How can my life on paper be the ideal American Dream, yet make me feel so empty?”

I know I have experienced the pressures of our culture, “make more money, climb up the corporate ladder to succeed, make your parents or boss proud, save save save for retirement, buy fancy clothes, get a new car, buy a house, save save save, get expensive stuff, be responsible, buy fancy new gadgets, save save save, buy buy buy buy, make more money, gotta be successful.”

I feel as though it truly never stops! We operate on an implicit foundation that encourages us to focus on material possessions and economic status/“success” rather than focusing on being real, connected and vulnerable with others in our life. We generally don’t let many people in; we don’t know how to trust. We constantly feel criticized and in fear of judgement, so we close off to people and only expose our fancy, successful exteriors to each other. This is a lot safer.

But isn’t feeling understood and safe with others, what makes us feel truly alive? It seems really counter intuitive if you look at it objectively.

Ironically, the same (kind) envy that some of my new friends expressed having toward me and other tourists, is the same thing that has caused many of us Americans to lose sight of being humble and loving toward each other. At the same time, the (kind) envy I have toward them is their innate friendliness and respect to their neighbors, their families, their friends. No judgements, no hate or disrespect… just love. They choose love in times of tragedy and oppression, they choose love in times of peace and harmony…

I think we have a lot to learn from “less privileged” countries.

Couples often come in to my office and express, “I just want to connect more, I truly miss my partner. I want more time to be spent together but I am ‘nagging and pushy’ when I ask for it or I am told my expectations are too high.” While the other partner expresses, “I have to work to provide for our family, to afford our lifestyle. There’s not a lot of time in the day for ‘connecting’ and romance.” I understand how this can truly become an issue, because it is easy to fall victim of our social trap of expectations and perceived values.

However, let’s think about this for a moment in very objective way. Generally speaking:

We live to work as our culture has implied that we do. This often leaves little to no energy/time to truly connect with the closest ones in our life. We make this sacrifice, only to provide the financial security and/or maintain the privileged lifestyle, but then we may find ourselves struggling with connecting with others in a profound way. This ironically, makes our luxury lifestyle meaningless.

In a way, if we value achieving and maintaing a financially rewarding lifestyle over having fulfilling relationships, it will in essence perpetuate our insecurities… which only promote discrimination and defensiveness; it will create defenses, which only cause alienation and loneliness; and it will sustain a lack of fulfillment in our lives.

(**I am not trying to convey that this is a dichotomy and you cannot have both, rather trying to share my experience and shed awareness of the generalization of what we tend to experience in our culture**)

Traveling to this exotic, gorgeous island, reminded me how to love others in the way I always instinctually felt was there, but wasn’t able to always express in our culture, in fear of being criticized by my peers.

The relationships my husband and I made and the relationships we witnessed, showed me how to love myself, even with my own superficial insecurities. It showed me how to feel and show respect, to myself and to others. It touched me in a way that was extremely
humbling and genuinely comforted my soul. Experiencing the natural love between the natives reassured me to feel authentically free and natural. It made me realize us humans are really all the same, but the complexities of power, wealth, success, insecurities and disrespect, often come between us from connecting and feeling safe.

I came home and naturally fell back into the infamous American “daily grind,” but only to feel more fulfilled and grateful for all that I have and all that I am. Although it could be easy to forget the impact the natives had on me, I can feel myself making the necessary shifts to being more patient, less stressed, more loving to strangers and people I don’t normally reach out to; I feel more enriched with the connections I have and more grateful for my accomplishments and abilities. I pride on the idea of having love and friendliness be a part of my life on a daily basis and am an actively refocusing my energy on that over setting financial goals that only steer me away from being humble and grateful.

I will always be excited and grateful for my traveling experiences, and I will always take something authentically significant from the relationships I make during my experiences. It’ll always be more than just a vacation for me and I truly appreciate the lessons I learned from my recent traveling experience to the West Indies.

The post The Ironic Envy : What Traveling Has Taught Me About Values appeared first on Modern Love Counseling.