Covid19 – Psychological Survival

I started off blogging about how to talk to kids about covid-19 and as things continue to escalate it is important to consider our own self-care, now, if we need to self-isolate and what happens afterwards.

The first thing we should do and continue to do is to follow the advice of the Public Health doctors in the HSE. Before we can be psychologically safe we need to be as physically safe as we can be so we need to not only heed the medical advice but embed it in our new routines, it needs to become our mantra.

FAKE NEWS

This is an important starting point in our psychological survival guide. Fake News is a challenge at the best of times, seeing dramatic and catastrophic click-bait headlines on social media or whatsapp messages sent to us multiple times. We need to do a couple of things to combat this:

• Maintain a healthy degree of skepticism about what we read / see on social media and actively wonder about whether some of the content could be click-bait
• Stick to reliable / reputable / trustworthy sources of information such as the HSE
• WHO have an excellent Myth Busters section on their website that can counter fake news and panics
• Take a break from social media, we’re at less risk of being vulnerable to fake news about corona-19 if we’re not constantly on it

ROUTINE

When something as big and dramatic as a worldwide pandemic occurs (which is not too often thankfully) it interferes with our daily routine. Limits have been imposed in different parts of the world on where people can go / travel / school / work / sporting occasions etc. Routine’s reassure us, they make the world feel predictable, we don’t need to think as much or worry because things follow a pattern, they’re predictable.

That’s where Covid-19 has been having such a negative psychological impact, it’s knocked out routines, we can’t predict with any degree of certainty how long this will last or whether we will contract the virus or not.

Unpredictability and uncertainty feeds and fuels anxiety and panic. Routine while not a complete antidote to it will take the edge off it and sometimes that’s realistically as much as we can hope for.

FOUR KEY ROUTINES FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SURVIVAL

In general there are four key foundations that give us the potential for not only psychological survival but give us the possibility of enhanced psychological well-being. The analogy I use the most is a table. It has four key legs to keep it stable and strong. All four are equally important and need to be equal in length for the foundation to be balanced and strong. If any of the four are neglected or if we do too much of any one of them then it will knock us off balance and it will be harder for us to cope with the challenges of every day life, never mind the enormity of covid-19. Lets look at each of them in turn:

SLEEP

When we’re out of routine we often neglect one of the most important aspects of our self-care, sleep. We might stay up too late watching a box set knowing we don’t have to be up in the morning or stay in bed way beyond what we usually would. For a prolonged period of isolation it is inevitable that there will be some times where we will go to sleep later / get up later. What we need to try and do is make sure that it doesn’t become a pattern, for ourselves or our kids. When covid-19 comes under control, we will need to adapt back to our pre covid-19 lives again, this will be easier when our imposed isolation routines are not too out of sync with our previous routines.

The other aspect of covid-19 that will impact on our sleep routines is worry / anxiety. It is understandable that we are at risk of lying in bed thinking about lots of “what if”, what if I get it / a family member gets it / if someone I loves gets so sick they die. No matter how long / how many angles you think about it from while lying in your bed trying to sleep, it won’t change the risks or the reality of covid-19. The only thing it will change is your tiredness levels and ability to think straight and emotionally cope the next day. Prioritise a good sleep routine.

SOCIAL 

It is crucially important for our psychological well-being to be socially connected to others. With covid-19 resulting in self or imposed isolation we could go through period (maybe even an extended one) where it is difficult or not possible to be as socially connected as we are used to. So what do we do to maintain our sense of connectedness? As bad as a rap as it gets sometime this is were technology and social media can play an important interim role:

Whether it’s whatsapp video chat, Facetime, Skype or any other video communication tool, at this time it can be an important facility to maintain safe social contact with others irrespective of where we are or what our medical status is. It will never replace face to face person to person contact, but as a temporary measure it can meet our needs for social connectedness and reduce risks of isolation and loneliness.

We’ve witnessed already the incredible support and altruism that people are capable of with social media being the means of facilitating this through #Selfisolationhelp #selfisolation

This will be particularly important for teenagers. During periods of isolation and shut-down out teens will rely on social media and their phones much more than they would usually do. We will need to be more flexible and understanding of their need to feel and stay connected to their peers but we will also need to keep some minimum boundaries on it’s use too.

EXERCISE

Exercise is a well known mood enhancer. With isolation we might be at risk of telling ourselves well I shouldn’t go the gym / football training so I can’t exercise. A quick google search or any free exercise app on our phones will give us a myriad of exercises that we can complete at home or weather permitting in our gardens. Regular exercise will protect both our physical and mental health

FOOD

When we’re out of routine our healthy food habits and routines can slip also. We need to try and maintain our routines around eating and also resist the temptation to over indulge in alcohol or caffeine (both will negatively impact on our mood and anxiety levels).

MANAGING OUR EMOTIONS

The very existence of Covid-19 and how much it is now a constant on our news, social media and conversations means that there is a strong likelihood that we will be experiencing a wide range of challenging feelings with the following being the most likely:

• Anxiety
• Frustration
• Anger
• Irritation
• Boredom

Most of the above will be normal reactions to trying to manage the realities of the stress of covid-19. What makes it extra difficult is that the degree of uncertainty that exists about how long this will go on for or how serious it could get for each or us and our loved ones.

In this situation, Anxiety is likely to be one of our biggest challenges. We will be bombarded by news cycles of infection rates, news of people who have died, enforced closures of places and events which will only fuel our anxiety. Worrying about the worst is an understandable reaction, especially in light of the WHO designating Covid-19 as a worldwide pandemic, it would be more unusual if you weren’t worried about the implications of Covid-19.

The challenge for all of us is differentiating between symptoms of anxiety (upset tummy, tension, aches, pains, increased heart beat, shortness of breath) and then mis-interpreting those as being signs of covid-19. It’s not unexpected for us to catastrophise and think of the worst outcome when we feel any physical symptoms in our body. As I mentioned earlier in the blog, stick to reputable sources of information from the HSE or WHO and please recognise that “Dr Google” will only increase not decrease our anxiety. It’s also important when we’re feeling anxious to check in with friends and loved ones. There’s a high likelihood that they will have been feeling anxious too. It helps to know we’re not the only ones that feel a particular way. Anxiety is our bodies response to threat, perceived or real. What is draining for us is being in a constant state of alertness for threat and danger.

Self-care and self-compassion is never more important than now.

One way of doing this is not to wake up each day wondering “What will I / we do today”. Make a schedule, preferably written, of plans for the day ahead. Use the time to re-discover things that might have gotten previously lost in the hectic busyness of life, books we meant to read, albums we want to re-listen to, board games we can play as a family, movies we could watch together. Don’t leave it to chance, schedule them.

Boredom is a sure fire recipe for anxiety to take a hold in our minds and increase our stress levels. The busier we can be the less time we have to think / overthink. It’s crucial to focus on what we can and can’t control. Focusing on what is out of our control will only make us feel more anxious.

No one of the above will exclusively protect us psychologically, at different times different combinations will be more effective. The one constant that will protect us more than anything? Hope. Hope is crucial, it gives us energy to keep going, for ourselves and others. When we feel despair at the latest catastrophic headline, we need to try to keep hope, hope is our psychological antidote to anxiety, sadness and despair, When we can’t find it in ourselves reach out to others, we don’t need to be alone, we shouldn’t be, together we will find a way to get through this, our strength is in our collective unity and out willingness to be there for each other.

This article first appeared on Mark’s really fantastic, informative website Wandering Mind of a Psychologist.