Dear Community,
Life begins where fear ends. ~ Osho
I am a recovering emetophobe. My fear began in second grade on a carnival ride and followed me into my early adulthood, when I was systematically desensitized by going to college and living in a dorm. Being around binge drinking is the perfect cure. Just when the phobia started to appear again, I gave birth to 3 children over the course of four years. The minute my eldest entered preschool, the stomach flu went through our home yearly. I was healed again! The residue from having a phobia about vomit is having a hypersensitivity to germs. Thus, I have begun and ended many days for the past month by consuming articles about the ever-widening path that the coronavirus is tearing across this planet. I like staying on top of the news and educating myself about the nature of this microscopic particle that looks like a fleck of pollen cast from the sun. And I imagine that some of you, like me, are experiencing angst about COVID-19 appearing in our county.
My concerns are for the health and safety of my family and my community, but they also run deeper than fear of illness or even death. My interest is in the collective mental, social and emotional symptoms that come with pandemics. For the past few weeks, COVID-19 fear has taken a seat in my waiting room, greeting each person who enters. My patients sluff their worry, their preparations, their canceled conferences and travel plans, their what-ifs. I try to purify it all. My job as a therapist offers me the gift of feeling the emotional pulse of our community. Today, it feels like our town, our nation, our planet has anxiety induced tachycardia and as a helper, I have the desire to sooth.
This is a tricky place to reside. We are watching impact zones grow wider as the virus slowly marches toward our community like the Thomas fire did two winters ago. We know how to cope with growing fear, some of did it really well and others...not so much. The toxic effects of stress on human beings has been a headline for years now. Stress increases our blood pressure, increases our blood sugar which can cause weight gain, increases risks of heart attacks, decreases fertility, creates headaches and lowers our immune system’s defenses. We can experience headaches, shortness of breath and heart palpitations. Those are just the physical effects of stress. Behaviorally, we eat more and usually eat food that is not good for us. We sleep less, which also decreases our immunity. Some of us look to numb the feeling with alcohol or drugs. Stress increases the tendency toward angry outbursts and lowers our attention span. Emotionally, stress makes us irritable, anxious, and depressed.
What we are moving toward is a collective outbreak of anxiety. This is called emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is when we synchronize our emotional state with the people around us. It is similar to empathy, but with empathy we are aware that the emotion is about someone else. With emotional contagion, we are unaware that the emotional source is not from within. Theorists think contagion could be from mimicry: he smiles at me, I smile back which shifts my emotional state internally to match his. Additionally, our emotions change the chemistry that we emit from our bodies. Fear pheromones have been confirmed through studies of the smell of our breath and our sweat, though we have yet to scientifically prove that humans can detect emotions from one another’s smell. We don’t even need to be in physical contact with others to pick up emotion. Facebook and Twitter engaged in controversial studies that proved that emotional contagion happens over the internet as well. Even if we do not yet have the scientific evidence of how it happens, we know for sure that we are sensitive to the emotions of those around us. This is a survival mechanism. It keeps us alive in times of danger.
Panic is an uncontrollable fear causing wildly, unthinking behavior that can spread quickly through people and animals. Panic is almost never an effective or useful state of being. Even in life or death moments, we need our wits about us. People often survive disasters and terrifying, dangerous situations because they can control how they respond. I recently had the misfortune of being at the grocery store with empty shelves. I was trying to get frozen spinach and the man in front of me, emptied the shelves of frozen vegetables into his cart. He was shopping in panic. A lot of shoppers were, fear was palpable in the store. It felt terrible.
My work is to help people manage the interaction between their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in order to better navigate this complicated experience of being alive. I also spend time looking at where some of these patterns began and I often find they go all the way back to childhood and are learned from our parents. We not only lend our nervous system to our children, but we model our behaviors for them as well. How you are handling your mounting anxiety as a parent is going to create a blueprint for how your children handle adversity in their futures. While I wish I could say, our children won’t need this skill, that they will have happy lives where disasters and pandemics will be a thing of the past, I sadly cannot. We are only seeing an increase in the need for resiliency, so let’s get on with learning how to do this well.
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go. ~ Rumi
I have made a practice of emptying my mind after I consume the news. Instead of letting the fear that arises from anxiety inducing news articles, I try not to let fear take root inside of me. Instead I visualize it flowing through me like water. I pull from the news the necessary facts: how to keep my family safe. WASH MY HANDS, really, really well, as much as I can. Try to stop touching my face, a habit I can only break when I wear a mask. And please STAY HOME! Keep your family home, keep your contact circle small. Make decisions for the collective not just yourself. After consuming the news, if you cannot release fear, then try to limit your consumption of it. Your mind attends to what you put in it. If you have the news on the television first thing in the morning, on your car radio on your commute to work and you get push notifications on your phone throughout the day you are not giving yourself space to anchor yourself in your life. You are out there somewhere attending to the problems of the nation and world. You might want to try coming back to you, here.
You might want to try scheduling a worry appointment for yourself. Go ahead, snicker. I am being serious, though. Instead of letting your mind barrage you with fearful thoughts, try to schedule a worry session at some point in your day, not close to bedtime. Sit down for ten minutes and let your mind go deep into your fears. If you are a writer, write about it. If you are an artist, draw or paint out the fear. Give yourself space to indulge and when you find worry on your mind at another point in the day, tell yourself, I have time for these thoughts during my worry appointment. They are not allowed to be attended to until then.
It is really important to practice good self-care right now. Weave it in and out of your daily routine. Make sure you are getting enough sleep. I know the time change just happened and sleep is always affected during daylight saving adjustments, but try to be mindful of getting as close to 8 hours a night as possible. Try to eat healthy, whole foods. Lowering your sugar intake can help your gut health, which in turn helps immune system function. Find time to get your heart rate up through exercise, which is one of the most effective antidotes to any mental/emotional health crisis. Sweat is very efficient in releasing anxiety from our systems.
Practice visualizations to help with your worry. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and go to a place in your mind where nothing can harm you. This is your safe place. Fill in all of the details. Where are you? What colors can you see around you? Are you inside or outside? Can you hear waves crashing in the distance, or leaves dancing in the wind, maybe birds singing to one another? Is a fire crackling in a fireplace or a stream trickling over boulders? What smells are around you? Smells from nature like lilac, rosemary, damp mossy earth, or salt air. What can you feel on your skin? What temperature is the air? Is there a breeze or a soft blanket around you? Just imagine yourself in this space where nothing can harm you. If worry comes for a visit, try not to judge yourself for it. Just notice the worry and then send it on its way. Imagine it is a leaf floating on water and drifting downstream or imagine it is a balloon and floats away in the air. Or, imagine your worry combusts and floats away in a puff of smoke. Create the space to practice this visualization whenever you are feeling overwhelmed.
I encourage you to hone in your skill of positive self-talk. Our minds are very good at negative banter. If only we were as kind to ourselves as we are to others. Talk back to the fear with encouragement and bravery. “We will get through this. I am safe. My body knows how to fight illness. My immune system is strong. We have a skilled medical community. We are strong. I am strong.” Find a set of positive, calming statements that you can use when you are starting feeling anxiety rising.
Finally, engage in stress relieving activities that you love. Human beings are fantastically diverse in their interests. Engage in what feels good to you. Get off your device. Listen to music, have a dance party with yourself, sit in prayer, take a warm bath, do a puzzle, paint, draw, color, write, shoot hoops, sew, consume comedy, read a good book, meditate, go outdoors, walk these beautiful beaches and explore our mountain’s trails, cook a yummy meal, clean out your closet, build a model airplane, call a friend. You get the idea. Turn off the exposure to the collective mindset and turn inward to anchor yourself.
These mountains that you are
carrying,
You were only supposed
to climb.
~ Najwa Zebian
With the bad news pressing down on us, it is important to remember your Self. Take the time to attend to your inner resources. Access that pod of courage that you have buried deep inside. Remember that children’s eyes and ears that are attuned to you. Show them, you’ve got this or pretend like you’ve got this and pretty soon, you will. Be kind to others in the process. It is easy to see one another as a threat, especially outsiders who come on cruise ships and airplanes. We are all human and this tiny little virus is making us feel vulnerable. One of the biggest gifts my work as a crisis responder and psychologist has given to me, has been to bear witness to the unimaginable amount of suffering that human beings have been made to endure. It is from the depths of suffering, that I have seen the most profound resiliency. Once they catch their breath and get accustomed to their new lives and new selves, some survivors even say that they would never give back the experience or the pain, because pain gives birth to something else and that something . . . it can be beautiful too.
Wishing us all good health. Be well.
Brooke
Brooke Sears, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Santa Barbara Community Wellness Team
Cold Spring Wellness Committee
PSY30172