Coping with the COVID-19 Crisis
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I have been asked for tips on coping for adults and for families; you can find them below! These are for information only and are not mental health treatment; if you need counseling, please contact a professional in your area.
Surviving and Thriving through COVID-19 CrisisBy Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, BCC |
We’re worried about our loved ones, our own health, our school work or livelihood and what the months ahead will hold for our families, our communities, and our world. Being separated from one another makes it harder. Here are some strategies that can help:
1. Establish a daily routine and keep regular hours. Get up at your usual time; go to bed as usual. Use a checklist, a schedule or whatever structure helps you stay focused on positive, constructive actions.
2. Pray! Pray alone; pray on video-conferencing with friends and family; pray while watching livestream worship services. Include in this: daily periods of silence – not just telling God what you want done; instead, begin learning to sit quietly, observe your zigzagging thoughts, and not immediately take all your ideas so seriously.
3. Physical activity: an hour or more of physical activity, if you have medical clearance to do so, will help reduce the physical and mental effects of chronic stress. If you are able to be outdoors without being in danger of infection – enjoy a walk in nature. If not, seek opportunities indoors: walk in place; dance with your kids; be creative!
4. Reach out to someone who needs encouragement every day. Call, email, text, video chat, or send a note in the mail – be a light for someone who is alone and discouraged.
5. Check for news updates twice a day – more than that and you are often reinfecting yourself with the same negative news. Even if your logical brain recognizes it as last hour’s news, your emotional brain is again jolted with a bit of fight-or-flight about the pandemic and its consequences.
6. Odds are, you have more time on your hands than usual. Why not pick something to learn about on your own, with family, or with friends as an online/videochat study group? Can you practice a new skill, start a book club (hello, e-reader plus video chat!), or study a long-neglected area of interest? If you ever purchased arts and crafts supplies for “someday,” bought and neglected a language-learning app or fondly recall an elective course you’d wished was your major – it’s time to bring those interests into the light of day.
7. Take some time each day to journal about the experiences you are having during these strange times. Writing things out may help you clarify your emotions and thoughts, and help you see your experiences from a slightly “outside” perspective. Close your daily journal entry with a few things for which you are grateful.
There are lots of other ways to survive and thrive as people maintain social distance, self-isolate, and shelter in place…while we can’t control everything, we can exert control over our responses. Pick the story you want to be able to tell yourself, and others, about how you handled the COVID-19 crisis. Are you going to be able to tell a story of faith, compassion and grace under pressure – the year you became passable in Portuguese, started a book club via Skype or Facetime, and became a hula hoop expert? Or will it be the year you zoned out in front of 24/7 news for untold days, slowly becoming more burdened with ennui and inertia?
Choose to persist in faith, maintain your healthy habits, nurture others and grow in wisdom.
Choose life!
Families and Children
I have been asked about tips particularly for families with children. I was a school counselor and remember very well September 11, 2001; there are similarities here as well as differences. I’ll start with the same advice I gave at school and with clients all those years ago:
1. Limit access to the news, especially for your children. The emotion-processing parts of our brain experience each revisit of news as a new, frightening experience, adding to adrenaline, cortisol and other stress chemistry. For your own sake and your children’s, please limit exposure to written and audio/video news about COVID-19. Check in a couple of times a day for updates.
2. Maintain as normal a routine as possible. School or not, keep your kids on the same get up/go to bed routine during the week. Keep meal times regular and eat at the table together, even if life feels like one long, strange hurricane party with electricity and running water.
3. Establish a daytime routine for: prayer (including gratitude for our blessings!), school work, quiet reading, imaginative play, creative activities, active play, family project (see #7).
4. Limit screen-time and social media. However, if your child is now an online learner, do not count school time against their daily quota of screen time.
5. Children and adults need physical activity. If you are unable to go outside to play safely under your circumstances, here are some ideas:
a. Streaming videos of at-home workouts that are family-friendly
b. Family “dance parties.” Throw in fake Karaoke if you like singing, too!
c. Kid- and grownup-friendly calisthenics, stretching, balance workouts, etc. that are safe to do in your home.
6. Answer questions clearly, simply and honestly. For example, “The Corona Virus, or COVID-19, is a type of virus like the flu. If someone catches it, it sometimes can make them very, very sick. Sometimes they have to go to the hospital. People can also have it and not seem sick at all, which means others can catch it from them. (If you have had first-hand experience with this as a family, for example, the birthday party where it turned out one kid was ABOUT to get sick and a week later half the guests were sick, too, bring it up here). So we are all pitching in and staying away from people outside our homes so no more people get sick. Anyone who is sick will get treatment. Then the virus will stop spreading.”
7. Pick a family project and spend some time on it every day or nearly every day. Some ideas:
a. Practice or begin learning a new language (the kids will outshine you on this, and that’s OK!). Use a language app, online videos, listen to the radio in that language, watch the news or other shows in that language.
b. Start putting ideas together for a family scrapbook: possible theme? “How We Stayed Strong through COVID-19!”
c. Sort through closets to gather items to donate to charity: outgrown toys, clothes, and books. Many people are suffering financially and will need help when this time passes. Say a prayer for those people as you decide what goes in the “help someone” pile.
d. Pick a subject to learn about as a family: the planets? A time in history? A famous person a day, letting each family member take turns picking?
Peace!
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
- CS Lewis
"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do." - Pope John XXIII
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Albert Einstein