There’s nothing that makes me feel old like seeing the look in my daughters’ eyes (even though they try to hide it) when I ask them for help with my computer.  And with my work schedule switching from a fairly long commute to absolutely no commute, the extra time I thought I’d have is now used trying to connect to WiFi, unfreeze my remote computer access, or find an email with the right link to the right meeting.  My struggle with technology makes me feel embarrassed, clueless, and down right like a stressed out idiot.  Turns out, though, I’m not alone, and if you’re relating to what I’m saying, there’s a term for it.  According to Fast Company’s computer experts, it is called “technostress,” a condition they wrote about even before the pandemic.  And in this unprecedented stay at home time, it’s only gotten worse with our complete dependence on our phones and computers for connection.

Part of what stresses me out is how absolutely vital technology has become.  The good news, truly, is that I can continue to do my work, stay connected to my staff, and talk with family and friends.  I’m continuing in my book club and even going to religious services all from my home!  But the privilege of all of this connectivity is a constant layer of stress on all of us.  And the more important the meeting, interview, or communication, the more stressed we become.  Technostress is defined as the “negative stress and psychological symptoms directly related to the use and adoption of new technologies.”  The term was first used by Craig Brod in 1984 with the widespread adoption of computers in the workplace.  Research shows our frustration has only grown as our dependence on technology has greatly increased and spread throughout both our personal and professional lives.

Technostress isn’t just about using specific tools or kinds of technology, it also refers to our relationship with technology.  For one thing it blurs the boundaries between work and home life, not just in location, but also in our time.  And the speed of communication also ramps up.  We have constant emails backing up or we may worry about it, constantly checking.  And then there is the learning curve of how to use all the tools that are supposed to make life easier.  And there is little help, except for reading instructions that leave us more confused.  Every new tool I use has so many features and functions, I find I tune out and just want to use the basics.  The constant insecurity I feel is wearing.  I wait for emails that have links, stress when the link won’t open, and panic when they can see me but can’t hear me, or I can hear them but they can’t see me, and all the variations of things that go wrong.  

Studies show technostress can cause a wide variety of symptoms to look out for such as headaches, hypertension, back aches, and other physical symptoms.  People can develop mental fatigue and burn out, as well as a feeling of helplessness and low morale.  It can also cause emotional symptoms like panic/anxiety, feelings of isolation, irritability, reduced satisfaction, and an increased sense of pressure and overwhelm.  Sounds about right.

So what can we do?  First of all, give yourself a break.  Who knew we would all be shut in at home and having to make this shift to a new way of living so all of a sudden?.  Some of us are just not computer types of people.  I went into psychology to engage in conversations that were intimate and personal.  I try to remind myself that it’s ok to struggle with the technology and my ignorance does not reflect my competence in my work or my intelligence.  Next, and this is a tough one, you need to ask for help.  No doubt, we have to admit when we’re having trouble.  Sometimes I get lucky and make it work on my own,  but more often I may stare at the computer for hours getting nowhere without someone to help troubleshoot.  Finding someone with the patience and knowledge is a life line.  Also, use technology when it’s most important and necessary, and then take breaks.  Get away from a screen, meet someone in person for a socially distant chat, or if you can’t avoid technology, ask to use the medium you are most comfortable with whenever possible.  

Ironically, technology is supposed to be about making our lives easier.  And used in balance and when seen as a tool rather than a torture, it can be of great benefit.  For me, personally, I have to stop thinking of it as out to get me and remind myself that it’s just metal, plastic, and wires and has no personal desire to make my life miserable. In fact, at times these very tools can bring me a lot of joy and facilitate keeping my life going.  For the truth is, without my crossword puzzle app or online shopping, just where would I be these past four months?

Remember the marshmallow test?  It was developed by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and was made even more famous by Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional Intelligence.  In this experiment, preschoolers were offered the opportunity to have one marshmallow right away or wait 15 minutes and receive two marshmallows, in other words, delay gratification.  What Mischel found (and has been repeatedly replicated) was that the children who could use strategies such as counting, pacing, or talking to themselves in order to resist the immediate temptation for a future greater reward had higher success as measured by better grades and increased self confidence years later. 

Recently, another group of researchers repeated the marshmallow test with a twist.  In the ‘solo” condition a child was given a cookie and told if they could wait to eat it, they would be given another cookie, essentially the same experiment as the marshmallow test.  But in the “interdependent condition,” two children in separate rooms were given cookies and told if they both successfully waited to eat it, both would get a second cookie.  What they found was that significantly more children delayed gratification in the interdependence condition than in the solo condition, even though the children did not even know each other.  The authors who published their findings in Psychological Science concluded this as evidence that the children had a sense of social obligation to others at a young age and that children are “more willing to delay gratification for cooperative goals than for individual goals.”  Co author Rebecca Koonan noted the children felt they “shouldn’t let their partner down.”

So now the pre-schoolers grow up and are adults with years of being encouraged to think about what “I” want or what is good for the people “I” love.  They don’t like being told what to do and in fact will become defensive and argumentative even if what they’re doing is self destructive or potentially harmful to others. Prolonged behavior change, in fact, is very difficult to achieve by simply telling someone they need to change.  That’s why NYU psychologist and leading researcher, Jay Van Bavel, in his paper combining the work of 41 experts in such fields as economics, psychology, and sociology regarding handling the response to the COVID-19 virus suggests a social modeling strategy over a directed appeal.  He writes, “If we’re asking people to behave in an altruistic or pro-social way, it helps to show a respected member of their social group modeling that behavior and to highlight the prospect of receiving approval from others in their social group.”

But in order to be persuaded or influenced by a group, we first must feel a sense of belonging to the group.  Somewhere between the preschooler wanting his unknown partner to have a cookie and our decisions not to wear masks and social distance, we have lost a connection to and a trust in what Damon Linker, columnist for The Week.com, refers to as the “social whole.” He writes:  “We resent being told what to do.  If wearing a mask is unpleasant, we don’t want to be forced to do it.  In fact, a governing authority – or really, anyone, even fellow customers at a grocery store – reprimanding us for failing to do our part for public health is enough to make us dig in our heals and stubbornly refuse to go along.”  Our connections to a “social whole” have faded into an us versus them mentality.  

It’s no wonder Americans are experiencing high rates of stress, anxiety and depression during this pandemic.  We don’t know who is “on our side” when we enter the public arena.  We wonder what the best course of action is and how the behavior of others will affect us.  This is a lonely experience.  Researchers in China found low levels of mental health problems among returning workers compared to high rates in America.  The reason for the lower levels of stress was the confidence the Chinese workers had that prevention measures would be strictly upheld.   What we gain in individual freedom, we lose in cooperation and trust.  What feels good in the moment of doing as we please, in the long run leaves us in vulnerable isolation.  

The truth is, we need each other.  We certainly do better when we work together than when we have to act alone. We are happier, more resilient, and have a sense of purpose when we feel connected.  To confront the societal problems we face, we will need to establish a feeling of a social whole, to act in the common good, not just for “our side.”   We will have to give up doing what “I’ want in order to support this larger community.  Certainly by delaying our own personal gratification, we can move to a more successful collective good for many.  Indeed, what we can learn from a pre-schooler is the power of social cooperation, not just with someone you know, but with a someone in the other room who might just also want a cookie.  

My daughter graduated from college this past weekend (celebrating virtually, of course).  As a proud parent I’m so impressed with how hard she worked, how much she gained in both academic and personal knowledge, and how much more worldly she is at her age than I was.   Her education was so important in not only building a foundation of knowledge, but in challenging her thought processes and exposing her to new ideas.  It got me thinking about how at the tender age of 21 our formal education generally stops, but how our need for learning is actually lifelong.  Unfortunately as so many of us become comfortable with what we know and enjoy the confidence that  familiarity gives us, we may overlook the potential cost in becoming increasingly closed off to new ideas and inflexible to change.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of experience!  I use it every day in my work and sometimes feel a  bit like a fraud when my interns ask how I know something, thinking I’m so talented,  when it’s just that I’ve seen similar patterns or presentations so many times before.  But I do notice that as I get older I can become a bit complacent and set in my ways.  (Which, ironically, is actually part of why older people are happier according to research).  When I listen to young people challenge the status quo and question why things are as they have been, it’s a wake up call.  When I go to a protest organized by young people, it shakes up my acceptance of how things have to be. Inexperience has its advantages.  There is a freshness of opinion and a willingness to try something new.   There is definitely a trade off in having to tolerate discomfort when you are open to change, and I ask myself about this unease.  Change is scary.  Change brings uncertainty, and with change is the very good chance that you may be left behind or, worse yet, dismissed, or rejected.  

This last month has been a big lesson for me in the downsides of comfort, as I wonder how much my own comfort with how things have been stands in the way of someone else’s need for change.  As I look at so many of our leaders in Congress holding on to their seats well into their 80’s (but not you RBG!!), it does give me concern for how hard it is to change things when our leaders are so comfortable in their power and the style and leadership that keeps them there.  If ever there was a time to embrace the youthful vision of possibility and marry it with the wisdom of experience, it is now.  But in order to do so we must ask ourselves what are we afraid of?  Rather than shutting down the hope of change, we must support its energy and guide its direction.  We must look fear in the face and be willing to give up some of our certainty and with it, some of our authority.  As a society, we must start to share the load of vulnerability.  Equality doesn’t mean all of us being the same, it means a shared ownership of power and its flip side, a leveling of the burdens that must be carried.

As I lift my glass to toast this year’s graduates and see the beauty of their visions for how they would like the world to be, I am pained with its contrast to the world we have handed them.  But I am also inspired with their ingenuity and passion.  With the climate changing, with the country divided, with inequality rising steadily, they are not comfortable, thank God.  Now, if the rest of us can allow ourselves to give up a bit of control, us old dogs may just learn a few new desperately needed tricks that might make our world a better place, despite us..

To be honest, I’ve been speechless this week.  Despite thinking for days about what I might have to say in the midst of what is happening in our country, I sat at my computer with a complete loss for words.  The same thing happened in my work meetings when we tried to support each other.  All I could find to say was “how very awful” it was and “how sorry I am” and how “profound the grief is.” At first I thought it was just about the pain.  What does one say in witnessing George Floyd on the ground, grasping for his last breath. Or in imagining being hunted and shot like an animal, as was Ahmaud Arbery, the last words he heard being a racial slur?  The pain of these truths of injustice is so deep and so difficult to tolerate.  Yet I am a psychologist, and one who works with trauma, no less.  I am trained to talk about emotional pain.  The meaning I find in my work is in this very act of putting words to the darkness one feels from traumatic pain in a process that promotes personal agency and awareness.  So why was this pain any different?  Why was I struggling to find anything of use to say?

In thinking about how to work with this, I went to another therapy technique.  When someone is so overwhelmed by a trauma that they cannot talk about it, we address this by first  “talking about the talking about.”  We explore with them what feelings come up in just the idea of talking about the trauma.  What fears do they have, shame they might be carrying, or guilt?  What must be worked through before they can move forward?  There are many layers to what can silence someone from opening a lid on a box filled with pain.  So I sat with this.  For a while.  And what emerged for me was a real sense of anxiety in not knowing the right thing to say.  As a person with white privilege I am afraid of saying or doing something that will be seen as wrong, hurtful, or even worse, assuming I know something I don’t know.  I am keenly aware of being caught in a dilemma between speaking as if I can understand something I cannot possibly understand and the fear of being silent, which is even worse.  So I say little, try to listen a lot, all the while feeling badly because I know that I am not doing enough.

Fortunately, in trying to understand what is going on for me, I came across an interview with a woman named Robin D’Angelo who is a diversity trainer and author of a book called White Fragility:  Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.  Her words rang true for me, even if it was humbling.  She states “Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware or can never admit to ourselves, we (white people) become highly fragile in conversations around race.  We consider a challenge to our racial worldviews as a challenge to our very identities as good moral people.  Thus we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offense.  The smallest amount of racial stress is intolerable.”

Yup.  That about sums it up.  I try not to be a racist, I try to be aware of my biases, knowing, however, I can’t help being racist as a white person raised in a culture and society that is racist.  But it hurts to think that I am a part of the system that continues to oppress.  That I and my family benefit from the effects of one race dominating over all the others.  For the truth of it is, the very white privilege I have has allowed me to avoid the racial stress, thinking my empathy and good intentions at trying to be kind to everyone are enough.  Or that expressing outrage every time there is a victim or an incident that is brought to my attention is enough, all the while having the privilege to move on and go about my life until the next news cycle.

The good news?  The book by Robin D’Angelo is back ordered; enough of us white people want to understand and are willing to read a book entitled White Fragility, or a novel The Vanishing Half by black author Brit Bennett, or How to Be An Antiracist by IbramX Kendi, and the picture book I am Enough. As of last Wednesday (today is Friday as I write this) 15 of the top 20 best selling books on Amazon are about race, racism, and white supremacy in the US.  

We are a traumatized nation.  In grieving both a viral pandemic and a racial pandemic, openings are being created to become aware of injustice and to express it.  There will be a backlash, as we see, not just politically, but within ourselves.  It is up to each of us to take the steps to not only read the books, but to follow through on supporting change in our societal structures.  But for me personally, this week has been a sorrowed recognition of my own discomfort and avoidance.  I’ve awakened to the fact that I can’t do anything until I can first tolerate the awareness of racial inequality (and how I benefit from it) and find the language to talk about it.  I will need to be vulnerable enough to take ownership of it rather than thinking it’s about other people. For me, this will be a needed first step and one that I no longer want the luxury of not taking.

This is not a post to take a side.  I’m not advocating for staying “locked down” or for “opening up”.  What I am advocating is for us to resist the temptation to what we call in psychology “black and white thinking.”  Black and white thinking is when we divide into extreme positions on one side of an issue or another while missing all the shades of gray. This style of thinking is, in fact, considered a defense mechanism.  Against what?  Against the painful complexity of not being sure, of uncomfortable inconsistencies and complexities, and of the scary feeling that we may not be doing things “the right way.”

I’ve noticed as each state begins to “open up,”  there’s a lot of opinions about what is acceptable.   On the extremes are people who feel the whole lock down is a bogus infringement on “freedom”.  On the other extreme are people who are horrified by anyone who selfishly ventures out and puts the entire community’s “safety at risk”.  These extremes come down to an argument, along with harsh judgments, regarding the perception of freedom versus safety.  And this to me is a great example of the polarizing effect of black and white thinking.  

The fact is, if you really think about it, you can’t be free if you are not safe. Both of these concepts need to come together as we consider what is the “right” or “best” thing to do.  For those of us who have an underlying health condition, the terror of becoming infected is a great infringement on our freedom.  And for those of us who are financially on the edge, needing to return to work or open a business, the financial implications are also a great infringement on our freedom.  Because in order to be free, we need a certain amount of safety.

Safety comes in many forms.  It can be the safety of knowing where your next meal is coming and where you will be sleeping each night.  Safety also comes in the form of being free of debilitating health concerns or at least having access to the care you need.  And it also can be the safety of knowing you are free from violence or abuse.  Or freedom from overwhelming emotional distress such as anxiety and depression.  Freedom and safety are not opposites, but in my mind are very much interrelated.

My older daughter put it really well when we were talking about the polarization’s happening all over social media: “You don’t know someone else’s story,” she said.  So very true and this perspective gets right to the heart of the debate.  When we judge someone for their actions, we don’t really know all that is going on for them that’s behind the choices they’re making.  It’s a defense mechanism to think that we know better what is the right way to be.  The simple truth is, these are complicated times with unprecedented uncertainty.  We still don’t know enough about COVID-19, the ways that it is transmitted, what it means to be infected, and the long term implications for our health and for our economy.  Uncertainty is hard to tolerate, especially on such a long term basis with such gigantic implications.  And so we retreat to our corners where certainty feels more comfortable and reassuring. 

What we all have in common is a sense of threat that is invisible and yet so very real.  How we respond to this threat is so important in terms of our capacity to ride it through and work together as a community and society.  We are all doing our best to make good choices and to manage our own safety issues. (Can my hair be considered a safety issue?  It is definitely becoming a threat).  So I invite us all to avoid the temptation to run to the black side or the white side.  Now more than ever we need to try on the various shades of gray (like my hair). Freedom and safety are not mutually exclusive. Being human is all about being vulnerable and doing our best to manage our lives through the choices we make, hopefully out of love and thoughtfulness rather than fear and rigidity.

Have you seen the movie Groundhog’s Day?  The one where Bill Murray keeps waking up to find he’s living the same day over and over and over?  That is a reference I’ve heard a lot this week with our shelter in place orders going on and on.  Many of us wake up in the same place, work in the same place, eat and sleep in the same place, interact with the same people doing the same things day after day after day.  There seems to be a collective sense of burn out, for sure.  The only thing that I hear making a reliable difference is getting out in nature, for those lucky enough to do so.  So today my post will sing the virtues of interacting with nature.  It isn’t just a hunch or a sense, but there is real science behind the psychological benefits of interacting with natural elements.

Biophilia (for once a “philia” term you actually want to have) refers to our attraction and affinity for living systems and natural things.  It posits that we humans have an inborn need for contact with nature and that this connection is essential to our health and well being.  Exposure to nature has shown a positive impact in recovering from surgery faster, improving the ability to focus and improving blood pressure levels.  There is even an emerging treatment method in Japan called “forest medicine” to take advantage of the healing benefits of our interaction with nature.   Being outdoors gives us energy, makes us happier, helps us to relieve stress, and even opens the door to being more creative.

While authors, poets and naturalists have been sharing the benefits of their profound experiences in nature for hundreds of years, scientists are now able to see the changes in the brain and body that underlie these physical and mental health benefits.  Results of various experiments show that people who walk in forests had significantly lower heart rates and reported better moods and less anxiety than people who walked the same distance in an urban environment (so it’s not the exercise alone).  In one study, a researcher focused on how walking in nature affects rumination, which is associated with the onset of depression and anxiety.  He used MRI technology to look at brain activity to compare people who walked in either a natural or urban setting.  People in the natural setting reported decreased rumination and this was supported by their brain scans, which showed increased activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (I bet you didn’t even know you had one), an area of the brain whose deactivation is affiliated with depression and anxiety.  Further research shows increases in problem solving tasks, short term memory and creative problem solving when we spend time in nature.  (Of important note, these positive effects all go away if you use a cell phone during your walk, showing the brain activity of someone with attention overload!).

Ok, you may ask, but what if I can’t get to a park or natural setting?  What if I don’t live near one I can walk to in our lock down, or am too vulnerable physically to go out?  The good news is that you don’t even have to be outside to get the benefits of nature.  Studies show that just watching a video of nature or even looking at a pretty plant has benefits for decreasing stress and improving our sense of well being.  There is even a design movement known as biophilic interior design that uses natural colors, images, and textures in office spaces.  It has proven to reduce absenteeism and mental fatigue, promote emotional satisfaction and increase productivity.

Believe it or not, according to a surveys by the Environmental Protection Agency, even when we are NOT in lock down, Americans stay inside for up to 93% of their lifetimes (when you include time inside and in transport).  Maybe one of the silver linings of all of this staying at home will be for us to truly appreciate the gift of keeping our natural word protected and the benefits it has for us.  In the meantime, we can buy pretty flowers, watch Nature on PBS (the one about weasels is adorable-Season 38, episode 12), and watch for birds out our window.  And if we watch closely enough, we might just get to catch a glimpse of that dang groundhog!

I must confess…I’m not thriving.  I’m not baking incredible things, recreating famous paintings with household items, or running marathons around my house.  I’m not sewing masks, arranging parades down the block for a lonely child’s birthday, or spearheading a fundraiser.  I think about it a lot, though.  Every time I see an image of what others are doing, I feel a little guilty.  I should be doing something better.  I should at least be doing something more.  And if I can’t do more, at least I should be able to be more helpful to other people.  I talk to my patients all day and feel I should have answers to their concerns, I should know how to help them.  And with my family I should be able to protect them and keep this pandemic from disrupting their college lives and business so intensely.

The stress of this pandemic is enormous.  But the stress we can add to it by our own expectations of ourselves is a whole other matter.  It’s lovely to celebrate the creativity and feel good stories of other people’s efforts, but it can contribute to the guilt and pain we experience in feeling we’re not doing enough.  A lot of us feel we’re in over our heads.  We’re trying to handle the emotional roller coaster of our personal and family life.  I heard a great metaphor that seems so appropriate: We are all weathering the same storm, but in very different boats.  Each of us has our own situation and vary in our resources, both emotionally and practically.  It’s an unfair practice to compare ourselves with others.  This is not a time to judge ourselves or other people for how we each are keeping ourselves afloat.

An important skill comes to mind in thinking about this overwhelm and “should” expectation frustration.  It’s what psychologists call “radical acceptance”:  accepting everything about yourself, your situation, and your life without blame, question, or judgment.  When a situation is out of our control, fighting against it only leads to more suffering.  By accepting things as they are, not pushing to have things as you want them to be you, you can reduce your added stress and actually increase your coping. It doesn’t mean you agree with what’s happening or even attempt to make the most of it, you merely allow yourself to accept what it is that you cannot change and stop fighting against it.

When I accept that I can’t change what’s happening and accept things as they are, I take the pressure off myself by letting go of my “shoulds”.  With this space, I actually begin to see that there is a lot I actually am doing and can reassure myself that, in this very moment, I am fine.  Radical acceptance takes away the judgement that there is some other way I need to be or some expectation that I must live up to.  Things are as they are.

In fact, once I free myself from the burden of non-acceptance, I tend to feel a sense of calm.  In this calm,  I can shift my focus to the things I can do.  For example, I may not be able to fix things for other people, but I can listen.  I can’t sew masks, but I can show appreciation to the woman who made one.  Little by little I find myself working my way out of the paralyzed state of overburdened should.

In this time of helpless staying at home and waiting for time to pass, perhaps it’s an opportunity to remind ourselves of the value of connection and relationship.  It’s a time to shift our focus from doing to being:  being together, being with ourselves, being apart.  We can listen to our thoughts and deepen our emotional experience with one another and with ourselves. Our regular lives are so focused on performance and activity, perhaps during this unprecedented time we can give ourselves and others permission to just be – where we are, who we are, and as we are.  Now isn’t that radical!

Talk about change!! No matter your situation, life is surely very different than it used to be just a short time ago.  Many of us are constantly home with people we didn’t expect to spend so much time with, engaging in ways we could never have anticipated, either.  Inevitably, as much as you love each other, conflict will arise. Especially under these hard circumstances with so many competing stressors and our lives suddenly being lived directly on top of one another, it’s bound to cause a quarrel or two.  This week’s post is to reassure you it’s normal and hopefully give some tips to get through.

About now, the reality of the situation is sinking in – this surreal way of living is our new normal.  We are using phones and laptops to try to do what was already challenging enough to do in person. We have lost roles that define us and lost income that sustains us. In trying to move forward, we are competing in our homes for space, noise levels (one wants to watch a video and another needs quiet), dietary needs, and cleanliness comfort.   Extroverts want more conversation and introverts are trying to retreat. We all have our particular way of coping and privacy is a forgotten medium. If you’re like me, the last month has brought both highs and lows that are very intense. I feel blessed for the opportunity to have this time with my family so close together, but have not always been at my best in navigating through it!

I had written a post one Groundhog’s Day about the psychological concept of “the shadow”.  It is the part of ourselves we don’t like to see (or sometimes can’t see). It’s usually a less acceptable part of ourselves that gets played out on those around us (hence named the shadow) while we remain comfortably unaware. I can’t help but think that with all of us home under stress for so many hours, we are all casting shadows on top of one another! No wonder we are a bit tense and feel misunderstood!  For example, my not-great habit of reacting under stress is to turtle up and become withdrawn and preoccupied by my thoughts and fears, shutting down to others. My family could tell something was wrong, but I kept insisting I was fine.  Finally, they had to confront me that I was being distant and it made them feel rejected and hurt. I didn’t like hearing that, as in my mind I was working hard to be the “good mom,” making everyone feel loved and supported through cooking and cleaning and making sure everyone had what they needed.  But when they shared examples with me, I had to open my eyes to their truth. I was emotionally shrinking from them, lost in my own perceptions of my experience.

Many of us are going back to old habits and patterns.  They can be more obvious, like drinking or smoking again or letting our anger get the best of us.  Or our old habits can be more subtle, like falling into an old relational dynamic or family role we had hoped we’d outgrown.  It can take a toll on our self esteem, particularly at a time when we need our emotional resilience. It’s important to remember that this tendency is normal, that the pull of regression is normal, and that you are not alone. The key is to be as aware as possible of how we are reacting and be open to feedback with a good dose of self compassion.  We also need to have compassion for others, and give one another the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

Here are a few thoughts to serve as a reminder/guide:

*Take time out.  Use whatever works for you to calm yourself down and engage your thinking brain.  Meditation, mindfulness, yoga, art, walking, dancing, or whatever you need to calm yourself down and take care of you.  Do it every day.

*Be a good listener.  It will be hard to hear, really hear, what others are saying, but be prepared to open yourself to their perspective.  Everyone has different opinions and feelings. No one can say another person’s feelings are wrong. Resist the temptation to interrupt and be defensive.  If needed, set some time parameters that allow you and the other person time to talk in turn.

*Watch your non-verbal communication.  It’s easy to eye roll, look away and use a tone of voice that undermines your words and can make people really angry even though you are saying the “right” things.

*Be collaborative.  Offer solutions that involve what you will change or an understanding of how you feel you contributed to a situation.  Educating people as to how they have been wrong does little to build trust. Modeling owning your part in a situation allows others to be vulnerable and share.

*Remember that others are hurting in some way.  People are reacting out of fear about what will happen and are preoccupied with their own stress.  They may not have the time or emotional space to be as understanding or loving as they might at another time.  

* Journal or talk to someone outside the situation in order to get perspective.  It can help to gain clarity about your own thoughts and feelings before you approach someone else.  (Again, be self reflective rather than blaming).  It’s normal to be anxious in times of uncertainty. Acknowledging and expressing your feelings in words will help you avoid acting it out in ways you may regret.

*Set a time to talk when both people are ready and open.  Don’t spring a conversation on someone right before they have a meeting (zoom, or otherwise) or a class.  Set a time that works for you both and allows people to be prepared.

*Remember that sometimes people, especially our family, can see or know things about us better than we can.  Accept their words or insights as loving gestures of trying to feel closer to you. It can be very hard, believe me, but it is so crucial to intimacy.

*Be realistic.  You are not going to rid yourself of old habits or fix a bad relational dynamic all of a sudden.  While under such intense times and stress, the idea of harm reduction is helpful. We can do our best to minimize damage, but it’s too much to expect perfection.

*Be kind.  To yourself as well as others.  While you might not be as light hearted as you want to be or forgiving at any one time, balance it out by taking the initiative to do a kind deed or provide a helping hand when someone needs it.  Helping a frustrated mother when her internet connection cuts her off from an important task (hmmm, wonder where that came from) or doing some dishes that have piled up can be another way to show your love.

We will get through this and return to our separate lives again.  My hope is that I will look back on this and remember the creative fun times (our Zoom Passover seders with people from the East Coast and even Germany), but also have lessons learned for how we made it through what was difficult.  I want to be patient with myself and with my loved ones. I want to be authentic, but also careful in how I react. There is a lot to be learned through this period of time, no doubt about that. We will all need to be strong when someone else falters and accept help when we are the ones who need it.  This unique order to stay home with one another can be a burden that tears us apart or a chance to grow together. With these once in a lifetime extended orders to shelter in place, we can best get through it by making our homes more than a place we have to be, but a place with emotional space enough for everyone to want to be. 

So much has changed since my last blog post, just two short weeks ago.  Themes have now shifted from worry and anxiety to a deeper level of fear and loss.  And there are so many layers of loss: deaths and illness, the loss of jobs and finances, schooling and college life, and the loss of any plans we each have made. This universality of loss is unprecedented.  Although we may vary in our specifics, no one has been untouched by grief during this pandemic. And how we help each other through this challenging time will be an important part of our healing as we move through it.

We have all lost our sense of safety and certainty.  In order to go about our days and plan our lives, we assume that the world is generally a safe and predictable place.  This notion has been shattered, at least for the time being, and our vulnerability and lack of control is at a premium. Decisions that affect our lives are being made by others and we can only try to make the best of the situation, sometimes without the information needed or desired.  We have collectively lost our autonomy, our sense of agency in our lives, and we live with a helplessness that can be uncomfortable and also really frightening. We are experiencing an unimaginable collective trauma and our emotional well being will be affected and in need of our attention.

It is important to allow yourself to grieve for your particular loss.  It is natural to push aside your feelings when comparing yourself to others.  I hear people say they feel selfish for being upset about their graduation being cancelled, for example, compared to the loss of lives that some are experiencing.  It’s important to make room for your own grief. I believe we have enough empathy to feel the pain for other people’s losses as well as our own. Maybe not all at any one moment, but as a collection of caring hearts and souls, we can help each other recognize and honor this grief together.  Your grief is just as real as anybody else’s. No one can know what your loss meant to you but you, so don’t be afraid to put words to it. By acknowledging our grief and articulating it, we can move through it. And current loss tends to bring up old losses. I have been dreaming nightly about my mother again, may her memory be for a blessing.

People grieve in different ways.  Some people may be irritable, some may withdraw, and some people may need to keep busy and active.  Some people stress eat and others lose their appetite. The important thing is to allow yourself to grieve in the way you need.  And we will need to give other people space to grieve in their own way. There is no competition in our losses, no one is more entitled to their pain than others.  At a time like this, it’s truly beneficial to acknowledge one another’s losses, providing validation and a chance to be seen in our own particular fear and sadness.  The stages of grief delineated by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But research on these stages suggests they do not come in a linear progression.  We will each have our own journey through these stages. Communicating what you need and how you are feeling is so important. And listening to one another and finding ways to negotiate differences is the best love you can give.  Identify what you can control and then problem solve. Staying in the present can be very challenging as we try to prepare for the worst. Labeling the what ifs as “fear” helps us to remember that it is not a reality, but a feeling that needs expression and compassion.

The silver linings are important to find and to hold on to.  Hopefully, in addition to the many losses we will need to heal from, we will also have moments that we can look back on with a bittersweet smile.  Our resourcefulness through this crisis is remarkable. Stories of 3-D printed ventilator nozzles, distilleries making hand sanitizer, and neighbors helping neighbors will also be a legacy of this pandemic.  Personally, we will each have tender moments of being reached out to by someone or making someone else feel loved by reaching out to them. Zoom happy hours, group face time chats, and all kinds of Instagram memes that bring us together are a testament to our collective resilience.  

The importance of love and connection can never be more clear.  And sheltering in place does offer some of the most creative opportunities for this.  One of my personal favorites this week was watching my daughter cutting my husband’s hair (after watching a you tube video and it looks better than some professionals have done).  We did each other’s nails and dragged out the slow cooker and tried some new recipes. My daughter’s do yoga together and we volunteered at a food pantry (with gloves and social distancing of course).  Amidst the tears for what has been lost, there is also laughter at the unpredictable and even the silly. Attempts at home schooling, learning new technologies, and the unending worry about toilet paper brings humility and funny stories, even if it also stretches our patience and at times our capacities. And that, too, is our common humanity shining through creating memories we will forever hold from this difficult time.

One of the most important elements of healing from loss through a traumatic experience is finding meaning.  Although we each will do this in our own way, I do believe another silver lining in this pandemic is its unique global nature in an era of nationalism.  The world is suffering together; we face a common enemy and feel our collective vulnerability. The virus does not know that we are politically different, economically diverse, or racially divided.  It only knows that we are all human. To get through this pandemic, we will need global cooperation and communication, societal assistance and support. I pray this pandemic ends quickly, but that global healing and compassion for the vulnerable throughout the world remains a lasting priority. (And maybe, for us, more home grooming as well!)

I tend to be a person who minimizes potential hazards and dire predictions.  There is enough drama going on inside my head that I don’t need to take on any more, thank you.  So as news was emerging about a new virus in China, I felt badly for them, but dismissed its meaning for me.  And then as illness began to spread, and my own Health Center where I work began to set up a triage desk out front and protocols for potential patients, I thought it was rather impressive that we were being so careful and overprepared.  But in the last days, as my daughters are both heading home from college because dorms are being cleared out and classes are being held remotely, travel is being restricted, large gatherings are being canceled, and my go to life distraction, the NBA is on lock down, I am beginning to wonder how worried I should be.  

And then, last night, when my own Health Center is choosing for my department to do phone visits only, I did feel a bit of panic arise, not necessarily about the virus, but about my own reaction.  Was I not worried enough, was I getting too worried, are people overreacting, not reacting enough? My worry about my own level of worry became the worry. And, to be honest, today I feel a little relieved to find I’m not alone.  The phone lines are jammed at my work with people calling about their fears. Overall the theme described by our Call Center workers is people looking for guidance about how worried they should be. Distress around the fear of Covid-19 virus has gotten so high, that the World Health Organization issued guidelines recently for protecting mental health during the outbreak: “Avoid watching, reading or listening to news that cause you to feel anxious or distressed; seek information mainly to take practical steps to prepare your plans and protect yourself and loved ones. Seek information updates at specific times during the day once or twice. The sudden and near-constant stream of news reports about an outbreak can cause anyone to feel worried. Get the facts. Gather information at regular intervals, from WHO website and local health authorities platforms, in order to help you distinguish facts from rumors.”

As a mental health practitioner, I can see that there are a number of elements of this viral situation that create a perfect storm of factors that lead to anxiety.  First is the uncertainty. Anxiety researchers at George Washington University note, “What we know from psychological science is that uncertainty drives anxiety.” This disease cycle is filled with uncertainty – who is at risk, what measures should be taken, how will my life be impacted, and what plans need to be made or changed.  Another factor is the unfamiliarity. The flu has high fatality rates, but we are familiar with it, which somehow makes us feel a better sense of control. Unfamiliarity coupled with uncertainty is bad enough, but add to it the failed leadership that has been demonstrated. Contradicting messages, misinformation, and inconsistencies in policies has led many to doubt what reassurances are being given by people who should be in the know.  When reassurance rings hollow, anxiety will spike. Missteps by supposed experts create a sense of doubt about the ability of those in charge of controlling the outbreak. And then there is the confusing dialectic of community risk versus personal risk. It is hard for any one of us to hold seemingly conflicting concepts in their mind, the very real risk to a country and the economy compared with the much smaller risk to any one individual.  Mary Alvord, a researcher at George Washington University writes,”We tend to extrapolate the general to ourselves.”

These intersecting factors lead us to an overall sense of powerlessness and vulnerability around the Covid-19 threat.  So, to feel more in control, we go out and buy a year’s supply of toilet paper and kidney beans. (By the way, according to one news report, broccoli is in plenty supply). It makes us feel we’re doing something to protect ourselves.  And that is not a bad thing. Whatever we can do to minimize our sense of the unknown is generally positive, as long as it is based in some reasonableness. We should strive for balance in times like these, and kindness to ourselves and one another.  Keep your routines as much as possible, find sources of information and people who can help you check your facts and try to avoid people or sources who are in a frenzy. Because just like an unseen illness, reactions are contagious.