How To Cope When Fear Becomes Reality
3 Steps That Help Reduce Anxiety During The Coronavirus Pandemic
You might’ve read ‘How to stop believing the worst’ back in February. Its underlying premise about anxiety assumes that whilst your anxiety catastrophe is technically possible it’s also highly unlikely.
So what the hell do you do when the ‘highly unlikely’ turned up anyway? After all, we’re in the middle of a pandemic that looks set to rival the Spanish Flu over a century ago.
A large driver of anxiety is the feeling of something being beyond your control. You either end up like a rabbit in the headlights & freeze or you panic and try to everything your anxiety-mind tells you to do, (even though logically you know none of it makes sense).
And in a way, this is the key. Bring some sense into the problem. This way, your unconscious mind can relax a little. Engage with the anxiety warnings & work the problem. Uncover what you can control and what you can’t. Nothing relaxes an anxious mind quite like feeling it has some control.
Here’s how:
Do this to regain control in a crisis
Importantly, most crises turn out well in the end. The very first thing to do is brainstorm what you’ll do when the pandemic ends and life goes slowly back to normal.
The tricky part is to think through what you’ll do if things go wrong.
If you’re one of those people who do anxiety quite well (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you probably are), then your mind is going to be good at coming up with ‘what if this goes wrong?’ scenarios….
Engage your ‘sensible’ brain
It’s best to do this using your sensible brain. You could build this into scheduled ‘worry time’ if you like.
There are three key steps to follow:
Step 1
Whatever story your brain is teasing you with, follow it through & write down exactly what the worry is. Here’s a good example which plagued me for a while:
It kicked off with:
“If I go to the supermarket, I might catch coronavirus”
By walking through it layer by layer, this is where it went:
“If I catch coronavirus, I might get very ill”
“If I get very ill, I might need to go to the hospital”
“If I go to the hospital I could end up on in intensive care”
“If I need Intensive care I might have to have a ventilator”
“and...I might die from coronavirus”
And here’s my underlying worry:
“If I go to the supermarket...I might die from coronavirus”
No wonder it seemed scary!
Step 2
Now we have the worry mapped out, it’s time to work the problem.
What can you do to stop your underlying worry from happening?
If it’s reasonable not to go to the supermarket at all, then this risk disappears. So if there’s someone who can go for you or you can buy everything you need online then the problem is solved. Obviously this depends on someone being happy to go shopping for you, or that you can get a delivery slot.
Of course, if this is your worry, then it’s highly likely that you do have to go to the supermarket sometimes (or let’s face it, you’d let someone else do it or get a delivery, like we just said, right?).
This was my worry too. At the moment, I’m the only one in the household who can drive. In all the weeks of lockdown, we’ve only managed to get one delivery. I checked again the other day & the next delivery slot was in June!
A quick brainstorm comes up with things like this:
Option 1: Eliminate the risk entirely. Don’t go shopping.
If you follow this to its logical conclusion, then you’ll run out of food and starve to death and that doesn’t really help much, does it?
Option 2: Reduce the risk.
Think of all the ways to reduce the risk of catching coronavirus whilst shopping.
Here are the ones I came up with, (along with some excellent help from family, of course).
Go as infrequently as you can - i.e. when you do go, get a big shop to last as long as possible (one week, two weeks, whatever is reasonable for you).
Go when there are fewer people. Most supermarkets are publishing guidelines of when they’re busy & quiet.
Make sure you do your social distancing rigorously.
Wash your hands before & after your shop.
Use hand sanitiser on your basket/trolley. (Most supermarkets are providing this now).
Keep your eyes, nose & mouth covered. (There’s a lot of question marks on how effective this is but even if it only helps a little, it’s probably worth doing.)
On the same lines, wear gloves. Preferably disposable or washable ones.
There’s some research that suggests the virus can stay active on items for a few hours to a few days. One way to minimise this risk is to wash every item you’ve bought after you get home.
I realise this may go further than some of you would do. For me, the risk extend beyond '“I might die”. You might’ve picked up from earlier T.B.Talks editions that my daughter is on the ‘vulnerable’ list. We’re being extra careful as we’re her Protective Shield.
Of course, you can’t eliminate the risk this way. The only way to do that is step 1.
Which leads us to step 3.
Step 3
What do you do if the bad outcome actually turns up?
This last step is to deliberately consider what would you do if it still went wrong, even though you’ve done everything reasonable to mitigate the risk.
It’s best to be super practical in this stage. Think about what you can do to make sure that what you’d want to happen does happen. If the underlying fear is around dying, this’ll involve things like making a Will or making sure the right people know where your money is, (bank accounts, pension, any investments you might have), who’s going to get the family clock [or other random heirloom of your choice], who’s going to feed the cats?
All in all, it’s not a pleasant topic. The point is, by going through this deliberately and sensibly, you stop your unconscious mind using its over-active imagination to scare you senseless.
By deliberately thinking through what you’ll do to reduce the risk AND what your plan is in case the worst really did happen, your unconscious mind hasn’t got any wiggle room. Everything has been considered, the risk reduced as afar as you’re prepared to go and you’ve got a plan in case it still goes wrong.
This lets your unconscious mind understand that you’ve taken its warnings seriously and considered the threat that it’s trying to protect you from. Not only that, you’ve spent time thinking about it and planned how to manage the risks.
After a while, your worry brain will quieten down and leave you alone.
Until it thinks up a new scary story. Then you just go through this process again.
Rinse & repeat until your worry brain gets bored!
As always, any questions, just ask.
Take care & stay safe.
Tony
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