Coping Emotionally With The Pandemic

There is no right way to react emotionally to the current pandemic.

Some people feel increased worry for their safety and others feel gratitude for the protection of their comfortable homes. Some are angry, sad or both about the losses of activities, events and income they've experienced. Others don't seem to have much emotional reaction at all, shrugging off the crisis by rationalizing that this, too, shall pass.

All these feelings are normal and expectable. What may be concerning, though, is the intensity with which people experience them. Too much worry can lead to debilitating anxiety. Too much anger can lead to irritability and conflict with others. Too much sadness can lead to depression.

Most of us pay great attention to our physical health nowadays but rarely consider gauging and regulating our emotional health.

Here are some ways that you can cope better with this unfolding crisis by better managing the intensity of your feelings:

Monitor yourself:

By regularly reflecting on how you're feeling, you are better able to detect any concerning trends.

There are several ways of accomplishing this:

• keeping a journal of your thoughts and emotions each day;
• using one of the many available mood tracker apps to visually graph your highs and lows;
• and asking your spouse or a good friend to periodically share their impressions of how you seem to be feeling.

Realizing you are being consumed with worry or sinking into sadness will then prompt you to take steps to temper those emotions.

Remember to seek joy:

Purposely engaging in positive activities can protect us from too many negative emotions. While it may be hard to imagine enjoying anything when you're sheltering in place and cut off from the world, we still must identify those activities available to us that can make us happy.

Discovering or perhaps rediscovering simple pleasures, such as cooking, playing a musical instrument or spending a relaxed evening watching a funny movie with family members, can at least temporarily relieve our anguish about the viral threat.

Shift your mind-set:

Negative emotions are often triggered by excessively negative thinking. But we have the power to change our thoughts and thereby transform our feelings. Techniques for changing thinking include noticing when we are being overly pessimistic and dwelling on improbable catastrophes; intentionally searching for the positive aspects of even difficult circumstances (“There's a silver lining to every dark cloud”); and keeping a gratitude journal to increase your awareness of the good things in your life, despite our current hardships.

 

None of these techniques will magically remove the threat of covid-19. But they can give us some means of exercising what control is possible to help us keep our cool and our spirits up to squarely face this and other adversities.

 

Barry J. Jacobs, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist, family therapist and a Principal for Health Management Associates. He is the author of two self-books on family caregiving and a monthly column on family caregiving for AARP.org