There is only one topic on all of our minds right now. You have doubtless read and heard just about everything that can be said about COVID-19, none of which brings any of us much comfort.
Let’s focus instead on you and what you are likely feeling. I’m going to take a guess that your predominant emotional state is that of anxiety.
Increased anxiety.
No matter how solid or stable or at peace you felt before all this began, it is very unlikely that as a parent, a partner, and a human being you can escape the burden of uncertainty and concern about your own and your family’s health.
If you were experiencing essentially no anxiety before, you have at least some now. If you were already struggling with low level anxiety, you may have at least moderate anxiety now. If you had moderate anxiety before, you may have considerable anxiety now.
This is unavoidable.
This is normal and to be expected. This situation has no precedents. None of us has a script for how to get through it.
Now you need to be clever because you need to find some physical and emotional space in which you can engage in activities that will lessen your anxiety so that it is manageable and bearable.
You need to be clever because you probably don’t have much physical space or unoccupied time in which to engage in soothing activities.
Might you have your own version of a “lovey” that you can put there and use to create some comfort? A favorite scent?
It is completely reasonable to turn your bathroom, or a corner of your bedroom, or a hallway, into a sanctuary where you can meditate for five minutes or even one minute.
Where you can just close your eyes for a moment.
Where you can indulge in the most relaxing fantasies you can call up.
Where you can take child’s pose and just remain there for a few minutes.
Maybe you can take a warm bath in the evening. Maybe you can watch the most escapist of programs you can find once some reasonable peace descends upon your home. Maybe you can skype or facetime with family or friends and revel in the fact that if this had happened twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t do that.
Most importantly, do not personalize your anxiety right now. It is not a reflection upon you. It just is. And for a while at least, it is not reasonable to expect it to go away.
I am including here a personal essay written by a woman who is pregnant and due in September with her first baby. Although her particular situation will certainly differ from your own, her thoughts and feelings will ring bells for many of you.
Many years from now, my son will ask me what it was like to live through the time of COVID-19. “It was a scary time. Especially because we didn’t know how or when it would end”, I will tell him. “I also didn’t know how it would affect you, because you were growing in my belly then”.
Scary is right. Along with anxiety and fear provoking, and lonely. I suffered from anxiety long before I became pregnant. But I was able to manage it with exercise, meditation, occasional visits to the therapist, and my friends.
Little did I know how significant my relationships with friends and patients (I am a physical therapist in an outpatient clinic) were until they were no longer reliably and regularly in my life.
When you spend 40 hours a week talking with 2 patients an hour and your 6 co-workers in an open and small clinic, and enjoy all of that, you are a very satisfied extrovert.
Take that extrovert, and stick her in an apartment with a husband who has to work more than 40 hours a week from home, and eliminate her physical contact with any other human, and she becomes very isolated.
So the anxiety and fear grow unchecked.
It has been difficult to motivate myself to be more active. There are so many options of exercises classes online that I find myself not choosing any. I am trying to continue running 2-3 times a week outside when it is not raining or too cold. I introduced meditation and self-help workbooks back into my life, and I try to call friends almost every day.
But I realized that what motivates me right now is the desire to be happy. Small things that used to make me happy don’t exist much anymore.
A smile from a stranger on the street doesn’t exist as I am physically trying to run away from everyone while walking my dog.
The weather is reflecting everyone’s emotions, and it rains almost every other day; vitamin D isn’t making its way into me naturally. Being able to physically help another human being by fixing their body or listening to their hardships is gone.
For now, I am finding my happiness in mental stimulation; I am doing crosswords, and jigsaw puzzles, and reading.
This is just the beginning of my COVID-19 story. As the weather gets warmer, and my thoughts shift, I hope that my motivation to engage in or learn other activities, skills, and crafts will grow. I will find other sources of happiness and different ways to manifest my extroversion.
Because I have to, for my son.
What is BBB doing? We are offering our groups on Zoom. We are going to reach out to former group members and offer a Zoom session.
We are going to respond to the emails and calls we receive and work to be there for our community of young mothers and their families.