Great Coping Strategies in the wake of COVID-19

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, Customers, Clients and Colleagues,

It’s times like these when I focus on the unique opportunities that I am afforded by having time at home. (If home is not a safe place for you, please click here.)  This post is dedicated to ways that you can help yourself and help others during the quarantine.   Although I did not write many of these tips myself, I am passing them along to you because they helped me.  I hope they help you.  This list is ever evolving– so if you have a helpful tip you’d like to share, simply email me.  Thanks!

From Dr. Andrea Birnbaum “Let kindness and gratitude, rather than anxiety and anger be “the wolf you feed” during this painful time. It is normal to feel anxiety, anger, sadness, and fear right now.  We must not let fear overwhelm us, as this can be destabilizing and paralyzing. Ignoring our pain will only lead to more suffering, “what we resist persists.” If there ever existed a “right time” to embark on a journey of personal growth, let me assure you that the time is now. Through a daily practice of meditation or other self-care practice, we can open up our minds and hearts in a way that helps us live our lives more meaningfully and purposefully. Moreover, practicing meditation and the other exercises included here can help us be more emotionally available to those people in our lives who really need our support.  There is a rippling effect when each of us engages in self-care practices.”

Great Coping Strategies in the wake of COVID-19:

1.) Remember our common humanity and show compassion. Be generous. Help others.  Donate to your local food bank.  Here’s a link to the San Francisco Food Bank.

2.) Donate your masks and gloves to Direct Relief.  There is a shortage of masks and gloves for healthcare workers.  Click here to learn more if you have extra N95 masks or surgical gloves that you can donate.

3.) Ask yourself,  “What beauty am I creating, cultivating, or inviting in today?”  Find an expressive art and go for it. Our emotional brain is very receptive to the creative arts, and it is a direct portal for release of feeling. Find something that is creative (sculpting, gardening, drawing, dancing, music, singing, playing) and give it your all. See how relieved you can feel. It is a very effective way of helping kids to emote and communicate as well!  If you are an artist or freelancer, here’s a great list for resources for financial help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4.) Do virtual  Restorative Yoga with emiko oye   No one will be turned away for lack of funds, and there are special “donation classes” set up that will benefit the San Francisco Food Bank and Direct Relief.  For young kids check out cosmic kids yoga on youtube.  If you can’t make it to any of emiko’s classes, and you don’t already have your own instructor, here’s a list of yoga instructors on YouTube.

5.) Mindfulness and Spirituality:  With Passover, Easter and Ramadan right around the corner, you may be looking for support within the spiritual community.  Check the San Francisco Interfaith Council website for community updates and virtual services you can log into to observe these holidays while maintaining social distance.   If you are looking to join a worldwide meditation movement, try Live Global  Meditation Event with Deepak Chopra.  Here’s a wonderful Compassion Meditation to try.

Mindfulness on Youtube (this can also be helpful if you have kids)
–10 Percent Happier channel- new meditations uploaded every weekday during COVID with some of the best meditation instructors
–The Headspace channel – Brilliant animations that teach concepts in mindfulness. (though the app is recommend)
–Meditation 101 – Learn How to Meditate in Our Beginner’s Guide Animation
–Why Mindfulness Is a Superpower: An Animation
–How Mindfulness Empowers Us: An Animation Narrated by Sharon Salzberg
–Playlist: “The 8 Attitudes of Mindfulness” Jon Kabat Zinn
–Tara Brach Leads a Guided Meditation: The RAIN of Self Compassion

6.) SLEEP— Stick to a routine.  Decide on your bedtime. Put a gentle-sounding alarm on your phone for 60-90 minutes before bedtime. After this alarm- no more reading/watching the news. Instead, do relaxation exercises or connect with friends/loved ones, talking about topics other than COVID-19 Try to go to bed + wake up at the same time each day.  Write a daily schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.  Here’s some helpful tips about sleep.

7.) Dress for the future you want, not the social life you have. Get showered and dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth. Take the extra time to do a bath or a facial. Put on some bright colors. It is amazing how our dress can impact our mood.  Here’s an excellent resource by  Anne Sagendorph-Moon: Dress for your Future.

8.) Get OUTSIDE at least once a day, for at least thirty minutes. I like a minimum of ten minutes of sunshine on my face each day– weather permitting.  If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues. If you are high risk or living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan. It is amazing how much fresh air can do for spirits.

9.) Find some time to move each day, again daily for at least thirty minutes. I like to walk my dog and work in the garden.  If you don’t feel comfortable going outside, there are many YouTube videos that offer free movement classes, and if all else fails, turn on the music and have a dance party!

10.) Ask yourself “Who am I reaching out to, checking in on, or connecting with today?”  Reach out to others, you guessed it, at least once daily for thirty minutes. Try to do FaceTime, Skype, phone calls, texting—connect with other people to seek and provide support. Don’t forget to do this for your children as well. Set up virtual playdates with friends daily via FaceTime, Facebook Messenger Kids, Zoom, etc—your kids miss their friends, too!

11.) Stay hydrated and eat well. This one may seem obvious, but stress and eating often don’t mix well, and we find ourselves over-indulging, forgetting to eat, and avoiding food. Drink plenty of water, eat some good and nutritious foods, and challenge yourself to learn how to cook something new!

12.) Develop a self-care toolkit. This can look different for everyone. A lot of successful self-care strategies involve a sensory component (seven senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (comforting pressure). An idea for each: a soft blanket or stuffed animal, a hot chocolate, photos of vacations, comforting music, lavender or eucalyptus oil, a small swing or rocking chair, a weighted blanket. A journal, an inspirational book, or a mandala coloring book is wonderful, bubbles to blow or blowing watercolor on paper through a straw are visually appealing as well as work on controlled breath. Mint gum, Listerine strips, ginger ale, frozen Starburst, ice packs, and cold are also good for anxiety regulation. For children, it is great to help them create a self-regulation comfort box (often a shoe-box or bin they can decorate) that they can use on the ready for first-aid when overwhelmed.

13.) Spend extra time playing with children. Children will rarely communicate how they are feeling, but will often make a bid for attention and communication through play. Don’t be surprised to see therapeutic themes of illness, doctor visits, and isolation play through. Understand that play is cathartic and helpful for children—it is how they process their world and problem solve, and there’s a lot they are seeing and experiencing in the now.  Here’s a thoughtful and compassionate reminder from child psychology expert, Dr. Tina Payne Bryson.

14.) Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and a wide berth. A lot of cooped up time can bring out the worst in everyone. Each person will have moments when they will not be at their best. It is important to move with grace through blowups, to not show up to every argument you are invited to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements. Everyone is doing the best they can to make it through this.

15.) Everyone find their own retreat space. Space is at a premium, particularly with city living. It is important that people think through their own separate space for work and for relaxation. For children, help them identify a place where they can go to retreat when stressed. You can make this place cozy by using blankets, pillows, cushions, scarves, beanbags, tents, and “forts”. It is good to know that even when we are on top of each other, we have our own special place to go to be alone.

16.) Expect behavioral issues in children, and respond gently. We are all struggling with disruption in routine, none more than children, who rely on routines constructed by others to make them feel safe and to know what comes next. Expect increased anxiety, worries and fears, nightmares, difficulty separating or sleeping, testing limits, and meltdowns. Do not introduce major behavioral plans or consequences at this time—hold stable and focus on emotional connection.

17.) Focus on safety and attachment. We are going to be living for a bit with the unprecedented demand of meeting all work deadlines, homeschooling children, running a sterile household, and making a whole lot of entertainment in confinement. We can get wrapped up in meeting expectations in all domains, but we must remember that these are scary and unpredictable times for children. Focus on strengthening the connection through time spent following their lead, through physical touch, through play, through therapeutic books, and via verbal reassurances that you will be there for them in this time.

18.) Lower expectations and practice radical self-acceptance. This idea is connected with #12. We are doing too many things in this moment, under fear and stress. This does not make a formula for excellence. Instead, give yourself what psychologists call “radical self acceptance”: accepting everything about yourself, your current situation, and your life without question, blame, or pushback. You cannot fail at this—there is no roadmap, no precedent for this, and we are all truly doing the best we can in an impossible situation.

19.) Limit social media and COVID conversation, especially around children. One can find tons of information on COVID-19 to consume, and it changes minute to minute. The information is often sensationalized, negatively skewed, and alarmist. Find a few trusted sources that you can check in with consistently, limit it to a few times a day, and set a time limit for yourself on how much you consume (again 30 minutes tops, 2-3 times daily). Keep news and alarming conversations out of earshot from children—they see and hear everything, and can become very frightened by what they hear.

20.) Gratitude.  “Ask yourself what am I grateful for today?”  Notice the good in the world, the helpers. There is a lot of scary, negative, and overwhelming information to take in regarding this pandemic. There are also a ton of stories of people sacrificing, donating, and supporting one another in miraculous ways. It is important to counter-balance the heavy information with the hopeful information.

21.) Find something you can control, and control the heck out of it. In moments of big uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world. Organize your bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, group your toys. It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.  We are in the process of deep cleaning our kitchen.

22.) Find a long-term project to dive into. Now is the time to learn how to play the keyboard, put together a huge jigsaw puzzle, start a 15 hour game of Risk, paint a picture, read the Harry Potter series, binge watch an 8-season show, crochet a blanket, solve a Rubix cube, or develop a new town in Animal Crossing. Find something that will keep you busy, distracted, and engaged to take breaks from what is going on in the outside world.

23.) Engage in repetitive movements and left-right movements. Research has shown that repetitive movement (knitting, coloring, painting, clay sculpting, jump roping etc) especially left-right movement (running, drumming, skating, hopping) can be effective at self-soothing and maintaining self-regulation in moments of distress.  There are also self-hypnosis methods which involve tapping that can be helpful for anxiety and other issues.

24.) Find lightness and humor in each day. There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason. Counterbalance this heaviness with something funny each day: cat videos on YouTube, a stand-up show on Netflix, a funny movie—we all need a little comedic relief in our day, every day.

25.) Reach out for help—your team is there for you. If you have a therapist or psychiatrist, they are available to you, even at a distance. Keep up your medications and your therapy sessions the best you can. If you are having difficulty coping, seek out help for the first time. There are mental health people on the ready to help you through this crisis. Your children’s teachers and related service providers will do anything within their power to help, especially for those parents tasked with the difficult task of being a whole treatment team to their child with special challenges. Seek support groups of fellow home-schoolers, parents, and neighbors to feel connected. There is help and support out there, any time of the day—although we are physically distant, we can always connect virtually.  Here’s a list of Free Telephone Counseling Hotlines.

26.) “Chunk” your quarantine, take it moment by moment. We have no road map for this. We don’t know what this will look like in 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month from now. Often, when I work with patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues, I suggest that they engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever bite-sized piece of a challenge that feels manageable. Whether that be 5 minutes, a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a time stamp for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry. Take each chunk one at a time, and move through stress in pieces.

27.) Remind yourself daily that we are saving lives and this is temporary. It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end. It is terrifying to think of the road stretching ahead of us. Please take time to remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will pass. We will return to feeing free, safe, busy, and connected in the days ahead.

28.) Find the lesson. This whole crisis can seem sad, senseless, and at times, avoidable. When psychologists work with trauma, a key feature to helping someone work through said trauma is to help them find their agency, the potential positive outcomes they can effect, the meaning and construction that can come out of destruction. What can each of us learn here, in big and small ways, from this crisis? What needs to change in ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world?

29.) Commission a new piece of art or jewelry.  You will give much needed work to an artist, and have something special to look forward to as you spend more time in your home-space.  Wink, wink! 🙂

30.) Connect with your values.  Who do you want to be throughout all of this? How do you want to be?  Here’s a worksheet with a list of 60 values.  In the morning write down on a piece of paper 1-2 of your values. (the way you want to live today). Set an intention to live out these values today. Throughout the day notice opportunities to live out these values and practice them. At the end of the day look at the paper you wrote down in the morning and reflect on how you might get closer to that value tomorrow. Tomorrow repeat. You can choose new values or the same values.

31.)Forgiveness of others and yourself.  Here’s a Forgiveness Worksheet.

32.) Grandparenting from Afar:  If you are a grandparent (Aunt, Uncle, Special Friend etc…) of school aged children and you are not able to see them in person, pick a classic book that you’d like to read with them (A Tale of Two Cities, or The Hobbit come to mind.)  Get a copy for yourself and one for the grandchild.  Read a chapter per day remotely with your grandchild.  You can also set up a daily time to help tutor your grandchild, or work on homework together via FaceTime, Skype or other online tools.

 

Every time you feel like you’re not doing anything, just remember we are saving lives,  just by staying home.  I am sending you SO MUCH LOVE!!!!