Worry at the Epicenter 

A patient asked me the simplest question the other week, “How are you dealing with all this coronavirus fear?” No pressure, easy enough right? After all, I’m an anxiety therapist who’s been treating worried and panicked people for decades. I paused. Embarrassed, my mind drew a blank. Seems like a therapist should have a well thought out answer to the question my clients are asking the most right now, “how do we deal with our fear of this seemingly unstoppable virus?” 

The truth of the matter is, up to that point — a week or so before the US woke up to the new social distancing reality following the example of China and Italy — I’d largely been dealing with viral fear like many of those in the Seattle area, ground zero for the COVID-19 virus. I’d been buying disinfectant wipes, paper products, and food; obsessively following the news; washing my hands religiously; and trying desperately not to touch my face — oh yah, and worrying a lot!

I was at a loss for words with my client because I had temporarily lost myself. I imagine many of you have lost yourself too these days. When overwhelmed and flooded, we put off dealing more directly with our primary feelings. We can end up instead addressing them through obsessive disaster prep and over identification with our worried thoughts and feelings.

I’ve done some work on my own anxiety in the last few days. I’ve paused to be more mindful of my own experience; I’ve reached out for support to friends, family, and colleagues; and I’ve reminded myself of what I already know to be effective in dealing with anxiety — self awareness, intentional action, and compassionate connection with self and others.

I’m not a physician, epidemiologist, first responder, or 3M factory worker doing 18 hour shifts manufacturing face masks. I’m a psychotherapist though and am pretty good at putting people more at ease by helping them understand anxiety and how to live alongside it. So I thought I’d do my part and try to offer some relief the best way I know how — teaching you something about anxiety by teaching you something about yourself. 

My hope is to offer you some comfort in this crazy time by giving you a few tools to gently lead you back to who you are, moment to moment. Once there, you’ll have more power to relate to anxiety and fear more deliberately and with more kindness. From there you’ll also be reminded of what you already have that you can offer others — in whatever way your talents allow. In this way, you can transform worry into compassionate and intentional action. Maybe then we can all begin to spread more healing and less virus.

The Miracle of Intentional Action 

One of the best ways to manage your anxiety is to act with intention instead of re-acting unconsciously. Reactivity isn’t always a bad thing. The oldest, most primitive parts of our brain enable us to react without thinking. This works well in a crisis; for example, you need to escape a fast moving vehicle while crossing the street or the jaws of a rapidly advancing dinosaur in prehistoric times. Our legs move without us having to tell them to move, this saves valuable time and gets us to safety. 

This doesn’t work so well in periods of prolonged stress — like we are experiencing now with this viral pandemic. Our nervous system doesn’t easily distinguish acute from chronic stressors, though. We can end up in a place where our brain continues to tell us what to do even if it’s against our own interests. 

This involves the way our body responds to stress (accelerated heart rate, increased blood pressure) but it can also involve the thoughts and feelings we are having too. We can end up with a whole host of “mental scripts” running in the background that we don’t control. These thoughts are often around our worst fears and harshest judgments. In turn, these thoughts can quickly influence feelings we might have like worry, sadness, anger, or helplessness. Things can go south quickly when our body, thoughts, and feelings are all bound together in a mutually and negatively reinforcing cycle of anxiety.  

When bodies, thoughts, and feelings build negative momentum in this way, we start to run on autopilot. We don’t act, we re-act. In the face of the coronavirus scare we can start to stockpile excessive supplies we don’t need, tunnel into obsessive thoughts that aren’t helpful, and be overcome by waves of feelings that we can’t control.

The remedy for all this reactivity is intentional action. 

Acting with intention means bringing conscious aim and purpose to what you do. You might think of intention as getting back into the driver’s seat, being the pilot of your life, flying directly, instead of defaulting to autopilot. This is important because when caught up in anxiety, we can get stuck in an autopilot existence.

Reacting from fear, our autopilot tends to take us in directions that are opposed to what we actually value, what we care about, and that are not in line with who we truly are.

There are some relatively easy and concrete things we can begin to do to learn to stand alongside our fear instead of reacting to it. Things that will help you get back to the driver’s seat so you can effectively live in viral times, taking care of yourself emotionally as well as being more available for your family and friends. In my next post, I’ll go over how to create some distance from fear so you can live more fully even alongside worry and anxiety.