As a clinical psychologist, some of the things I specialize in are grief therapy and concerns related to chronic and end-of-life health care. Over the years, clients have expressed concerns about their own mortality, concerns which have become even more pressing of late with the coronavirus pandemic. We are indeed living in stressful times.
With the coronavirus outbreak constantly in the news, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. We’re being forced to make rapid changes in how we socialize, work and engage in self-care. Many sports leagues are suspending their events, religious communities are not meeting in person, and movies and TV shows are being delayed. I’ve talked to small business owners who are worried they could go bankrupt. I know very resilient, emotionally grounded people who feel unmoored. So when it comes to feeling anxious, you are not alone.
It’s important to know that as a species we are predisposed to be worried. For our ancestors, it was rational and adaptive to worry. Our biological forebears had acutely short life expectancies; danger and death were constant threats. Fear kept our ancestors vigilant and helped them to survive in a world without modern medicine and the comparative physical safety that modernity can provide. While being anxious was useful from an evolutionary perspective, these neurological tendencies that have been passed on to us have not caught up with the more rapid advances of society, science, and medicine. So when a systemic, largely unprecedented phenomenon such as COVID-19 manifests in our collective consciousness, it can fill us with despair and dread. “It kind of feels like we’re all about to step off the precipice together into the unknown,” a good friend wrote in a text thread yesterday.
A potential unexpected benefit of the coronavirus is that it may help us rediscover the value of our community and working together. No country is perfect, and our society certainly has its faults, just as all nations do. But we’re also the land of Transcendentalism and thinkers such as Emerson and Thoreau. Jazz, the blues, and rock ’n’ roll were created here. We have some of the most elite universities of the world. We are still leaders in science and technology. The United States is one of the largest and most diverse countries on the planet, and our diversity can help us innovate. A society that produces disparate thinkers and artists such as Carl Sagan, Irvin Yalom, Maya Angelou and Lin-Manuel Miranda has some obvious gifts. I believe as a society we can come together.
My friend’s text thread also illustrated another important idea for coping with stress related to the coronavirus disease: We all need help sometimes. That’s an important point to remember, especially in an individualistic society such as ours. It can be a sign of strength to ask for help. Due to the nature of my work, I rely on a diverse and interdisciplinary network of support. As the poet John Donne observed, no one is an island. And as the research into the coronavirus pandemic has illustrated, we are stronger and safer when we work together for our mutual common good.
As a psychologist and in my personal life, I value interpersonal relationships. We can find healing through being in healthy relationships. Though texting can be impersonal, I found my friend’s cellphone-based outreach to be quite comforting. Similarly, because I work with a lot of patients undergoing medical treatments and struggling with compromised immune systems, I often use a telehealth model and am happy to say that video or phone therapy can be just as beneficial as in-person psychotherapy. Some clients even discover they prefer teletherapy as it’s very convenient, and, for some, physical distance can facilitate sharing and exploration of difficult topics.
We need to be informed of developments related to COVID-19 to keep ourselves and the people we care about safe. But in our interconnected, technological world we can easily get overwhelmed with alarming news stories. Consider putting yourself on a skillful media diet whereby you only access the news and social media for a certain amount of time each day. There is a saying in Zen philosophy that can be helpful in guiding how much coronavirus news we process: Salvation lies in the middle way. Staying on top of breaking news is vital (e.g., school closures, social distancing and public health guidelines, etc.). But be mindful of how much COVID-19 news you consume. Social media and electronic devices can amplify neural activity with even benign content, so information related to a global pandemic can unnerve us and increase our anxiety for a host of reasons.
If you’re like most people, automatic thoughts, the habitual thoughts that spring unbidden into our brains, can be a struggle. Anxiety and depression are quite common and perhaps even part of the human condition. Some stress can be adaptive and motivate us for healthy change but it can be hard for anyone to deal with fear-based automatic thoughts. If you have clinically high levels of anxiety or OCD, reach out to your therapist and rely on a trusted person in your personal life to help guide you in issues around cleanliness, washing, and social interactions.
We tend to be a death-denying society, but I’ve learned in my work that ultimately there is no true, thorough self-exploration without exploring the fact that we are all mortal beings. The reason I chose to work in end-of-life care is because facing our mortality can empower us to find what really matters in our lives. In my work I see everyday heroes who face immense difficulties with grace and courage on a daily basis. I have seen the transformative power of being open and willing to explore these difficult topics. The current pandemic brings these difficult topics front and center. I’m grateful for the work I do, and I believe we can emerge stronger from the coronavirus pandemic on both an individual level and as a society.
Dr. David Zuniga is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Austin and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. His website is a free, interdisciplinary source of support: www.drdavidzuniga.com
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