Healthy Ways to...

Calm Your Fear

“We spend so much time anticipating what will happen next that we miss the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.”

Mark Nepo (The Context of Every Struggle, April 6, 2020)

          I find it difficult to have a conversation about anything other than the coronavirus pandemic, no matter who I’m talking with. I wonder if you do, too. So much is unknown. We anticipate the worst and hope for the best which leaves us both anxious and split. It’s like we’re all hovering five inches above the ground not knowing whether to run madly away from this moment, or drop back to earth and resume life as usual. And we’ve been hanging like this for weeks. Normal life feels as though it’s receding into the pages of history. We must take responsibility for reducing our own anxiety.

          Yesterday, I listened to an interview on 1A with Matt Richtel, a reporter with the New York Times and author of “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System.” There are, he said, two thing we can do to help our immune response: not by taking massive doses of vitamins as you might imagine, but by getting enough sleep, and lowering our stress level. When we worry and fret, we activate the sympathetic nervous system, which shuts down the immune system as non-essential to fight or flight. Also, when that system is activated, we have trouble sleeping because we have too much adrenalin floating around in our bodies. The key, then, is to de-stress and sleep—if this sounds circular, believe me, it is.

          What we can do to help ourselves get through this scary time without massive damage to either our psyche or our immune system, is to find ways to take our minds off the worry-train for as much of the day as we can. I have favorite escape mechanisms—sewing, listening to soothing music, watching funny movies, or a binge watching a series on TV, dancing to rock music, reading a good book, taking a long walk with my dog. I’m sure you have escape hatches, too. This is the time for full deployment of our stress release valves. Don’t hold back. (Unless we’re talking about alcohol. Consumption is up forty percent! Not good.) Happy activities that make you laugh support health as much as wearing your mask. There are some funny mimes and videos making the rounds on Facebook at the moment. Check them out.

          Meditation, yoga, ordinary exercise and stretching are good antidotes for anxiety. They are activities that kick off the pleasure chemicals of dopamine and serotonin in your brain and lower those stress hormones. We don’t have a magic bullet for this virus, nor do we have one for the anxiety we feel as a result of not knowing what comes next, but we do have the power to comfort ourselves. Try not to anticipate the worst—what happens next is out of our control. Instead, activate  the creativity within you to direct your attention away from doom and gloom and onto something positive. This too will pass. We will get though it by supporting ourselves and each other.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane