Three tips for wise minds to calm coronavirus anxiety

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In the ear­ly days of COVID-19, we faced many dif­fi­cult deci­sions in every­day life: try­ing to weigh risk and decide whether to meet up or stay home, send kids to school or vis­it the gym. Now that my home state of Cal­i­for­nia has its “shel­ter in place” order—and many oth­er cities and states are in var­i­ous stages of lockdown—a wait­ing peri­od has tak­en shape.

In some ways, this is a relief—our minds get deci­sion fatigue in the face of so many choic­es. Now we have our instruc­tions, which are restric­tive but use­ful to our brains. But many oth­er types of uncer­tain­ty still remain, about things like our jobs, whether we will get sick even while tak­ing pre­cau­tions, or when we will see our loved ones and return to some nor­mal routines.

We do not do well with uncer­tain­ty, and it dri­ves much of the anx­i­ety in the world, even when we’re not fac­ing a pan­dem­ic. In fact, I define anx­i­ety loose­ly as “an unre­al­ized fear that thrives in uncer­tain­ty and oth­er vague cir­cum­stances.” In the face of the unknown, we spec­u­late, we avoid, we try to con­trol. We “research” and con­firm what we are afraid of.

This is not a good place for our thoughts. As a psy­chother­a­pist, I know that get­ting through this time will involve get­ting a grip on our minds. We need to focus on what is reas­sur­ing and pos­i­tive, and what we can con­trol. We can con­trol our minds, at least to some extent. We can start small. Here are some things to work on.

1) Structure your time

Why: Rou­tines are calm­ing for every­one. Whether for chil­dren or adults, our minds need to know what to expect next. Anx­i­ety thrives in vast amounts of unstruc­tured time.

My sis­ter-in-law Bon­nie ran a day­care, and I am con­vinced that part of the rea­son she sur­vived is because she gave each week a theme. We are all now run­ning day­cares of actu­al human grem­lins or just the grem­lins of our mind. Make a theme to your day, or a spe­cif­ic focus to your work. Bugs. Har­ry Pot­ter. End­ing emails as pos­i­tive­ly as pos­si­ble. Walk­ing or stretch­ing dur­ing all phone calls. The focus doesn’t real­ly mat­ter, but it will help you make sense of the day. Remem­ber, your mind wants to put order to things and when you don’t pro­vide enough struc­ture, it will spi­ral out on you.

Make a buck­et list of things you will do dur­ing this time, and pri­or­i­tize those that lead to a mea­sur­able result. Start with a morn­ing rou­tine. Keep it sim­ple. Weed a cor­ner of the yard. Cook a new recipe. Make a meal plan with all the gro­ceries you just stocked up on. (I know I saw you at Trad­er Joe’s today!) Meal plans are great for uncer­tain­ty; even if you are just microwav­ing some­thing, it is one more thing you can count on to go as planned.

Include essen­tial tasks for your job and school­work when appro­pri­ate, but keep your expec­ta­tions low. Even with extra time at home, we are cram­ming in work and usu­al­ly more cook­ing and child care. At the very least, we have more inter­rup­tions and more temp­ta­tions to procrastinate.

If you are work­ing from home, don’t for­get to make time to take a walk around the block, and plan to catch a sliv­er of the news and know when you will stop. Sched­ule news check-ins as if they are meals; no snacking.

2) Take a news break

Why: Our brains need to return to base­line func­tion­ing with­out con­stant stim­u­la­tion from a fear-induc­ing topic.

Con­stant­ly tak­ing in news head­lines about infec­tion, risk, and death stokes our fear engine, and we have to work hard to keep our wor­ries in check due to our brain’s neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias: our ten­den­cy to pay more atten­tion to the bad rather than the good. Con­sum­ing lots of news is not tol­er­a­ble long-term for most peo­ple. Most of us could use a break for an after­noon, or even a full 24 hours to reset our­selves in the world and show up calmer.

Avoid­ing the news for a day makes our “wise mind” avail­able when we do tune back into news. “Wise mind” is a term from dialec­ti­cal behav­ioral ther­a­py that refers to a way of look­ing at things with per­spec­tive and accep­tance, or “peace in the truth.”

Instead of check­ing the news, notice what hap­pens if you take a walk in nature. Nature has huge stress-reliev­ing effects. The birds aren’t wor­ried. The trees are grow­ing. Your body is work­ing. You can remind your­self that some basic things are still in place.

When you do need to tune back in, you want to be able to do this from a calm place. Wise mind gets chipped away by too much news and stimulation.

3) Create thought charts

Why: Thought charts help you see a choice in what you focus on, and try to shift your per­spec­tive to a plan of action instead of worry.

It doesn’t do us any good to rumi­nate (“when your thoughts go in a cir­cle,” as my son says). Rumi­nat­ing thoughts feel like the dev­il on your shoul­der, the wor­ry cloud, or the buzz of anxiety.

Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) is the most evi­dence-based way to address fear and rumi­nat­ing thoughts, includ­ing issues like depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and insom­nia. CBT is used for spe­cif­ic pho­bias, as well as wide­spread unease. With prac­tice, it teach­es you to reframe your thoughts in a way that gen­er­ates less reac­tiv­i­ty and more mea­sured respons­es. CBT also hap­pens to be the best treat­ment for those on the obses­sive-com­pul­sive spec­trum, which recent­ly has come to include many of us. (Who isn’t hav­ing recur­ring thoughts on coronavirus?)

One help­ful tech­nique from CBT is to cre­ate a thought chart, which includes three steps: iden­ti­fy­ing the thought that cre­ates con­cern, some­times called an “event,” fol­lowed by the actu­al wor­ried thoughts, and final­ly a chal­lenge to them. The chal­lenge to these wor­ried thoughts should include self-com­pas­sion­ate phras­es (“It’s nor­mal to be wor­ried right now”), as well as plan-of-action phras­es (“Lis­ten­ing to the wor­ried thoughts aren’t help­ing me so I will take a walk and play a non-news podcast”).

– When I teach CBT to kids, I use a book called Tam­ing Your Grem­lin. My favorite CBT work­book for adults is called Mind Over Mood.

Thought charts help you look at the thoughts you have about your­self, your future, and the world around you—and see what mes­sag­ing you’re giv­ing your­self based on these thoughts. For exam­ple, at this time many of us are look­ing at the world around us and telling our­selves we ought to be afraid, and spec­u­lat­ing on worst-case scenarios.

How­ev­er, we can’t know the future, and with prac­tice we can learn that this repet­i­tive mes­sag­ing is not pro­duc­tive for our lives. We can acknowl­edge the truth of our thoughts (if evi­dence sup­ports it) and then add our own choice of response that includes two things: self-com­pas­sion and a plan of action.

We might respond to these wor­ried thoughts by say­ing, “It’s true that coro­n­avirus is out there, and that is scary [self-com­pas­sion]. What steps can I take so that I can still do what I need to do while fol­low­ing pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tions [plan of action]? When I let fear run my life, I don’t feel any bet­ter pro­tect­ed, so I’m not going to lis­ten to this thought any more today.”

With prac­tice, thought charts val­i­date our anx­ious thoughts with­out let­ting us become trapped in them. We can see a clear choice and prac­tice giv­ing pow­er to the self-com­pas­sion­ate and action-ori­ent­ed thoughts.

Espe­cial­ly since we are all in this same sit­u­a­tion togeth­er, we owe it to our­selves to fig­ure out how to not let that ter­ri­fied lit­tle part of us run our lives. The world needs us to bring our wise minds to action.

– Lind­sey Antin, MFT, is the founder of Berke­ley-based Lind­sey Antin Coun­sel­ing. She brings her expe­ri­ence as a cog­ni­tive psychotherapist—and as a for­mer col­le­giate athlete—to her live-ses­sion and dig­i­tal-plat­form advice for cou­ples, indi­vid­u­als, and teens. Based at UC-Berke­ley, Greater Good high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­right Greater Good.

Resources mentioned above:

• Book: Tam­ing Your Grem­lin: A Sur­pris­ing­ly Sim­ple Method for Get­ting Out of Your Own Way
• CBT work­book for adults: Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Chang­ing the Way You Think

To Learn More:

• Four tips to prac­tice good men­tal hygiene dur­ing the coro­n­avirus outbreak
• Study finds a key ingre­di­ent in mind­ful­ness train­ing: Accep­tance (not acquiescence)
• Pos­i­tive soli­tude, Feel­ing active and Future-mind­ednes: Three Keys to Well-being
• New study rein­forces the impor­tance of walk­ing through forests for men­tal and gen­er­al health
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains