Advice to Help with Corona Worries
Overwhelming fear and worries about the coronavirus, Covid-19, can create a ton of emotional distress especially to those who are already living with angst and nervousness. All of us are watching the headlines and have been thinking when is this all going to end. The advice I will be sharing today will focus on bringing relief, but not by the end of the virus but by helping you end your worries through the power of your thoughts.
Remember, you’re not powerless. Today we are going to be sharing some advice on managing those overwhelming fears. We still don’t know exactly how long this will last, or even how bad things might get. So, waiting for the world to get better so we can feel better is not a good strategy. Your power comes in being able to change your thoughts, even when your situation is out of control.
Did you know that what you think about your situation has more influence than what’s happening in your situation? Your thoughts have power. Your thoughts have the power to make a bad situation better, or to take a good situation and make it look bad. What you believe about your current situation, good or bad, will affect how you deal with the situation.
Here’s the other thing that’s interesting, what you believe is not shaped by your situation. It is the other way around. What you believe will shape what you see and feel about a situation. That’s why it’s not useful to be afraid. We can’t worry too much about what’s happening, because some things are really out of your control. Instead we need to control our own thinking.
Stop focusing on circumstances outside of your control. This mindset and strategy will get you nowhere, well aside from feeling worried, nervous, afraid, angst, and overwhelmed. When you feel that you’re getting caught up with fear and doubts of what might happen, try to shift your focus to things that you can control. Like your thoughts.
Here is where my advice begins, what we see as true is not directly the result of the facts around you. What is seen as true, is based on how you think, and then you filter the facts around you to a line with what you believe. This is why it is so important in times of crisis to focus on what you believe as the most powerful tool in coping rather than focusing on the circumstance themselves. It is what you believe that will shape your truth more powerfully that what is or is not happening around you.
Today’s advice and suggestions will help you look at what you believe, what stories you are telling yourself, and help you find beliefs that are useful and empowering. If you want to learn more, stick around.
Hi I’m Brett Williams. I am a licensed psychotherapist and the Chief Executive Officer of the GatheringofGoodPeople.com. We are a nonprofit dedicated to helping your personal growth and emotional healing. We provide support to anyone and everyone who needs it through our self-care groups.
We have created this new series called ANXIOUS, to address the anxieties that have been created by the coronavirus.
As I shared earlier, I want to talk about your thoughts. Specifically, I want you to understand that, “Whatever you believe is true”. Your thinking sets your reality.
One of my favorite books is Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist who lived in Vienna Austria during the 1930s and was of Jewish descent. This ended him being interned in Jewish extermination camps. In his book he talks about his experience and the psychology of surviving in Nazi prison camps.
His basic idea was that those who could create meaning for their lives, and even their suffering, found life. Those who could not were among the walking dead, for they didn’t survive.
The camps were horrendous and brutal but what made them endurable was the ability to find a reason to live, to find a truth or story that gave your life purpose.
For Dr. Frankl it was wanting to share what he had experienced with the world. To expose the evil done to him and others, and to share the truths he had found in living through such pain and suffering.
What you and I believe about our experiences changes our experiences. Our beliefs shape our experiences, or we can let our experience shape our beliefs.
It comes down to choice. Not choosing our experiences, but choosing what we want to believe about experience, what we want to think about our experiences.
I would even say there is no choice about what we think, in terms or thinking or not thinking. We all have formed beliefs or made meaning out of our experiences. The choice is to do it consciously or unconsciously.
When I allow experience to define me or my truth, what I am really doing is choosing to believe I have no voice, no say, and no power. The experience has not told me that, I have chosen that as my truth. Typically this belief that I have no control of my own thoughts is done unconsciously. My story is that I am helpless and therefore I let the events have power over me. I am surrendering myself to the circumstance.
When I find meaning or choose to tell myself I do have the power to define myself in any situation, that has to be done is consciously and with intention chosen an empowering story. Meaning is not given by situations, but is brought to any situation by my choice.
But whichever I choose, to see myself with power or to see myself without power, that choice is my truth. For truth is what I believe.
Let me give you two quick examples. After Dr. Frankl’s release he went back to psychiatry. One day he met a man who was severely depressed. His wife of 40 years had died and he was lost without her.
“What would have happened if you had died first and she was here without you?” Dr. Frankl asked his patient.
“She would be even more of a mess. She was a fragile woman and she relied on me for everything.” The man answered.
“Well then, maybe it is good that you carry this pain of missing her? For if she had to endure the pain you feel, it could have broken her. Maybe this is your greatest gift of love that you are here missing her and not her missing you?” Dr. Frankl replied.
With that answer the man left happy to hold the pain of grief, for it was a pain he would rather hold than to have her hold.
Nothing changed about the man’s situation, other than his story. And by finding meaning to his pain he was able to overcome it.
I remember once seeing a patient who had experienced the most violent abuse I had ever heard. She was beaten and sexually assaulted most of her childhood.
“Wow, that’s an amazing story. How did you survive?” I asked her.
We continued to talk about what she did to endure the pain, and as she did I continued to comment. “You are a survivor.”
At one point she pushed back. “How can you say I survived? It broke me.”
I agreed with her. Pointing to her physical scars I said. “Yes you abuse left its marks both inside you and outside, but here you sit with me. You prescents in the room, and your ability to share it with me is proof you survived it.”
She left feeling better, not because we changed the situation but because we changed her story around the situation. She moved from, “being a victim of abuse” to “being a survivor”.
Her old story had her as a victim, and her new story empowered her and saw her as someone who had the ability to overcome massive pain.
So, what’s your story? What are you telling yourself about your current situation? If you are feeling anxious most likely your story is unconscious and is telling you are powerless and unsafe.
If you can embrace your situation and feel hope, then your story is empowering. Your story is that you will overcome, and you are stronger than your circumstance.
I love to consider the ideas like, “What if I am safe?” “What if I am enough and have enough?” “What if I am loved and loveable?”
Yes, it is natural to worry, be afraid, or concerned about what may happen. But what you are telling yourself about the situation makes it better or worse. Being proactive and having a positive mindset can help relieve at least some of your overwhelming fear.
This all may be easier said than done, so if you have trouble implementing a shift in your thinking, I would suggest joining one of our self-care groups at the Gathering Of Good People.
Share in your comments your story and what you would like to consider as a better story of you and your current circumstance.
Thanks for being here and a part of our Gathering of Good People. I am Brett R. Williams, and I look forward to meeting you soon.