Now is the Critical Time to Take Charge of Your Mental Health
We’ve all been running on adrenaline for weeks now. Thank goodness for adrenaline. It lets us get through the crisis. Adrenaline keeps our energy up and our reaction time quick so that we can survive. Then the crisis usually ends, and we re-stabilize, process the trauma, and go back to normal. Sounds all neat and tidy, doesn’t it?
The problem is, this crisis isn’t ending. The trauma of the COVID-19 crisis is not only the fear and lockdowns and job loss and illness and death. It’s also the uncertainty. The not knowing when, or if, life will ever look normal again. The expectations of working/parenting/isolation/educating/sanitizin
Our nervous systems can only sustain a crisis in this fight or flight mode for so long. When the crisis doesn’t end, or seems completely unbearable, the nervous system can send us into shut down. This is the classic “playing dead” that animals do when the predator is staring them down. This is a physiological process that will happen automatically.
For us, shut down might look like depression, incredible fatigue, brain fog, irritability, difficulty making decisions, crying, even physical aches and pains, or heaviness in your body. You might find yourself “eating your feelings”, zoning out online or on Netflix, sleeping way more, lacking motivation. Before you start accusing yourself of being lazy, remember that this is a normal reaction to the totally abnormal circumstances happening right now.
It can start to feel like despair. Prolonged fear, isolation, lack of normalcy, and not feeling in control of our lives can lead to a decline in our mental and emotional wellbeing.
Now is the critical time to take charge of your mental health.
This might mean easing up on how much effort you put into trying to educate your kids. Going for a walk. Calling a loved one. Drinking a glass of water. Hugging a tree (for real, this helps!). Listening to music. Dancing. Snuggling with a favourite pet or human. Calling a therapist.
Listen, friends. You DO NOT have to power through this time. You DO NOT have to come out of it with a new skill or language or 47 books read or another degree or a sparkling clean and decluttered house. You also DO NOT have to deteriorate into despair and hopelessness.