The Emotional Life of a Pandemic: Anxiety, Grief, Rinse, and Repeat

Apr 1

Parenting In A Pandemic: Part Two

Anxiety: Ours and Our Children’s

Days before the official closing of their school, my 10-year-old daughter asked, “Can you 100% promise me I will not die from Coronavirus?” She got right to the core of it – how scary is this thing and how much can I count on what you are telling me? We had already had the discussion about how children seem to be protected in general, and they are at very low risk of anything bad happening. But she wanted a guarantee of safety, which, honestly, I can’t give her.

The awareness grew as the week (and our discussions) wore on – questions about Mom and Dad getting sick and dying, and of course, their grandparents. I have a 99-year-old grandmother in an assisted living facility who obviously is very vulnerable. So, even if we can reassure them they are basically safe, we can’t promise all of their loved ones are.

Then at 9 pm on Thursday evening, kids tucked in bed, we got word of our school district closing immediately. I knew it was a matter of when, not if, but the reality sunk in of all of us being at home. The more difficult reality of complete social isolation took a little longer, but by the end of Day 2, I accepted it as a necessary measure. We adapted to each 24-hour acceleration of updates that our lives need to change in a big way, for an unknown amount of time.

A global pandemic strikes at the heart of the anxiety beast: the world is not safe. We are literally not able to leave the house because it might harm us or we might harm someone. So, especially for parents and children who are already prone to anxiety, how do we keep it from becoming completely consuming?

For Your Anxiety:

For all that is sacred for your mental health, carve out moments to actively cope with your anxiety in ways you have identified and practiced, and know work for you. Now is also the perfect time to find other strategies, since the tried and true may feel inadequate in this overwhelming time.

“A lesser known concept is posttraumatic growth, which refers to discovering strengths and resilience that grow from living through traumatic experiences.”

Moderate Information Intake

I have felt absolutely compelled to check social media and news outlets for articles and updates, because so much is changing so fast. I also noticed a constant pit in my stomach and tightness in my chest, clearly related, because once I slowed down all the checking, my body felt better.

Moderating the amount of information you take in is critical to keep the emotional stamina to run the whole pandemic marathon. If the checking starts to feel compulsive, leave your phone in another room and find a distraction completely unrelated to Coronavirus. I changed my alarm to wake me up with classical music instead of NPR after one morning when the first words I heard, “this is just the beginning of the global pandemic” sent my heart racing before I barely oriented myself to time and place. Check your news and information access points, and figure out ways to make them less accessible.

Calm and Collected

What do you find soothing, comforting, and relaxing? This is different from numbing, where the brain shuts off with a little trashy TV, or more wine than you planned on drinking. Think about when you feel mentally absorbed in an activity, and do that whenever you can, even if for a few minutes. When we become mentally absorbed, it’s similar to a meditative state, which is very good at calming the anxiety parts of the brain.

Our brain needs this break from lighting up all its stress and fear regions, or it will blow a fuse from electric signaling overload. Instead of waiting until that impossible long stretch of time to sit down with a novel, I will grab 10 minutes to do it, which still gives me the mental shift I need. I’ve seen all those puzzles and freshly baked bread on Instagram – that’s the idea. I have had to be more creative since our family puzzle and baking activities cause more arguments than peace, which leads me to the next tip.

Self-isolate

Not to reduce possible COVID-19 transmission (I mean, do that too), but to save your family from too much togetherness. Emotions are running high, which means we are going to irritate and be irritated even more easily than usual. If you are fortunate enough to have a partner sharing the burden of parenting, tag-team so you each get alone time to do what feels replenishing. My partner and I are going to experiment with alternating weeknights for an hour alone time each evening to refuel after the marathon day of parenting/homeschooling/working. We are also attempting a “quiet reading” time on weekend afternoons, but the 5-year-old needs more conditioning to do this successfully. We have time to figure it out. You may have to go through trial-and-error, but it’s worth it to find a way for everyone to have this time alone, even if in the house.

See Your Doctor

If you have a history of anxiety treatment, like medication and/or therapy, (or other mental health needs that are likely triggered by the extra stress) this is a good time to either continue or resume treatment, if possible. Insurance companies have rallied to authorize telehealth for the time being, so psychiatrists, therapists, and patients can access care, even when homebound.

For Your Child’s Anxiety

You First

First and foremost, the better you manage your anxiety, the less anxious your children will be. We know this from lots and lots of research showing how influential parental anxiety is on child anxiety. In addition to doing all of the above for yourself, stay calm in front of the kids. They look to you for how they should be responding to all of this, and if they see you hyperventilating, that will certainly add to them feeling completely freaked out.

Find Normalcy

Everything is turned upside down right now; this uncertainty feeds anxiety in a big way. Wherever you can find normalcy in your daily life, this will help your kids feel reassured. They may not be going to school, but waking up close to normal time, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and brushing teeth before starting some form of e-learning provides a comforting predictability in an otherwise unpredictable world right now. Besides the obvious overthrow of screen time rules, keeping rules and limits is also an important part of children feeling safe. (They will never confirm this, but it’s true.)

Comfort

Maybe you’ve noticed that despite the exponential increase in togetherness, your children seem to cling to you and need you more. You are their most comforting security blanket, and those extra hugs may be just what they need to keep their overall anxiety at bay. Maybe you can take your own comfort in the fact that you are such an indispensable part of their comfort. When my children have begged for my attention after I feel like I have been quite attentive all day, I reframe it as them needing that extra touch point of comfort, with all they are processing. We all do.

Take Action

Anxiety paralyzes us. We feel helpless and out of control. And this whole pandemic thing blows these feelings up into the size of Godzilla, wreaking havoc on our anxiety-prone brains. One of the best antidotes for this helplessness is to find a way to take action. You may see examples in your community, like encouraging chalk messages on sidewalks, or ordinary people taking initiative to gather masks for healthcare workers (my neighbor did this!).

If your child is expressing worries about others getting harmed, or a general sense of being out of control, they can do a concrete act of caring. One example is our kindergarten teacher shared a form letter for the kindergarteners to send a note and drawing to isolated nursing home residents. Even small actions help us feel more control.

Grief Is Everywhere

Anxiety may be the dominant universal experience, but underneath lies a whole array of difficult emotions, with Grief as the wrapping paper. We are all feeling loss. We have lost our way of living – the way we work, the way we go to school, the way we socialize, the way we decompress on weekends, the way we get breaks from our families.

We are also anticipating loss. The fancy term for this is “anticipatory grief,” and usually refers to expecting and waiting for the death of a loved one. In the case of a global pandemic, we are anticipating potential losses big and small, from May graduations, to vacations, to our jobs, to the ultimate loss of loved ones.

The uncertainty attached to anticipatory grief feeds anxiety, and it’s a big loop of distress and discomfort, especially because there is no known endpoint.

If anything, recognizing this is what’s happening emotionally is the first step to diffusing its intensity, even a little bit (the age-old “name it to tame it” of coping with difficult emotions). It can help to recognize spontaneous outbursts in our children (and ourselves) as expressions of grief. Our children have lost so much of what they need for social, learning, and emotional development, or at least how they are used to getting these needs met.

Making Meaning

A key part of managing grief so it doesn’t consume us is the process of making meaning. Making meaning involves opening ourselves up to a deeper understanding of the why of pain and suffering. Many use religious and spiritual beliefs to navigate this, but it doesn’t have to be faith-based. It’s okay if it doesn’t feel natural to do right now — we are in the midst of the crisis. But if you can welcome the possibility of meaning coming from this experience, you are more likely to find it when it is the right time for your mind, heart, and soul. This helps the healing.

We are all familiar with the concept of posttraumatic stress – the idea of psychological symptoms resulting from exposure to a trauma. A lesser known concept is posttraumatic growth, which refers to discovering strengths and resilience that grow from living through traumatic experiences. When I worked with teen cancer survivors, almost every single one claimed they would not undo having cancer because it was such a formative part of shaping who they were, and they liked who they were. This global, national, community, and personal experience may be shaping our futures in ways we cannot see now, but we will view later with gratitude. (At least parts of it — not the impossibe stress of homeschooling while working!)

“Everything Is In A Constant State of Change” —Buddha

One of my coping mantras is that everything is temporary and nothing lasts forever. Although I’m not Buddhist, I do find this part of Buddha philosophy comforting. As much as these last two weeks have certainly felt like forever, and the timeline has no endpoint yet (this may be the hardest part for me), it will end. We don’t know what the aftermath will look like. We don’t know what changes await us. So we focus on what we do know: we are going through this together. We have each other. We are not alone. Even if we can’t hang out. Yet.