How to overcome Covid 19 Anxiety

This Pandemic has caused many people to feel stressed, anxious, out of control and worried about their health, their financial situation and just generally about the future. Our brain is a pattern matching machine it likes prediction and response and is always looking out for our safety and at the moment many of us don’t feel safe and we can’t really predict our future. We don’t even feel safe going to the supermarket let alone making plans for the future.

The effects of stress includes:-

MIND – unhelpful thinking, not being able to make decisions, feeling confused, lack of concentration, over thinking, problems with memory.

BODY – PHYSICAL – higher blood pressure, feeling dizzy, stomach problems such as IBS, changes in eating behaviour, insomnia, sleeping too much or too little, sweating, lower libido,

EMOTIONAL – withdrawal from other people, comfort eating, prolonged silences, feeling angry and frustrated, feeling overwhelmed, depression, feeling tearful and sad, grief for the way we thought our life should be and the connections we have lost but still need.

We miss our family, friends and work routine, not having these things in our life can have a massive impact on how we feel about ourselves and our life especially if our self-esteem is validated by these things now we don’t have them or the validation. Our self esteem takes a real knock which can result in a strong desire for control and unhelpful behaviours such as OCD, binge eating, drinking, checking, gambling, online shopping and many more.

 Maybe you are the sort of person who never stops for second, always on the go busy busy busy, but now you have been forced to stop and be with yourself and your thoughts which may have made you face up to things you were trying to avoid thinking about which has led to some uncomfortable feelings and emotions. This could be causing anxiety and depression because you can no longer escape into your busy life.

On the other side of the coin for some lockdown has felt like a huge relief not having to worry about daily stresses and pressure, as if someone has pressed a pause button. It’s coming out of the lockdown that is now causing stress and anxiety. You felt safe at home and everyone was more or less in the same boat. If you have any social anxiety you didn’t have to worry about being judged or what other people thought of you , but now it’s back to the big wide world but not quite as you knew it, and this makes you feel even more anxious and out of control than ever.

But like most anxiety and fear this is all anticipatory and about the future and about what might happen,  but it hasn’t happened and probably won’t but even if it does it won’t be anywhere near as bad as you thought it would be. Think back through your life and I bet there are many times when you felt really really anxious about a situation but the reality was it didn’t even happen or it actually wasn’t that bad when it did.

So how do we overcome these feelings and emotions it’s a simple as ABC

A – AVOID or minimise time with negative people especially the news, and social media they would have everyone you know including you being affected.

B – BELIEF’S a belief is just a thought that you keep on thinking so challenge and change your thoughts and you change your beliefs, so instead of saying something like” this is a nightmare” say I have really enjoyed walking my dog more often, or how fabulous my garden looks.

C – Control your thoughts, responses and behaviour. Listen to your language, try not to over dramatise and always look for the worst case scenario. Recognise and change catastrophic language. Instead of saying” it’s a nightmare” say it’s a bit challenging or if you are thinking my business will never recover” why not say “ this is giving me the opportunity to restructure or change direction”

Remember it doesn’t matter if you say it out load or just in your head, your brain reacts the same.

The one thing we do have control over is our thoughts so be careful what you wish for.

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