COVID-19 certainly brought a lot of baggage in the door, and then tried to move in. As if the virus wasn’t tough enough, the fear of the virus has been overwhelming at times as the media has continued to stoke our anxieties, both real and imagined. Is it any wonder we feel such a loss of control over our lives?
In a very real way, we entrusted the responsibility for our own Health to others professing to be experts. Their claims of looking out for our best interests, in retrospect, are questionable at best. Now that the scenario has played out over a year, we need to reclaim what has been ours all along – our Health
We are powerful enough.
The Early Days
In March 2020, we all ran for cover from something we did not understand and did not know how to manage. We took refuge from what we were told was the onslaught of disease and death that was certain to overwhelm our healthcare system. Shelter-in-place, flatten-the-curve, the best thing we could think to do was hide.
Fear is certainly a useful emotion. As part of our old-fashioned fight-or-flight response, fear has kept our species alive for generations. Extended periods of fear, however has just the opposite effect on our bodies. Organ functions become tired and uncoordinated, and brain functions begin to falter. The short term effects of fear are just not suitable for long term use.
Not to hold myself to any higher standard, I confess that in the early days of the world’s response to COVID-19, I drank the Kool-Aid with everyone else. I bought into the fear and anxiety promulgated by media and ran away from many regenerative activities, then I decided enough was enough. This wasn’t enjoyable and I was becoming hard-pressed to find some usefulness in all of this non-activity. Hunkered down and nervous about every interpersonal communication is absolutely no fun.
I need my Life back.
Stepping Away to Step Up
The endearing cartoonist/philosopher Charles Schultz’s was quoted as saying that “There is no problem so big or so complicated that it cannot be run away from”. COVID-19, as problems go, is a pretty big one but after living with the ever-changing and incomplete responses our leaders have provided, I decided to walk away.
My sense of déjà vu kept reminding me of my stress-packed days in med school. At Finals time, the campus would almost literally buzz with the stress and anxiety of all of us Chiropractic students desperately trying to survive the high stakes tests that carried our future, and the health of our patients, with each Scantron bubble we filled in.
Nervousness begat nervousness so that by the time an exam would start, I was a wreck trying to focus on the test. The longer I lingered on campus, the more nervous I became.
My solution?
Don’t be where the anxiety lives. If I picked up on the emotions of those around me, my common sense solution was to walk away from the source. With a calm focus, I would wait to enter the school buildings moments before the start of an exam and just sit the test.
I made my own safe space out of the time available to me.
It’s All in How You Approach the Problem
We can all build our own safe spaces. The emphasis is on the building. As we support and grow ourselves from the inside out, we care and nurture protections for our Health. As we have found this last year, if we focus exclusively on protecting ourselves from perceived outside threats, we miss the opportunity to grow stronger physically and mentally.
A harsh reality of the coronavirus, as well as other viruses, is that some people will not survive the infection. Hiding in fear of the infection is not a realistic long term solution to a fact of living. Vaccination may be a solution for some individuals at risk. Empowerment of individuals through an exercise of control over themselves offers additional options to Health and success. Taking actions that are supportive of our body and mind builds our native internal strengths.
What’s in Your COVID Tool Kit?
Remember the trendy psychology around healing your inner child a few years ago? It certainly sold a lot of books.
The premise is that psychological wounds received in childhood trauma were responsible for holding you back as an adult was quite popular. Since I enjoy borrowing useful tools from where I find them, some parts of this concept can be used for our needs.
If you are not already, consider becoming a parent to your Self. You are not fatally flawed or broken, just scared to death of being scared to death. Healing is possible. Nurture your mind with stress reduction activities. Nurture your body with activity, rest, and good nutrition.
Sometimes we parent ourselves to protect from threats like COVID-19. Sometimes however, we parent ourselves to protect from those who do not have our best interests at heart
Grow and be strong, my friends.
One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.
― Shannon L. Alder
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