Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last month, you’ll be aware that CoronaVirus is infecting every part of the news and social media. This easily provokes anxiety and unease in us as it represents a threat in a number of ways. From the obvious health threat to us and our loved ones to the effect it will have on our lives.
Anxiety is future oriented in that we fear what could happen and worry if we’re going to cope with whatever the future event will be. With an epidemic, it has the potential to disrupt our lives massively. For example, if we’re unable to work, this has significant consequences and there are endless of what-if’s such as what if I have to stay in for 2 weeks, what if I can’t get help etc.. Those who feel more vulnerable and those who are prone to feeling anxious are most at risk from having adverse emotions. Our anxieties will always have some plausibility but we can unrealistically inflate them which creates unnecessary high levels of worry.
The following articles give helpful advice to help regulate our emotions –
- Coronavirus anxiety: how to cope if you’re feeling anxious about the outbreak published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) in the last week
- How to cope with coronavirus anxiety, according to psychologists.
The repeating advice is to limit media exposure and to wash your hands. Limiting media exposure is important as when we read from different sources, they may not state the same exact information which leaves us with questions and subsequent anxiety. We can also expose ourselves to unreliable and untrue information which can fuel anxiety and unease so using a few trusted sources is being advised. Washing hands is seen as the gold standard of helping to contain any virus. As simple as it sounds, washing hands for 20 seconds with soap will help. Anti-bacterial soap helps more and hand gel/sanitiser will also help.
I hope that this time next year we’ll reflect back on this time to appreciate how well we coped with this and how as friends, as families and as a society we pulled together to help each other.
Regards