Feeling Overwhelmed and Exhausted Due to Coronavirus Stress? Here’s Hope to Cope.
Frightening news and the drastic changes make it easy for any of us to feel overwhelmed and exhausted.
Given the current circumstances, you may be very understandably burdened with these feelings and experiences. You don’t need to continue to endure them, though.
I want to help us look at some practical ways to feel more in control, calmer, and more enthused.
1. Try to Stay Fact-Based and Reasonable
Crises such as the current one test us in a variety of ways, one of which centers around our ability to stick with facts, as opposed to getting overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions that aren’t centered around evidence.
When our emotions are intense, we’re much more vulnerable to catastrophize (to envision the worst possible result).
The reality is, there is so much we don’t know about how this pandemic, and its impact on the world and each of us, will play out.
Therefore, it’s unfair for us to jump to conclusions about this all ending in various worst-case scenarios.
My recommendation, then, is to regularly remind yourself to look at what you do know about your reality and your prospective future. This will help us feel more control, and therefore less overwhelmed and tired, throughout this experience.
2. Recognize and Remind Yourself that You Can and Will Get Through this
When our emotions are profoundly negative, we often feel as though we’ll feel them forever.
Essentially, what’s happening here is our emotions trick us because we know that we don’t stay stuck in the feelings forever.
Countless research studies, as well as my own personal experience in helping hundreds of clients over the past decade, tells us that even the most troubled person can rebound from a devastating mental state.
One way to remind yourself of your resiliency at a moment like this is to think back to a time when you overcome a considerably negative experience.
Perhaps, for instance, you recall a breakup that left you flooded with all sorts of terrible feelings and thoughts, and instead of staying stuck in such a place for weeks or months, you decided to fight back to feel much better and live productively again. You succeeded.
To succeed now, really close your eyes and remember, in as vivid detail as possible, how you experienced this past event and overcame it. This can help foster your ability to do the same again now, as you will feel confident that you can call upon similar skills and resources to do it once more.
3. Bring Awareness and Limits to Your Daily Activities
To stay safe during this pandemic, many of us are staying home and either working part-time or not at all. Prior to the pandemic, a large portion of us had little time to engage in various activities outside of work, whereas now, many of us have almost too much time to partake in non-worked related endeavors.
Too much of anything isn’t healthy for our sanity. The ideal daily routine for us should involve as much balance as possible.
The best way to achieve such a healthy balance of various activities is to bring attention to the process. Here are a few tips on how to do so:
Reflect on approximately how much time seems reasonable for you to engage in several healthy activities which bring you joy and fulfillment.
Consider plans for how to best ensure you stick to these allotted times
Hold yourself accountable for acting on them.
To help, you could set an alarm in your phone to go off when you feel is appropriate to stop participating in any activity.
I can help you feel much better in this overwhelming and exhausting crisis. Contact me today to discuss setting up an online therapy session through a HIPAA compliant video platform or phone session.
Give me a call and we'll discuss how I can help... Jordan Zipkin, LMFT, at 954-391-5305.
