I'm Rebecca Hunter and this is Take Out Therapy. As a private practice therapist, I've helped a lot of people work through some of the most common everyday issues using new tools and greater insight. If you have any interest in doing some personal growth work, this might be the perfect place for you.
In the next 20 minutes, I'll walk you through a commonly explored topic in therapy and provide you with actual tools to deal with it. It's that simple. Obviously, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I think it could be helpful.
Thanks for being here. Hello, my friends. I come to you today from inside my closet, which I would like to tell you is the quietest place at my house right now with a lock on the door, even better.
This episode, I wanted to talk to you about coronavirus-related anxiety and depression because we're in the mental health community. There's a lot of, there's just a lot of dialogue about the upcoming mental health crisis and what we're going to do about it and how we're going to handle it, how we're going to best take care of ourselves. I want to acknowledge for you that that's happening.
Now playing at your local theater, people are experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression right now, whether they've experienced it or not before, whether they have experienced it before or not is what we're seeing. I run a little local therapist network and get lots of phone calls from people seeking therapy and trying to get information about therapy. I would just say, I'm going to talk about COVID-related anxiety and depression today and some things you might be able to do to cope with that.
Also, I will say, if you're suffering, go get some help. We need to push our mental health system to ramp up right now. I encourage people to go and get some help.
Whatever that looks like for you, whatever you're the most comfortable with. Therapy, you don't have to sink in for two years and go through all your trauma. You can go to therapy to deal with COVID-related anxiety and depression.
You can go to therapy to deal with losing your best friend. I mean, it's, you know, don't get me started. Maybe I'll do a whole thing on that.
Today, let's talk about what we're going through right now. As I record this in August 2020, in the U.S., this pandemic is an absolute shit show. I don't even know how else to describe it, isn't it? I mean, isn't that just a great expression for what's going on in our country? So different everywhere you go.
But overall, we're seeing, well, people are flipped out. And may I normalize that, please? Because we absolutely should be flipped out to a certain degree. And some of us are very flipped out, and that's OK, too.
Because this situation is really hard for our brains and our bodies to digest. And it's so widespread. It's collective trauma.
I talked about that in a previous episode. But it's so widespread that it's almost like in the air. So, yeah, if you're feeling really stressed out or you've had depression and haven't seen it for a long time, and here it is back again, or if you're usually anxious and now you're super, super anxious, yes, that is pretty much probably an appropriate response.
But the coping is your responsibility. So that's where your accountability comes in. And we all have to be, you know, I mean, it's like totally normal to feel bad in this life.
And then and then we just like if we want to feel better, if we decide we want to live differently, then that's up to each of us. You know, so many people are dealing with one of two things, either overstimulation, like there's too much coming at us, or we're dealing with understimulation, which is basically like people are shut in and they don't have any contact and they are understimulated. Neither one of those things is good for the brain or the body.
Take the whole pandemic out of it. Right. And you you put a lot of stress and overwhelm on a person.
And there's, you know, seven different facets of their life that are blowing up. Yeah, that's not going to be good for their mental health. And you take a person away from other people and their normal activities.
And yeah, that's going to be rough, too. So these things are very areas where we want to take a look at because they're they're happening because of this pandemic. And there's things that we can do to mitigate the effect of those things.
You know, this thing is really affecting people's mental health because it's very emotionally complex. Right. And, you know, I've already talked about the fact that, you know, the information that we have gotten has been so unreliable.
And so many people are still looking at really unreliable information. So we won't get into all that. But, yeah, that's an issue.
And social media and the media and blah, blah, blah. Let's get to a deeper level and just say, like, this pandemic is very emotionally complex on a really personal level. Like what I can see as a therapist is, you know, we all have a unique history.
We all have a story. Right. And this thing plays into our story in a lot of different ways.
OK, and so it's emotionally complex, meaning on a normal day, you know, of course, we have a lot of different emotions every day. On a normal day now, a lot of those emotions, unfortunately, are what we would put in like the negative bucket. Right.
Some of the things that I see a lot of are, well, I mean, I see a lot of frustration and confusion and, you know, annoyance and judgment. I see a lot of fear. And I've I definitely have talked about this, but, you know, we always, always, you guys, we have to be looking for that fear, that underlying layer of fear, because that is what messes with our mental health.
It sends signals to our body and to our brains that we're not safe. Right. And so when there's a lot of fear in the air.
And even if our fear is like we do this thing that we call othering, because we want people to be like us and we're afraid of the impact of them not being like us. Right. It's like when I feel totally differently than somebody that I really, really care about on an important issue.
Like that scares me a little bit. Am I going to be able to have this person in my life? You know, there's all this like story around that. And usually I can be like, OK, well, that doesn't actually matter because we all get to have our own opinions about things, but it takes a willingness to go through the fear of like, am I going to lose this person? And that's really, you know, and I you know, I'm a huge Brene Brown fan and she is a brilliant researcher that has done a lot of work in this area.
But that vulnerability that human beings face with just the idea of not having other humans around is enough to drive us mad, frankly. And so, you know, that plays in here. It's at the root of all these really complex emotional experiences that we're having.
And then the other thing, you know, is this othering, which is this really black and white. Everybody's in a box. You're either on my team or you're against it type of thing that's going on right now, which is super.
Well, it's sad, isn't it? It's sad. And we don't have any control over that except for our participation in it, frankly. Right.
And I think our participation in it affects our mental health. Do we have to do the othering? Is that an important part of this piece? And so, you know, that othering makes this situation really complex because humans need each other. You guys, we need love and belonging, remember, above all the other things.
Right. And so what can we do? What can we what can we do in the midst of this utter pandemonium? What can we do to not not compromise our mental health? Yeah. We don't want to fall down the toilet bowl.
We don't want to be in the spiral of anxiety and depression. So if you feel that way and you're feeling like you want to try some stuff to get a handle on it, this is what I would recommend. I would I would.
Well, first of all, I'd learn about mindfulness because mindfulness teaches us just this tiny little piece about like just being in a moment, just paying attention to a current moment. And the bigger picture of that in what I would describe as a good prevention plan is like be willing to just be in your life where you are right now. So, yeah, I know there's a lot of stuff we don't know.
So can you be in what we do know? Plan with what we know. This is what life is in this moment. So, you know, that's a very mindful rooted idea that even if you don't practice mindfulness, you can grasp, which is like.
What's happening right now? Your kids are hungry, they need a sandwich. OK, right. Or what's happening right now? You've got a meeting in five minutes for work.
You might want to brush your teeth, right? Just kidding. You know, be in your life. What's happening right now? Well, right now I'm sitting in my closet.
Talking to you guys about how you can take care of your mental health. That's all that's happening for me right now. I don't know if my kids are going to college in the fall.
I don't know if I'm getting to go on my little vacation. I don't like there's a lot of things we don't know. So if we're able to kind of pull out of the bigger picture of the world and come into our lives, it will keep us grounded, you guys.
So and then the other thing is like, can you be flexible? Is there flexibility for you? Right. And possibility. So the other you know, the other idea here is like, yeah, be in what you're in now, but also know that it's probably going to change.
And be willing to have flexibility. Be willing to see the different possibilities that exist within more change. Right.
And so I know there's a lot of really negative things happening all around us. But when we come back to our own life in this moment, can we see anything good there? So we really, you know, in some cases, you got to really look. Some days I have to really look.
And that's OK. That's how life is. Right.
At the root of it, we can sort of rest in our own strength and resilience. I think that's an important piece of coping here. Don't forget to remind yourself that you've been through hard things.
You've already done some stuff. That you didn't really want to do, you probably gone through some stuff that you didn't really want to go through, but you know what? You're here. And you're in and right now it's now.
And so, you know, one of the other things is like just to be able to understand your own strength and to remind yourself of that, you know, that's one thing that I think I teach people to just have a little mantra, just something that you say. In these moments where you need that little pep talk. Right.
And my mantra, if you've been listening to my podcast for any length of time, you know that my mantra is it's OK. I'm OK. That is literally my mantra.
It's OK. I'm OK. And I will literally say that over and over and over again until I remember that it's true.
And so setting a mantra during this time might really help you. One or three mantras. Right.
You could have different sayings for different situations. But one thing that helps me right now is like I am capable of and willing to roll with change. That's one of my things that I'm saying, because every week is different in my business, in my in my life and in my kids lives.
And, you know, we're we're being flexible. We're trying to be in our lives every day, but also see the possibility of change and know that that's coming. And then, you know, just like kind of pep talking ourself.
You guys pay attention to your morning routine, too, right now, because how we wake up really matters. We're in the middle of this very complex collective trauma. So if you can take a little morning time to just sort of set your set your tone for the day.
You know, when this started, I would wake up and like the first thing I would think of is, are we still doing this? And I realized after a while, like, Rebecca, this is not a setup for anything positive. Are we still doing this? Like, this is your life, girlfriend. So I've definitely pivoted on that and have a different approach to my morning.
I don't touch my cell phone when I wake up if I can possibly help it. So that's one thing that I've moved away from. Continue to play around in your own life and see kind of where you can affect some change so that you don't feel anxious or you don't get into depressed cycles.
But also just know that that's totally normal. And there's an opportunity for you to learn about your own capacity for coping and healing and frankly, like dealing with hard stuff. In the meantime, I'll be here with you dealing with it, too.
Thanks for being here. I hope you found today's show helpful. It would mean a lot to me if you'd rate, review or subscribe so that we can reach more people with this type of information.
Here's the deal. I'd like to get rid of some of the stigma around mental health, and this is how I'm doing it. We just need to have these conversations.
If you really want to dig in, join me on social media or join my private Facebook group for more tools, support and possibilities for change. Head to the link in the show notes at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. Way to show up today.
