I don’t think I need to spend a whole lot of time describing what’s going on out there with COVID-19. I’m sure anyone reading this is getting enough information from news and social media crashing through your collective conscious every waking moment. The Coronavirus is impacting everybody - healthcare providers struggling to push through shifts as they jeopardize their own health and safety to treat others, small business owners and entrepreneurs challenged to mitigate the fiscal damage as they gauge how many employees they must terminate to stay afloat or how long they can extend support to the employees they can keep, service industry workers looking for temporary employment as they collect whatever resources they can to build a nest in the next coming weeks, educators providing classroom instruction via web conferencing while taking care of their own children at home, contractors who are unable to find work, people with pre-existing medical issues who are deemed “essential” by definition and must continue to work or they lose their health insurance despite daily exposure to the public, and let’s not forget individuals and families that were already going through difficult times prior to this unfolding - addiction, marital strife, mental illness, job displacement, homelessness, depression, grief and loss - yeah, you get the point. Different boats, but the same unmanageable storm. And there’s very, very little certainty right now for a lot of us - myself included.
My heart hurts for what suffering has occurred and will continue to occur during these trying times, which is why we must work towards eliminating unnecessary pain. There’s a lot in life we cannot control and the path to peace is through an unmitigated acceptance of that. But we should get a grip to the things we can control and channel our energy there. In the next coming weeks, I will be periodically providing exercises, suggestions, and tips to help manage stress during this pandemic. Some will be suggestions you’ve heard of or have even tried before, some you may not have - but the goal is to help inform and inspire my readers to take at least one new action to better their mental health.
Teletherapy
Before revealing today’s exercise, I want to say this. Whether you were seeing a therapist before all of this unfolded the last few weeks and stopped or if you’re seeking therapy now - consider teletherapy. This isn’t just for my financial benefit - tremendous work can be done through this alternative.
For those who don’t know - teletherapy, also referred to as Telemental health, involves the use of electronic communications to enable physicians and other healthcare professionals, including mental healthcare professionals, to improve the access to quality and appropriate care. Teletherapy includes the practice of health-care delivery, evaluation diagnosis, consultation, treatment, transfer of medical data, and education using interactive audio, video, or data communications. Treatment Providers may include, but are not limited to, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, counselors, clinical social workers, and marriage and family therapists. It’s regularly provided on an encrypted, HIPAA complaint platform.
It’s important to note at this time that many therapists - including myself, in private practice as well as agencies have adopted teletherapy into their practice, extending access to mental health services across the country - so if you’re considering counseling but don’t want to risk exposure through in-person contact, this is a viable option. Most insurances have also moved towards covering teletherapy services as they would psychotherapy sessions. Professionally, nothing beats being in an office with your therapist and getting that person-to-person contact; but in times like this, it’s a very effective means to receive quality counseling services. After two weeks of seeing clients through teletherapy, I haven’t had one client express regret over continuing services and meaningful work is being done. If you are still on the fence about considering counseling despite this, feel free to read a previous post I made on reasons for going to counseling. Also, please visit the CDC website regarding mental health and stressors when faced with a pandemic.
Now on to the exercise.
Cultivating Mindfulness in activity
Mindfulness is a word that gets thrown a lot in my world - but maybe it could help to be specific and define what I’m talking about when I say mindfulness. I like Williams, Teasdale, Segal, and Kabat-Zinn’s definion from The Mindful Way Through Depression - “Mindfulness is awareness that comes from paying attention to things in the present moment, on purpose, non-judgmentally to things as they are. Pay attention to what? you might ask. To anything, but especially to those aspects of life that we most take for granted or ignore.” In order for true mindfulness to be practiced, it must be intentional, experiential, and non-judgmental. We observe. We describe. We participate.
How the hell can you do that when there’s a damn pandemic going on?
Well, for starters, you have to make room for it. Set boundaries. Clear some time in your schedule each day to reset - and don’t tell me that you can’t. Even five minutes can do wonders. Take some time out of the five-to-six hours you’re spending scrolling through twitter or binge watching the Office. Strike a deal with your partner for fifteen minutes to yourself. Be strategic about it, because when it becomes a discipline, it generates speed bumps to the ruminating, anxious, or depressed mind. You also have to accept that it’s a practice. There’s no “doing it right.” It’s simply a different way of knowing.
There’s plenty of avenues you can use to practice mindfulness - washing dishes, taking a shower, going on a walk, meditating, eating, even breathing! But what I would recommend for you to do is pick up an interest and practice losing yourself into the present moment in wake of the activity.
Some considerations for this interest: affordable, easy to access, utilize as many of the senses as possible, isn’t physically or emotionally harmful, something with “low-stakes” meaning it’s not tied to earnings or livelihood, something you can do for yourself. For me, it’s been cooking.
I only started messing around with cooking (beyond frozen baked pizzas) a few years ago. Mainly learning cajun and creole cuisines, smoking BBQ, and other random dishes I wanted to learn how to make. I care a lot about the final product and nailing down a recipe and sometimes get very upset when things go wrong and I mess things up. But the greatest gift cooking has given me is actually the time spent in-between - the process. I get so excited for what cooking a gumbo gives me. Chopping up the holy trinity as green and white vegetables slide down the cutting board, the texture of the washed ribs of celery. The heat from the cast iron dutch oven. Hearing the oil crack and pop as I add the flour. The smells of sweated onions mixing in with the roux. Watching the roux darken over the blue flames. Taste testing as the gumbo cooks down and reduces. It is in those moments that I’m completely and utterly captivated by what’s going on in front of me - and nothing else.
Trust me - I want the food to be good, but the real gift comes from observing with each present moment how that process unfolds. Describing it in my head. Becoming an active participant in cooking. And trying my best (with some failure here and there) to not judge myself too harshly.
My wife knows cooking means a lot to my mental health, even though I’m probably not very good at it. If I get to cook at least a few times a week, it can make a major difference in my mood and attitude on things. She knows this because I communicated it to her, so we try our best to work time in each week for it to happen. Plus, she ain’t complaining cause it’s food and I agree to do the dishes afterwards.
When we use our senses and observe, describe, and participate, our mind is preoccupied with the present moment and we reject any sort of dwelling or dreading from taking up real estate in our head. There’s a lot of dwelling and dreading that can go on right now, and it may feel like you’re only surrounded by sources of stress. I’m here to tell you, though, that those stressors are probably not going away any time soon. So manage them wisely and with self-kindness. Carve out some time each day to engage in mindfuless through an interest or activity. Pick something you feel that you can stick with. Be practical. Make it your own. Have openness. And allow yourself to experience under a different way of knowing.
Take care, stay safe, and see you next week.
