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It’s been difficult for me. My mental health has been on the decline this Summer. I was looking forward to many things. Baseball, my midway point of Grad school and so on. But sadly that has gone to crap. It’s a shame this virus has turned more into a Political game. The news is incredibly depressing so I deleted my social media for good. (Might help in the long run). But I really just can’t take it anymore. I have been working from home while finishing my online degree and being cooped up with my husband and my 2 daughters (10.5 and 3.75 years old) in our very small house. I have also started job hunting for a better position. Coping Strategies:A)
Be Out In Nature– I take my girls for a stroll/walk/hike/mud puddle expedition along some walking paths around our house set up by one of our angelic neighbors. I don’t know what that will look like for you, but every effort to be moving and out in nature seems to be helpful and worth considering. 
Eat a Salad Every Day (or So)– these salads contain perks like croutons and blue cheese, and non-perks like lettuce. Point is – I am doing something more healthy for myself as a habit and it helps. C)
Have a Guilty Food Treat on Hand (that works with your dietary constraints)– this is easier to manage. I found a Strawberry-Lemonade ice cream with lower sodium (go figure) that works for me and my husband. D)
Projects– We are not house fixers by nature, but we decided to remodel parts of our bathroom. We have a certain amount of pride in having switched and replaced from a vanity sink drain setup to a pedestal sink drain setup, put down a certain amount of non-stick laminate flooring, removed all the wallpaper and glue, removed all the icky vinyl and glue, and replaced the medicine cabinet. Of equal importance is that we are still married after this. Other side projects include cleaning out our living areas, and developing better storage habits. E)
Look for the Positives– Having our daughter home for the last 3 months has not been easy – our house is wayy too small for that. But it does give us a chance to see how she would function learning at home – which is not bad. This summer, we have her doing “homework” on a maintenance program for math (15 minutes of work), reading for at least 20 minutes (most days), and practicing typing. So yesterday, she decided to practice her typing by writing up a Google Slides Presentation on what her home school schedule should look like. F)
TV/Movies– We have a family movie every other night or 2-3 nights. I usually wind up feeling better after each show so far. I ride my bike alot. Good exercise always makes me feel better. When i am not ridding I am hiking. I dont read or watch the news. It is all so jaded and negative.
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Cadence wrote:
I ride my bike alot. Good exercise always makes me feel better. When i am not ridding I am hiking.I dont read or watch the news. It is all so jaded and negative.
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I started going on jogs every morning during the week. Been nice to shed some pounds and get back into shape. But it’s not helping I reach for the comfort, I mean junk foods sometimes when stressed. And thank you, I echo your sentiment towards the news cycle. It’s sad.
AmyJ wrote:
I have been working from home while finishing my online degree and being cooped up with my husband and my 2 daughters (10.5 and 3.75 years old) in our very small house. I have also started job hunting for a better position.Coping Strategies:A)
Be Out In Nature– I take my girls for a stroll/walk/hike/mud puddle expedition along some walking paths around our house set up by one of our angelic neighbors. I don’t know what that will look like for you, but every effort to be moving and out in nature seems to be helpful and worth considering. Eat a Salad Every Day (or So)– these salads contain perks like croutons and blue cheese, and non-perks like lettuce. Point is – I am doing something more healthy for myself as a habit and it helps. C)
Have a Guilty Food Treat on Hand (that works with your dietary constraints)– this is easier to manage. I found a Strawberry-Lemonade ice cream with lower sodium (go figure) that works for me and my husband. D)
Projects– We are not house fixers by nature, but we decided to remodel parts of our bathroom. We have a certain amount of pride in having switched and replaced from a vanity sink drain setup to a pedestal sink drain setup, put down a certain amount of non-stick laminate flooring, removed all the wallpaper and glue, removed all the icky vinyl and glue, and replaced the medicine cabinet. Of equal importance is that we are still married after this. Other side projects include cleaning out our living areas, and developing better storage habits. E)
Look for the Positives– Having our daughter home for the last 3 months has not been easy – our house is wayy too small for that. But it does give us a chance to see how she would function learning at home – which is not bad. This summer, we have her doing “homework” on a maintenance program for math (15 minutes of work), reading for at least 20 minutes (most days), and practicing typing. So yesterday, she decided to practice her typing by writing up a Google Slides Presentation on what her home school schedule should look like. F)
TV/Movies– We have a family movie every other night or 2-3 nights. I usually wind up feeling better after each show so far.
Those are some really good tips! My folks keep inviting me over for movie night but I keep turning down the offer. Just from being stressed out. Maybe I should start accepting their offers. I think having projects to work on is a good idea. As I said I am in Grad school. So in a way that has kept me busy to a degree. I might start a positivity journal, that could very well help.Best of luck on that job. The market is very weird right now. lol
AmyJ wrote:
So yesterday, she decided to practice her typing by writing up a Google Slides Presentation on what her home school schedule should look like.
As a parent of a child also on the autism spectrum, I am super impressed by the degree of self advocacy displayed by your daughter.
One thing that I try to do is to keep a regular sleep schedule (which for me means waking up between 6-7am). Studies show that keeping such a schedule is important for mental health even if there is no work or school that we might need to get to.
Here I’m not limiting my definition of hope. It can be in great things and small things. It can mean something as simple as looking forward to something. I think it’s important to find something to have hope in. It’s also tough when forces that we can’t control start to take the things we have hope in off the table.
Hope for a good baseball season. The pandemic cancels nearly all sports.
Hope that the pandemic will end soon. Daily reports that set a new record for confirmed cases every day with no relief in sight.
Hope for a return to school, church, and other social gatherings. The pandemic puts those things on hold.
Hope that a divided populace can reunite. News that paints a picture that we’re only becoming more divided.
Hope that the next Star Wars movie will be good. …
It’s tough when things we hope for start to feel like pipe dreams.
How to handle the chaos? There’s no one answer, everyone is different. Some things that have worked for me in the past:
Relatively speaking, other countries may be more even keeled that the current state of the USA. The USA feels like it’s on a pendulum. Things swing in one direction, it upsets enough people to cause the pendulum to swing in the other direction for a season, that upsets the people that were happy with where the pendulum was, and it’s back and forth. If you don’t like where the pendulum is at, wait a little while, then it will be other peoples’ turn to be unhappy.
But in all seriousness, MLK Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The arc of the moral universe may be longer than our lifespan, but over time people tend to be better to one another. That’s cause for hope. I’m also reminded that most lessons we learn have to be learned the hard way. In JRH’s talk… sometimes we go down the wrong path but we quickly learn it’s the wrong path and that helps us choose a better path. Again, with the idea that “we” represents humanity more than the individual. The individual may experience dark days but long term I like to think that the sacrifice makes humanity as a whole better.
I can have hope that humanity will learn and get better.
- Unplugging can help.
- When dealing with chaos I like to try to be more present and I try to shrink my universe.
I have the tendency to live in an imagined future. I take the inputs that are in front of me, interpret them through my lens, and filter them through my experiences. Sometimes that produces anxiety. When I start living too far in the future I have to mentally deal with multiple outcomes. When I’m more present I deal only with the things that are in front of me.
Side note: I’m not saying abandon planning for the future, just that there’s a balance and I have the tendency to get out of balance.
What do I mean by shrinking my universe? I try to shut out all my thoughts and all my anxiety related to what is going on in the world around me. Just focus on the immediate, in this example the five basic senses: touch, smell, hearing, sight, and taste. When I do that right now I come up with:
1) Touch: I’m in an air conditioned room. I’m not hot, I’m not cold. It’s nice.
2) Smell: The dog is in the other room, so I’m good there as well.
3) Hearing: I hear a ceiling fan. Non-irritating white noise.
4) Sight: I’m looking at a computer screen.
5) Taste:
I probably need to brush my teeth. Over all, pretty good. I shrunk my universe. I shut out the thoughts of employment anxiety, political anxiety, bills, imagined futures… it’s just, “What am I experiencing right now?” We all have responsibilities, we can’t spend our lives like that, but it can be a nice break from the thoughts that have us see chaos.
It’s a form of meditation, and with the way I’m wired meditation is more about giving my mind a break from usual thoughts as opposed to trying to blank out my mind.
- Not my favorite bullet point, but chaos is a part of the equilibrium. I think it’s more about striking a healthy balance with chaos than spending all effort attempting to fight against it.
I don’t do social media so I wasn’t impacted there but I did tend to look at the news a bit. Once the pandemic hit, I found that there was so much that WASN’T news but rampant speculation that I had to delete that app on my phone (the most distressing was one article claiming unemployment would reach 25% and that the U.S. was headed for a “Greater” Depression than the 1930’s. That was the point I said to myself “enough!”) I now view news filtered through a local news app where I assume if something big enough happens, it will show up there. But primarily, it deals with local issues, weather, uplifting stories (they interview a lot of senior citizens) etc. I found that helped my own stress levels quite a bit. I’ve also been exercising a bit more than I used to which has had some benefits. My job is done remotely so I don’t interact with coworkers very much at all and found I haven’t missed it. But I’m rather introverted so some aspects of the current situation have actually been nice. Up to now I thought I was handling it fairly well, this afternoon I found out my nephew has tested positive. He is a health care worker. Currently the
symptoms are mild & he can quarantine at home with his family close by.
Minyan Man wrote:
Up to now I thought I was handling it fairly well, this afternoon I found out my nephew has tested positive. He is a health care worker. Currently the symptoms are mild & he can quarantine at home with his family close by.Covid news can be tough, scary, uncertain and unsettling. However, ‘nephew’ indicates he’s younger, which seems strongly encouraging. Mild symptoms are more encouraging still. All things considered, it sounds like his prospects are about as good as it gets.
Here’s wishing a full recovery.
I’m a bit hesitant to say how we’re doing because – well, this has been the best year we’ve had in a very long time. To be fair, they were pretty black years so it’s not like the bar was all that high. During the black time I went from very social to anti-social but guess what? It turns out a pandemic compliments that really well. I am also (really really) fortunate+blessed to be able to work remotely.
I am enjoying the empty-ish roads. A lot. Maybe too much.
However, I’m not totally insensitive to the profound challenges that people are facing. To explain, a lot of the hardships people are facing right now (health, food, housing), that was our 2009. It was also our 2010. And our 2011 and every single year that followed until about a couple of years ago. Now we have food, like, all the time. Food is so awesome when you have (5!) kids. I am sleeping in an actual bed. Luxury! We have (aged but reliable) cars again.
So, we’re pretty good. But a lot of people are now heading where we’ve been – including some folks who never got our breaks.
I’ve reached out to the EQ Pres and said we (6 guys) are available to help. We had a few opportunities from that. I’m doing a bit to help an online PTSD support group. I do regular stuff for a sometimes-homeless couple. Frankly, we could do a lot more. I am looking.
If I have anything constructive to offer the forum, it might be this.
Back when things were dark and we couldn’t do much for ourselves, we wound up doing service projects because it was the only thing we actually could do. We did a LOT of moves (again, 6 guys). It really was a matter of efficiency & pragmatism. Helping people was less terrible than the alternative – helping no one (ie: us). My fragile male ego can take only so much failure. Well, okay. Not that true. I can take a lot but the failure then was just endless and compounding every year. Accomplishing something – anything at all – provided enough self-esteem that we could survive.
I’m not claiming we endured with a cheerful countenance because I wouldn’t be cheerful after winning a lottery of rainbows. But we did endure.
tl;dr: If it’s bad and you can’t help you, help anyone else at all.
NoahVail wrote:
Covid news can be tough, scary, uncertain and unsettling. However, ‘nephew’ indicates he’s younger, which seems strongly encouraging. Mild symptoms are more encouraging still. All things considered, it sounds like his prospects are about as good as it gets.
I’m not worried about my Nephew. He’s young, strong & healthy. But, he has been in contact with people at his clinic & his parents. My Brother &
SIL. Both have health issues that can quickly be compromised. Suddenly a news item can quickly become personal.
Minyan Man wrote:He has been in contact with people at his clinic & his parents. My Brother & SIL. Both have health issues that can quickly be compromised.
That seems like a lot of worry. Are your family members finding some peace, to offset that worry?NoahVail wrote:
That seems like a lot of worry. Are your family members finding some peace, to offset that worry?
Yes they have. The symptoms are relatively mild. And my Brother & SIL have no symptoms & are being tested.
Life goes on & they seem reasonably happy in the middle of this situation.
This is another side to this issue of dealing with a pandemic. I know there are members who have moved into our ward during the lockdown & we haven’t been able to introduce ourselves except by email or a text. There
are others who are moving out & we can’t say goodbye in person. There are primary baptisms that we can’t go
to because of the virus.
We are a people & a church who need & require human contact. Even if we don’t always agree, we need to be
with our “peeps”. If it hasn’t already, we are going to see more people & members in emotional or mental troubles
because of the lack of personal, human contact. I can see a little within my own family.
These are interesting time. I hope this pandemic doesn’t last much longer. Some of us may not survive.
I hope I’m wrong.
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