What do you do if COVID-19 has messed you up?

Diet all over the place.  Sleep patterns disrupted; a little insomnia thrown in.  Exercise non-existent.  Anxiety one week, depression the next, irritability the week following.  Stressed beyond compare because of the uncertainty.  Lacking patience for those who decide to flout social distancing norms.  No hugs.  Just a whole lot more sensitive than normal.  Can’t see family or visit elderly relatives.  Family stressors heightened or simply missing family.  Feeling hypervigilant in public. Avoiding the news and social media.

If you relate with any of these things, you’re in pretty average company.

The fact is COVID-19 has messed most of us up in some sort of way, and it’s probably best said, it’s affected us all in more ways any of us can count.

We may joke all we want to about wanting to move past this year, promptly onto 2021, and forget this year completely, but there is a lot of truth to it.  When we read a meme that says 2020 is a leap year that had 29 days in February, 300 days in March, and five years in April, you only have to be alive in COVID-19 and you know exactly what that humour is about.  It’s kind of necessary, isn’t it?

There’s a lot to be said for humour, especially as it helps regulate our anxiety.  And it is a sure sign that people really are struggling when they resort to humour a lot of the time.  We have all needed such an outlet.  There is no shame in admitting it.

I’ve had a person ask me what do you do if COVID-19 has messed you up?

It’s a reasonable question to ask, particularly when there are a range of different stressors at play during this time.

The first thing we have to note is the sheer unpredictability of this time.  It just helps to understand we will feel out of control.  We will feel at the mercy of many different elements of life that are just happening to us at present.  We’ve all endured so many shock waves.

We can be mindfully gentle with ourselves, patiently accepting that we are in the grief process, and by nature it will feel chaotic, and our emotions will be hard to regulate some days.

We can extend this gentle and gracious patience to others in compassion.  The very definition of the word compassion means to ‘suffer with’, and if we are honest with ourselves and admit that these times are hard, we actually have more patience and compassion for others, because empathy has a chance for expression.

Empathy is a beautiful replacement for fear.  As soon as we feel empathy for others and ourselves, fear melts away, because the truth of our sadness is heard.  There’s no need to pretend we need to have everything together and be managing perfectly well when we aren’t.  It’s okay if this period of time is rough for us.

Whenever we feel messed up, it is always good to sit in that space and to listen to what is going on in our body, mind, and our soul.  I truly wonder if resilience in this day is simply allowing the rollercoaster its time.  And it certainly pays not to get ahead of ourselves.

Sitting in the chaos, not trying to control it, and just learning to be still of mind and heart, accepting the ups and downs without judging ourselves as stupid or weak; these are good things to do.

Photo by Georg Arthur Pflueger on Unsplash