It comes in waves actually, that's what I seem to have found with people, it's like,
but something triggers it and you really feel quite anxious.
Then other times, when you're distracted or you get a sense of perspective, it sort of calms down,
but it's quite difficult to tell when you're gonna get the next surge of that.
Recognise that each day we're probably going to have to change our behaviours
in a slightly different way from the day before.
The reason for those changes is further information, further knowledge
and the more knowledge we have, the quicker we're going to get
through this thing ... almost sort of see
that as a positive, see that as moving forward, that we're going somewhere,
that it's going to conclude. This is going to end.
So if you health anxiety already and that basically means that for every little
symptom you get, you blow into something else or you think it's something more
severe, or you're constantly Googling your symptoms - it's very easy to go to Dr Google.
The symptoms of coronavirus are actually quite similar to anxiety in
some ways, I think that's worth bearing in mind.
It's difficult to catch your breath, you feel like your chest is tightening
you get those sort of pulsating waves through you.
That's what happens when you're overanxious.
Our cortisol levels, so that's our stress hormone, is on high all the time.
We're overdosing on cortisol and that makes us feel jittery and edgy and
actually makes us feel more anxious, so let's, perhaps, some of the ways you
can step down your cortisol, discourage it from overwhelming you.
Firstly, what we call a 'worry window'.
So, yeah, we're all tempted to go and look at everything on social media,
get as much information as possible because information is power,
the more we know about it the more we feel in control.
However, lots of stuff that's going out on social media is inaccurate
or it's speculation or it's opinion, so give yourself a window of maybe
an hour a day or half an hour at the beginning, half an hour at the end of the day.
Things change fast.
Look at something when you know it has gone through a filtering process, it's not just
somebody's opinion, it's based on something you know that has more substance.
Secondly, I mean, the things that we feel guilty about doing like
watching distracting telly box sets, films, I mean if you are at home do it.
This is the one time in our lives where you can ... this is not a guilty pleasure
anymore, it's just a pleasure. We need to distract ourselves.
Even having a clear out, you know, the cupboards that you haven't done that you meant to do ...
it's all about distracting yourself and then absorbing, so you go from
distraction to absorbing yourself into something so that actually you find
yourself: "I haven't thought about it for the last half an hour".
When you've got funny little symptoms that you just don't know,
and they're going to internalise and make you feel more anxious,
tell a friend or tell a family member because everyone is having something
that doesn't feel right, that's what a nationwide or a global anxiety
does for people. We're all having anything from sort of feeling like we
can't quite catch our breath, to feeling like itchy at times, to feeling that we,
you know, our hearts are palpitating or that we're sort of starting to sweat.
There are so many signs of anxiety.
99% of the time they will not be signs of coronavirus but they will be your body
going into overdrive, the fight or flight syndrome.
I know it sounds boring but going to bed at a regular time, exercise is
really important, not drinking too much, these are all ways of containing the
hormones adrenaline and cortisol that are threatening to envelop us.
My advice for anybody that feels that it really is painful in self isolation is
to reach out, I mean there's a lot of things going on there's a lot of neighbor
groups, there's Whatsapp groups, there's various things going on where people are
learning to support each other either in a practical way or in an emotional way.
And you can do something else for someone else, usually there's a kind of
I don't know, a generosity of spirit swap, if you like, so if someone can go into your
shopping, you can do something else for them. Maybe you can have a conversation
about how you can get somebody online.
It would be great to teach somebody, very simply, how they can communicate by video call
or join a social media app like Facebook,
so that they can connect with others.
Sharing something is one significant way of reducing anxiety.
So where we are at the moment with changes happening fairly constantly,
I think, and I'm feeling the anxiety too ... I'm a psychologist, I'm the one giving
the advice, but actually I'm going through, we're all in this together, and
I'm feeling as anxious as anybody.
I think what I do recognise in people, and what you may be surprised to find in yourself,
is a reserve of resilience, and each day that something different happens
and our behaviours have to change, that resilience gets stronger so that
develops our coping mechanisms.
We're never going to look forward to it as a challenge but we are gonna go into the
next day knowing that we're able to cope,
and that's the really important take away for the moment.