Staying resilient in anxious times

I’m doing my best to keep my own fears, confusion and worries about this new virus in some kind of perspective…but it isn’t easy.  So many things that I take as a given in my life are now questionable.  I just found out that my daughter can’t go back to college due to the virus.  The conference I was planning to attend was cancelled. The jazz concert I’ve been looking forward to was just canceled. Oh no, I just found out that my yoga studio and hair salon are closed! I really can’t keep up with emails about COVID19.  I’m sure you’re experiencing some of this too.  Uncertainty is the driving force of anxiety.  We fear what we can’t understand, can’t control, and therefore can’t protect ourselves from. We need some structure and sense of predictability and stability in our lives in order to feel safe and secure.  Suddenly, we are faced with a virus we can’t see and don’t understand.

Part of dealing with rising fear is to know what to do in the case of a real disaster. No doubt that many of you have received information about how to protect yourself physically from COVID19. Here’s a link to the CDC Factsheet.

For many, this new virus may feel like yet another looming threat out there piled onto others. 

So how do we protect ourselves emotionally?  Part of dealing with rising fear is to focus on resiliency.  In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we like to say that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s psychological flexibility. Resiliency is the capacity to be psychologically and emotionally flexible in the face of stress.  Usually when faced with fear or threat our brains propel us into reactivity in order to protect ourselves.  This is typically known as “fight or flight.” Resiliency means getting better at noticing our habitual reactions and pushing the pause button, stopping for a moment, so that we can “respond” in a way that is helpful to our emotional wellbeing. When we react out of fear and threat it often narrows our choices and causes anxiety and suffering.  Resiliency is like having good shock absorbers when we go over the inevitable bumps in the road.  It means putting fears into a larger perspective and holding onto things in life that we cherish and make us feel like our true selves. It’s really, really hard when everything is being cancelled and our lives are being uprooted. Yet, a part of resiliency is about accepting the reality of what is, rather than on hoping that things will be the way we hoped they would be.

One of my favorite stories that Tara Brach tells about radical acceptance is about the monkeys on the golf course. The story is about the British colonizing India many decades ago and building golf courses, which they liked to do.  This, for several reasons turned out not to be such good idea. The biggest challenge was that the area was populated with monkeys.  The monkeys apparently were interested in golf too, and their way of joining the fun was to go onto the course and take the balls the golfers were hitting and throw them around.  Of course, the golfers didn’t like this at all so they tried to control the monkeys. They built a big fence but the monkeys, being monkeys, just jumped over it.  They tried to lure them away, maybe with bananas or apples, but for every monkey that they’d lure away, all of their relatives would come onto the course to join the fun.  Finally, they established a new rule for this particular golf course; the golfers had to play the ball wherever the monkey dropped it! The golfers were onto something. We all want life to be a certain way. We want to conditions to be just so, and life doesn’t always cooperate. Maybe it does for a while, which makes us want to hold on tight to how things are, but then things change. So sometimes the monkeys are dropping the balls where we don’t want to them.  Life isn’t cooperating with us.  For me right now, it feels like the monkeys are dropping the balls all over the place.  This is the source of anxiety and suffering. 

One of greatest teachings in spiritual life is this:  While what’s happening matters, what matters more is how we respond. How we respond is what determines our happiness and our peace of mind. (Tara Brach).

In an Insight Meditation post a few days ago, Jack Kornfield reminded us of this:

When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive. –Thich Nhat Hanh

“The need for the dharma is stronger than ever. We can choose to live in our fears, confusion, and worries, or to stay in the essence of our practice, center ourselves, and be the ones on this beautiful boat of the earth that demonstrate patience, compassion, mindfulness, and mutual care. If you want to live a life of balance, try this: Turn off the news for a while, meditate, turn on Mozart, walk through the forest or the mountains and begin to make yourself a zone of peace. Let go of the latest story. Listen more deeply. When we react to insecurity with fear we worsen the problem—we create a frightened society. Instead we can use courage and compassion to respond calmly with a fearless heart.” -Jack Kornfield.

Please do what you need to do to take care of yourself emotionally. Our mission at CBT Denver is to be here for you and support you through difficult times, to be present in the face of fear, with balance, growth, and resiliency. I spent the morning cooking with my daughter (an egg strata) and listening to The Beatles and Mozart. I turned off the tv. It helped.

With my deepest wishes for peace and health,

Pam