BETTER FAMILIES
by
Jomo Phillips MSSW-MFT (Clinical Fellow AAMFT) Couple & Family Therapist/Clinical Social Worker
If someone had told us that the coronavirus restrictions would have been in place almost a year later and life as we know would remain upended, many of us would have laughed. Yet this is reality one year later. With another round of increased strictures and a national lockdown, many people are exhausted. The notion of a highly infectious and dangerous virus has already put many of us on high alert. Our sympathetic nervous system has been activated and taxed for extended periods because many of us have been in fight or flight mode. We have been this way for many months, leaving us burnt-out and exhausted. All the other disruptions, including changes in work and schooling, have compounded this experience.
In the last few weeks, many people have told me that they are not sure how much longer they can continue like this or how much more they can even carry. All the more scary because they are also having the responsibility of looking after their children and sometimes older relatives. One client told me recently she had hit the wall and was fearful of her physical and mental health because of how exhausted and stressed she felt. This response is consistent with the pandemic’s traumatising nature and the chronicity of the stress we have experienced.
As we talked about her tiredness and unease and the fact that she was parenting and was the primary caregiver for her ageing parents, it became clear that the things she used to manage her stress were no longer available. She could no longer go to the gym, go out with her girlfriends, or travel. As a result, we talked about “going small,” in the face of something as massive and overwhelming as the pandemic. Therefore, we focused on the little things she had some power over. These included not watching or listening to the news, as often, because as she said, “the infections numbers always get me worked up”.
There were some other little things that she identified that she could do; for example, there was a friend who she spoke to regularly who always left her feeling drained because of her hopelessness about the current situation. She decided to spend less time talking to this friend. One of her teenage daughters was very interested in running, and she was always trying to entice her mother to go running with her. My client decided to start giving it a go, and they started running together several evenings a week.
The little things my client decided to do started to pile up. She created something significant, including new limits to protect her from information that reactivated her fight or flight response and left her feeling anxious and vulnerable. Reducing her interactions with her friend, who talked hopelessly, was another form of boundary creation because she chose not to let her friend’s negative talk contaminate her feelings and leave her feeling depressed.
Her newfound exercise outlet, jogging with her daughter, also left her feeling energised, as they did something together that they both enjoyed that also strengthened their relationship. As these small things piled up, my client felt much more revitalised and she knew with this pile of new strategies that she had developed she could now scale the wall into which she had previously run headlong.
Getting through the long haul, which has been this pandemic, will probably involve hitting the wall on multiple occasions and reflects that our fight or flight response system has remained active for long periods. But there are small things that we can do that can contribute to returning to a normal and calm state that promotes good mental and physical health. These little things, include recognising some things that we can control, creating healthy boundaries, and remembering things we can do to look after ourselves.
