Take Care of Yourself

I came across this on Facebook and thought perhaps it might reach someone who needs it if I posted it here. Times are tough, we are all stressed and worried, and there is a lot of good advice here, stuff it took me years of therapy to figure out. You get it for free!

From Margie Donlon

From a psychologist:
After having thirty-one sessions this week with patients where the singular focus was COVID-19 and how to cope, I decided to consolidate my advice and make a list that I hope is helpful to all.  I can't control a lot of what is going on right now, but I can contribute this.

Edit: I am surprised and heartened that this has been shared so widely!  People have asked me to credential myself, so to that end, I am a doctoral level Psychologist in NYS with a Psy.D. in the specialities of School and Clinical Psychology.

MENTAL HEALTH WELLNESS TIPS FOR QUARANTINE

1. Stick to a routine.  Go to sleep and wake up at a reasonable time, write a schedule that is varied and includes time for work as well as self-care.

2. Dress for the social life you want, not the social life you have.  Get showered and dressed in comfortable clothes, wash your face, brush your teeth.  Take the time to do a bath or a facial.  Put on some bright colors.  It is amazing how our dress can impact our mood.

3. Get out at least once a day, for at least thirty minutes.  If you are concerned of contact, try first thing in the morning, or later in the evening, and try less traveled streets and avenues.  If you are high risk or living with those who are high risk, open the windows and blast the fan.  It is amazing how much fresh air can do for spirits.

4. Find some time to move each day, again daily for at least thirty minutes.  If you don’t feel comfortable going outside, there are many YouTube videos that offer free movement classes, and if all else fails, turn on the music and have a dance party!

5. Reach out to others, you guessed it, at least once daily for thirty minutes.  Try to do FaceTime, Skype, phone calls, texting—connect with other people to seek and provide support.  Don’t forget to do this for your children as well.  Set up virtual playdates with friends daily via FaceTime, Facebook Messenger Kids, Zoom, etc—your kids miss their friends, too!

6. Stay hydrated and eat well.   This one may seem obvious, but stress and eating often don’t mix well, and we find ourselves over-indulging, forgetting to eat, and avoiding food.  Drink plenty of water, eat some good and nutritious foods, and challenge yourself to learn how to cook something new!

7. Develop a self-care toolkit.  This can look different for everyone.  A lot of successful self-care strategies involve a sensory component (seven senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (comforting pressure).  An idea for each: a soft blanket or stuffed animal, a hot chocolate, photos of vacations, comforting music, lavender or eucalyptus oil, a small swing or rocking chair, a weighted blanket.  A journal, an inspirational book, or a mandala coloring book is wonderful, bubbles to blow or blowing watercolor on paper through a straw are visually appealing as well as work on controlled breath.  Mint gum, Listerine strips, ginger ale, frozen Starburst, ice packs, and cold are also good for anxiety regulation. For children, it is great to help them create a self-regulation comfort box (often a shoe-box or bin they can decorate) that they can use on the ready for first-aid when overwhelmed.

8. Spend extra time playing with children.  Children will rarely communicate how they are feeling, but will often make a bid for attention and communication through play.  Don’t be surprised to see therapeutic themes of illness, doctor visits, and isolation play through.  Understand that play is cathartic and helpful for children—it is how they process their world and problem solve, and there’s a lot they are seeing and experiencing in the now.

9. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and a wide berth.  A lot of cooped up time can bring out the worst in everyone.  Each person will have moments when they will not be at their best.  It is important to move with grace through blowups, to not show up to every argument you are invited to, and to not hold grudges and continue disagreements.  Everyone is doing the best they can to make it through this.

10. Everyone find their own retreat space.  Space is at a premium, particularly with city living.  It is important that people think through their own separate space for work and for relaxation.  For children, help them identify a place where they can go to retreat when stressed.  You can make this place cozy by using blankets, pillows, cushions, scarves, beanbags, tents, and “forts”.  It is good to know that even when we are on top of each other, we have our own special place to go to be alone.

11. Expect behavioral issues in children, and respond gently.   We are all struggling with disruption in routine, none more than children, who rely on routines constructed by others to make them feel safe and to know what comes next.  Expect increased anxiety, worries and fears, nightmares, difficulty separating or sleeping, testing limits, and meltdowns.  Do not introduce major behavioral plans or consequences at this time—hold stable and focus on emotional connection.

12. Focus on safety and attachment.  We are going to be living for a bit with the unprecedented demand of meeting all work deadlines, homeschooling children, running a sterile household, and making a whole lot of entertainment in confinement.  We can get wrapped up in meeting expectations in all domains, but we must remember that these are scary and unpredictable times for children.  Focus on strengthening the connection through time spent following their lead, through physical touch, through play, through therapeutic books, and via verbal reassurances that you will be there for them in this time.

13. Lower expectations and practice radical self-acceptance.  This idea is connected with #12.  We are doing too many things in this moment, under fear and stress.  This does not make a formula for excellence.  Instead, give yourself what psychologists call “radical self acceptance”: accepting everything about yourself, your current situation, and your life without question, blame, or pushback.  You cannot fail at this—there is no roadmap, no precedent for this, and we are all truly doing the best we can in an impossible situation.

14. Limit social media and COVID conversation, especially around children.  One can find tons of information on COVID-19 to consume, and it changes minute to minute.  The information is often sensationalized, negatively skewed, and alarmist.  Find a few trusted sources that you can check in with consistently, limit it to a few times a day, and set a time limit for yourself on how much you consume (again 30 minutes tops, 2-3 times daily).  Keep news and alarming conversations out of earshot from children—they see and hear everything, and can become very frightened by what they hear.

15. Notice the good in the world, the helpers.  There is a lot of scary, negative, and overwhelming information to take in regarding this pandemic.  There are also a ton of stories of people sacrificing, donating, and supporting one another in miraculous ways.  It is important to counter-balance the heavy information with the hopeful information.

16. Help others.  Find ways, big and small, to give back to others.  Support restaurants, offer to grocery shop, check in with elderly neighbors, write psychological wellness tips for others—helping others gives us a sense of agency when things seem out of control.

17. Find something you can control, and control the heck out of it.  In moments of big uncertainty and overwhelm, control your little corner of the world.  Organize your bookshelf, purge your closet, put together that furniture, group your toys.  It helps to anchor and ground us when the bigger things are chaotic.

18. Find a long-term project to dive into.  Now is the time to learn how to play the keyboard, put together a huge jigsaw puzzle, start a 15 hour game of Risk, paint a picture, read the Harry Potter series, binge watch an 8-season show, crochet a blanket, solve a Rubix cube, or develop a new town in Animal Crossing.  Find something that will keep you busy, distracted, and engaged to take breaks from what is going on in the outside world.

19. Engage in repetitive movements and left-right movements.  Research has shown that repetitive movement (knitting, coloring, painting, clay sculpting, jump roping etc) especially left-right movement (running, drumming, skating, hopping) can be effective at self-soothing and maintaining self-regulation in moments of distress.

20. Find an expressive art and go for it.  Our emotional brain is very receptive to the creative arts, and it is a direct portal for release of feeling.  Find something that is creative (sculpting, drawing, dancing, music, singing, playing) and give it your all.  See how relieved you can feel.  It is a very effective way of helping kids to emote and communicate as well!

21. Find lightness and humor in each day.  There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason.  Counterbalance this heaviness with something funny each day: cat videos on YouTube, a stand-up show on Netflix, a funny movie—we all need a little comedic relief in our day, every day.

22. Reach out for help—your team is there for you.  If you have a therapist or psychiatrist, they are available to you, even at a distance.  Keep up your medications and your therapy sessions the best you can.  If you are having difficulty coping, seek out help for the first time.  There are mental health people on the ready to help you through this crisis.  Your children’s teachers and related service providers will do anything within their power to help, especially for those parents tasked with the difficult task of being a whole treatment team to their child with special challenges.  Seek support groups of fellow home-schoolers, parents, and neighbors to feel connected.  There is help and support out there, any time of the day—although we are physically distant, we can always connect virtually.

23. “Chunk” your quarantine, take it moment by moment.  We have no road map for this.  We don’t know what this will look like in 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month from now.  Often, when I work with patients who have anxiety around overwhelming issues, I suggest that they engage in a strategy called “chunking”—focusing on whatever bite-sized piece of a challenge that feels manageable.  Whether that be 5 minutes, a day, or a week at a time—find what feels doable for you, and set a time stamp for how far ahead in the future you will let yourself worry.  Take each chunk one at a time, and move through stress in pieces.

24. Remind yourself daily that this is temporary.  It seems in the midst of this quarantine that it will never end.  It is terrifying to think of the road stretching ahead of us.  Please take time to remind yourself that although this is very scary and difficult, and will go on for an undetermined amount of time, it is a season of life and it will pass.  We will return to feeing free, safe, busy, and connected in the days ahead.

25. Find the lesson.  This whole crisis can seem sad, senseless, and at times, avoidable.  When psychologists work with trauma, a key feature to helping someone work through said trauma is to help them find their agency, the potential positive outcomes they can effect, the meaning and construction that can come out of destruction.  What can each of us learn here, in big and small ways, from this crisis?  What needs to change in ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world?

People Are Assholes

I will probably be writing some things here about the happenings in Ferguson, as the whole thing just has me alternating between spitting mad and profoundly sad.


But, I came across this.


The Last True Hermit


I think that they should have just left the guy alone and let him go back to his home in the woods, is what I think. People are "terrorized and frightened" because their marshmallow fluff and propane are stolen? WTF? He didn't harm anyone. He never stole anything of real value. A kinder, more compassionate community would have noticed the pattern of thefts of only Needful Things, and maybe just left "donations" of these sorts of items out where he could find them. But, no. The man who found solace in solitude had to be hunted down and prosecuted and made miserable for the rest of his life. People are just such huge fucking assholes. I'm tempted to trot off to the woods somewhere, myself.

So, This is Christmas

By now, Diane should have received the check I sent.  Unlike her, I am not a Believer, but I do hold in my heart the hope that the best of the human spirit will prevail in times of trouble.  This hope has been kept alive, yet again, through the efforts of everyone who sent a donation or a kind thought to our friend in her time of need.  I hope it's enough.  I hope that all the Dianes out there have Enough.  I hope that, someday, we reach a point where it's just understood that everyone should have Enough. 

Again, I thank you all for your generosity.  I may call on you again, and, if I do, I hope that you will be there.  You are the best that humanity has to offer.

Love,

K..

Thank You

Through the collective efforts of Atriots past and present, readers of Diane's blog, and other friends, we have managed to surpass the goal of collecting $1,800 to pay Diane's last month's rent at the care facility where she resides.  At the end of the week, I will be mailing her a check for $2,200.  I can't thank you all enough for your generosity, and for all the kind emails you sent expressing your love and concern for our friend in her time of need.  Rest assured that your good wishes will be conveyed to her along with your financial contributions.

I have tried multiple times to compose this post, and each time I was overwhelmed.  First, by the simply stunning outpouring of affection and generosity of those who care for Diane, but second, and somewhat surprisingly, by anger.  This may not be the most appropriate place to express it, but it really makes me angry that this fundraiser even needed to happen.  A dying person should not have to concern herself with these matters.  Her friends should not have to rally to scrape together the funds for her last expenses.  I'm so heartened, and so relieved that we were able to manage this, but what if we had not been able to?  What, then?  What would happen to Diane?  What happens to all the "Dianes" out there who don't have a network like this?  This is something that simply should not happen in a civilized society, and it makes me incredibly angry.  I'm not sure what to do with that.

For now, I suppose it will be enough to be happy and grateful that we were able to bring some comfort and peace to a friend in her time of need.

Thank you for that.

Peace,

K..

Gratitude

I'm about to shut it down for the evening, as my tired old ass has done all I can for this day, but I wanted to let you all know that due to your generosity, we have well surpassed our goal of collecting $1800 for Diane, and that's just through the PayPal link I put up.  I will have something to say about all this tomorrow, when I'm not so tired and not so completely verklempt, but, damn, youse are the best fucking fucks I've ever had the pleasure to know.  Anyone who says Internet friends aren't "real" friends can fucking blow me, and by that, I mean, again.

Solidarity

As many of you know, one of our own beloved, Diane, of Cabdrollery, has been experiencing serious health issues for quite some time.  She is currently in good hands, receiving excellent and loving hospice care in California.

I have been corresponding with her, as she no longer has Internet access (although efforts to re-establish that may continue, if she is willing and able), and one of the things that she mentioned is that she is in need of financial assistance.  The facility in which she currently resides has asked that she pay her last month's rent (although that is not necessarily this very month, please do note), to the tune of about $1,800.  If I had that much to spare, myself, I would simply send her a check, but, fact of the matter is, I don't.  However, I know the Atriots, past and present, to be an overly generous and extraordinarily kind group of human beings, and so, on Diane's behalf, I humbly beg for your help.

Diane will surely not be with us for too terribly much longer.  For now, she is receiving good care and is not in pain.  I think it would be a kind thing and a blessing to at least ease her passing by helping to relieve her worries about finances. 

All donations large and small will be most gratefully accepted.  Thank you so much for whatever you can do to help our friend.

Love,

K..

Here There Be Monsters

I (and many others) have been accused of "politicizing" the recent murders of 26 people in Newtown, CT.  I have been berated for not showing sufficient deference to the victims and their families by not talking about the "gun issue."  I am told that I should set this aside in favor of simply feeling badly for them, of offering thoughts and prayers and sympathies to them, that "now is not the time" to discuss the reasons for this bloodbath.  What kind of person am I that I could put my own feelings above those of the people most directly affected?  Have I no shame? 

First of all, I do feel badly.  I feel incredibly badly.  As a woman, a mother, a grandmother, hell, as a human being, my heart absoutley breaks for each and every one of those gunned down, for their parents, their grandparents, their husbands and wives, their families, friends and neighbors.  I simply cannot conceive of the level of pain and suffering that comes with such a thing.  How will they ever mourn?  Will they ever stop mourning?  But how can my offers of sympathy, my empty prayers, ever offer any consolation?  What good will they do?  The bile rises as I think of those 26 coffins, 20 of them far too small, being rolled down the aisles of places of worship and placed in cold December graves.  I look at the bright faces of those children, the obvious love and dedication to them on the faces of their teachers, those who died trying to protect them, and the tears well up in my eyes.  What good are my tears?  Will they comfort the survivors?  Will they bring back the dead?

Secondly, this issue was politicized long before the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary.  It has been politicized for decades by people like Wayne LaPierre, and the organization he heads.  Under their influence, millions of people have been convinced that their absolute right to own any sort of weapon, with no regulation whatsoever, outweighs the right of children and their teachers to be safe in schools, of people to go see a movie and come out alive, of Christmas shoppers to buy gifts for their loved ones without being gunned down where they stand.  When I see that Merchant of Death give a speech, even before the latest bodies have been buried, encouraging, no, demanding, that the only solution to such mayhem is more mayhem, in the form of yet more weapons in the hands of yet more people, under the guise of "security," the bile that had been rising reaches its destination, and I retch.   When he stands in front of the nation and dares to put the blame on movies, or music, or video games, instead of where it belongs, on him and people like him, who peddle fear to the masses, offering the comfort only of weapons of mass destruction against it, I scream in my head, and sometimes aloud. It makes me physically ill that monsters like this are taken seriously and given a place in our discourse.  The only place for men like this is in  a locked ward where they can't do any more damage.

 I think to myself how different peoples' reactions might be if, instead of being shown the smiling faces of the victims, before their young lives were snuffed out, they were shown the results of decades of fear-mongering and lobbying for the gun industry.  What would gutless politicians and babbling talking heads say if they had to see the bullet-ridden bodies, the blood-stained party dresses, the brains of their precious children splattered on walls and floors?  These are the things we ask people like those police and rescue crews to look at.  They had to see that.  Why are we spared?  How different would our discourse be if people were forced to face the bloody, violent ends of their pontifications about "rights?"

You're damned right I'm going to talk about this, and I will do it in the strongest terms I can muster.  Because this never should have happened.  It could have been prevented.  And I don't want it to happen again.