There's this consistent perception by the human brain that they're under threat, the threat of losing a job or threat of not being able to follow a routine that feels natural, the fear of getting COVID The fear of someone they love getting COVID and dying from it. So there's this constant underlying threat. And the brain's wants to respond to that by finding safety getting away from it. And these just aren't things that we can physically remove ourselves from or, or take steps yet to say okay is this result,
under normal circumstances, the day to day stress of work, family, finances, or any number of personal concerns can weigh on our mental well being added to that now is the COVID 19 pandemic. Never before has staying at home been quite so stressful? This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. The measures we're taking to prevent the spread of the corona virus pandemic could include living with a house full of kids home from school, social isolation from friends and extended family complications of the workplace, ranging from technical frustrations to long hours to even risking one's health. Today, we're speaking with a clinical psychologist about how to navigate these kinds of stresses and maintain our mental health in the time of a physical health crisis.
So I'm Dr. Jonathan Lindsay, I am a licensed counselor, I have a private practice my work with clients with a wide range of concerns for Heartland, I occasionally offer community education classes dealing with communication, both personal communication and also professional and also conflict resolution, same areas.
As we speak remotely. A lot of people are working from home right now. And trying to do their jobs by teleconference by the phone by email, how have you adapted your job as a licensed psychologist, under the circumstances of the COVID 19 pandemic,
I am using a video conferencing program, I'm using a program called Doxie. Because it's HIPAA compliant. So I am communicating with some of my clients just from their homes, for a few of my clients who don't have internet access, that will actually facilitate even a basic video chat. I've been doing some sessions over the phone, but I do actually still provide some face to face, some of my clients is extremely important I might be the only person that they have direct conversation with are actually in the presence of outside of people wearing masks or the like at a grocery store. So that can be really important depending on a person's mental health to have that human presence. So I am still providing that for some of my clients.
So in a general sense, what are people going through now with having the self isolation in some cases, or having their routines up ended having a health crisis going on? What are some of the issues that people are having to struggle with that that might be exacerbating something that would normally just be the regular stress of life.
I think what I'm seeing, aside from what people were already struggling with is two big kind of areas. One is that there's this consistent perception by the human brain that they're under threat, that threat and come from different things that can be an economic threat, a threat of losing a job, a threat of not being able to follow a routine that feels natural, the fear of getting COVID, the fear of someone they love getting COVID and dying from it. So there's this constant underlying threat. And the brain wants to respond to that by finding safety getting away from it. And these just aren't things that we can physically remove ourselves from or, or take steps yet to say, okay, is this resolved, right? We don't have, for instance, a vaccine, which might give some relief to people that are worried about spreading disease or contracting it. So that's the first one. The second one is there's a lot of additional pressure that a lot of people are feeling on their interpersonal relationships. Some of that could be they're just not getting enough space, the amount of space that they're used to, they might be having conflicts in their personal relationships that normally they could physically be away from the person and so the conflict won't flare up such as going to a job. But now they're kind of sharing the same space. People are having to communicate needs they wouldn't normally have to communicate such as Mommy needs this time to work here when the child is used to when Mommy's home, right, I get her attention all the time. And so just struggling to negotiate those things, or kind of wrestling with problems that we've kind of buried under the carpet, if you will. So most of the additional strain I see is really coming from those two areas.
We need to Talk about the that situation where people are under the Shelter in Place Order. And not only do they have that overarching concern about well, you know, every time I go out, I could encounter somebody that has the virus, I could bring it home to my family, there are certain things you have to do, and you take all the precautions. But on top of that, you have kids that normally would be in school or be in daycare or be in some sort of learning environment. We all have to maintain our mental health as adults, but for kids, their brains are still developing, how does an upset in that routine affect how kids develop? Obviously, for 1000s of years, people were homeschooled in one form or another. But this is different. And this is a different situation. So So what the parents need to watch out for, for their kids development and their kids mental health.
I want to start by saying I think the children will mostly get through this time without it having any kind of major residual effect on their development, I think the fact that they're still developing creates certain challenges or creates certain threats. And the fact that what happens if something hurts them something traumatize them, but it also gives them a lot of flexibility. And so I think with just some pretty simple steps, most children are going to just remember this as a strange time, or maybe even a time they really liked. But what I see mostly impacting children in a time like this is the need for predictability, children, especially the really young ones, rely extremely heavily on the adults to create safety, provide them with food shelter, to let them know when things were okay, and not okay. And their predictability or their ability to kind of predict everything's gonna be fine, or this is what I'm supposed to do, right really comes from routine, right? So we've been harping on the need for children to have routine for generations. Now, I'm going to it really boils down to that their ability to have things be predictable. And of course, their routine is very upset and has been for weeks, though by now I think that a lot of kids were probably falling into this new normal, and maybe even easier than some adults just like they do when summer break comes out, right? Suddenly they're out of school. But in that case, it's expected and they adapt to it. So the more that the parents continue to provide a routine, the easier it is for the children to be able to predict older kids teenagers, they're going to have run into a lot more situations where they had to kind of size it up and make their own judgment call. So they're going to often be able to come up with their own kind of this is how I need to do things. But they'll still need parental guidance, because they're still developing poorly younger children. Ideally, parents would do something similar that a kindergarten teacher would do, which is just create a easy to follow schedule that they stick with, that the kids can learn, and follow every day. And then again, things become predictable. And the second part of it is that, again, children look to adults, to know that things are okay or not. So the more that the adults don't have to adults will need to put up a front saying, oh, everything's fine. And all this sort of stuff, because the kids will feel what the parents are feeling, right? They're a little balls of empathy. So trying to act like everything's fine, when it's not, isn't really going to trick the kid so much as the kid is going to learn. Well, I should act like I'm okay, even when I'm not. But if the parents are loving, you know, a parent can say, I'm not sure what's going on honey, but we'll be okay. Right? Or I'm looking after you or just giving them a hug and letting them snuggle on the couch. You know, these things naturally make children feel safe. And that's going to be a big part of insulating them against the possibility at this time would leave a real negative impact. As a matter of fact, this time could actually lead to a very large positive developmental impact as they wrestle with their crisis as they witness adults, successfully navigating difficult things. So I think it really boils down to those two things, just helping children be able to predict what's going on and know what they need to do their miss time. And also just reassurance love reassurance that things are gonna be taken care of, that they typically lean on all the time. It's just, we're so used to giving them those reassurances in a normal period of time that, you know, we don't even realize how essential it is.
So something else when we talk about adults, and you alluded to this earlier, there are more people around more more needs that kids have for you. I kind of think it might break down into two sorts of conflicts. One is you have people that are maybe more used to having that space and distance and break. So they maybe are more introverted. And now they're surrounded with people. In some cases, you know, the kids are home, the spouse is home, whomever else is home. So that's one source of potential stress. And then the other one might be people that are just really social animals, you know, people that thrive on that contact of going to the office and talking to people and interacting with people, and going to visit friends and going to all the places that you can't go now because they are closed. So how do you reconcile those individual things as far as the stress it puts on your mental health?
I think, in both cases, if a person is able to communicate what they need, so if I need more space than I'm getting, I might feel like, well, I shouldn't say something or everybody's struggling. And I might not speak up for myself. But speaking up for yourself is actually pretty important. Because often, people are going to be experiencing this moment from their own perspective. And unless their perspective happens to match your perspective, and everything just magically works out, right, they aren't necessarily going to give you what you need. Because they may not really just be aware, even if it's like, well, you know, you know, I always need this extra space, I still need extra space. And your partner says, Oh, well, of course, right? It doesn't mean that they would have thought of it on their own, because they're dealing with their own struggle. So communicating that I need a lot more space, or, you know, man, I'm really bored, I need to do something, I need some social time, if there's something that you can't have, right? Maybe that introvert is a stay at home spouse, and so that person would normally get hours alone. And that's just not possible now. Or maybe it's that extrovert you mentioned who always goes out on Friday and Saturday night, and that's just what they live for, and they can't write. So if it's something that they can't provide yet or don't feel safe doing, communicating that frustration, and having some people understand it can still be a big release being unburdening from that, I think we're conflict can arise from trying to communicate those things is if one, I'm placing the responsibility for giving me that to someone else, right? If I'm like, you don't give me enough space, or I wanted to go out with my friend, and you freaked out because of the virus. And so I stayed in. And now I'm really angry with you. But that's certainly going to create a lot of conflict if we approach it that way. So it is really essential to communicate in a way that says, we're both in this together, I'm just trying to vent my frustration, or I'm just looking for some help as a team, right, I'm not pinning it on you. And also for the other person to be able to let their partner vent without having to feel responsible, which can be a struggle for some people to,
as we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of these external factors that are weighing on us, we might even not know that our radar is up. Because everything you see in the news, you see all these signs, externally everywhere have things that there is an unseen threat. So that does weigh on your brain. What are some everyday things people can do to make sure that that stress doesn't kind of build up and get to be too much the same way that exercise might help your muscles maintain their health and your physical health? Are there things that you can do for your mental health to kind of be preventative and proactive? So you don't get too stressed out in a way that all of these changes build up?
Yeah. So I think there's a number of things, I think the place to start is with anything that you already do that normally works in your old way, right. So exercise is a great example that actually reduces stress, both physically and mentally. If normally, I would go and I would spend a certain amount of time doing cardio at the gym. While I might not like doing those sorts of things at home, it will work for me, if I do it, if I let myself do it, especially if I do it regularly at the same whatever my regular pace was before if I readapt to that. So if normally I would have some quiet time, give yourself that same time, try to find a way to get it that might be negotiating with my partner, if I've got children to say, hey, you know, I want this hour here to meditate. If that's something I do, maybe my partner clog up the kids and then I can look after him later. So my partner can do what my partner needs to do. So number one, that's always the place to start, do what already works for you try to readapt to that. And then the second thing is in that same vein, I strongly encourage my clients to still do the rituals that we would be doing if we weren't in the shelter in place order. So don't go to your job. If you're working from home right now. In your pajamas, right? Change your clothes, take a shower, go through your morning routine. You may not have to rush out the door, you might have an extra 510 minutes, but otherwise, do all the things like you're going to work and up at the same time. Time, yada, yada. And it's really important to to do the same thing on reverse. So when it's quitting time, quit working, change your clothes, what you would change in the evening, if you had gone out or go through those same rituals and patterns, so that your days have some semblance of normal, which will help regulate your overall stress, specific to threats, like what's going on with the economy, what's going on with the virus, I encourage people to be informed, but to pick what they trust, to get their information from, and try to limit what's coming in to just the essentials of what you need, right? That's different for different people. So some people, you know, they just watch the evening news. And that's it, they won't listen to reports and COVID on the radio and stuff, that's great, you know, they're getting their information. For some people that might even not be every day, some people might actually need to cut back from their normal on this, because they might be used to always having, they might be listening to programs that have the news break in at the top of every hour. And maybe right now that's a little too much, giving yourself permission to limit the constant reminders. You don't want to make yourself completely abandoned information, because then that'll build up its own anxiety of what's going on, and what do I not know about? And the last thing is, whatever sources of information you trust. So for instance, I strongly recommend when people ask me, where do I get information about COVID, I would always recommend we'll just check the CDC, they'll tell you what's going on, they'll tell you what to need to do. They've that agency I have a lot of trust in. And I think that they are doing what they can. And I think they've got the best basic knowledge of how to be safe. So do what the CDC saying. CDC says wear masks, so just wear a mask, stay six feet apart all the things we've been talking about for the last month and a half. That hopefully, we can offer a little trust that that that that is giving us the best protection we can outside of that, that kind of circles me back around to the first point of just doing the things that I already need to do to kind of regulate anxiety, feelings a threat. I guess the only other thing I want to highlight is that feeling that things are abnormal in that creating unsettlement, which can come in the form of strange dreams, it can come in the form of just feeling a little more wired up, it can come in the form of being a little more irritable, or a little more sad. Either my feelings are a little bit more intense, or made my feelings a little muddled. Any of these changes, these are all natural. These are being felt by people all around the world. Everyone's reacting to this. Some people are coping one way some people are coping another as long as they are creating safety for themselves. And and for other people. It's fine, whatever their coping is, as long as they're not hurting themselves or someone else, it's fine. And we're gonna get through this. But how you individually are going to get through this is your own unique thing. And it's okay, right. The other thing I would recommend, or want to point out is that this is not a time to try to not have fun, play, laughing, sharing stories with the people you can communicate with, whether that's over video or people that live in your home. These are all essential survival tools. Absolutely. So if you're watching late night program, and you're seeing these various videos of people, you know, having quarantine Olympics or doing other fun things, and you feel like that would be fine, go do it. Right play is absolutely one of the essential things that gets people through these difficult times and helps them feel connected and relieve some of that tension that otherwise might build up into conflict. So those are the main things that I really want to encourage is just recognizing that all of this oddity is what everyone's feeling, and to try to bring some fun and joy into it. That's an essential survival tool.
Jonathan, thanks so much for taking some time to talk to us today. And giving us this insight and advice. And hopefully, this won't go on so long that people go completely, probably a term you don't like is is anything crazy,
but stir crazy. That term. I understand that.
We really appreciate you joining us to talk about this. Thank you.
Dr. Jonathan Lindsay is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. You joined us today to talk a little bit about how people can maintain their mental health during the COVID 19 pandemic. If you're interested in other interviews about mental health, physical health, self improvement and ways that you can keep yourself healthy and active. While this global pandemic affects all of our lives. Check out some of our other podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio boom or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
