Over the past weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread worldwide. With more outbreaks being reported each day and conflicting information getting shared around the clock, it can feel harder than usual to stay calm.

With so much still unknown about the coronavirus, you may be feeling more fear and anxiety than normal. Feelings of fear and anxiety can feel unmanageable as they feed off of the unseeable and unknowable.

Here are some ways to manage feelings of fear and anxiety brought on by the coronavirus:

Seek out reliable information

Anxiety is an emotion that wants to plan and protect. It feeds off of information, and when it’s fed information that is wrong, it goes into a five-alarm alert, setting off fight-or-flight responses.

To help manage your anxiety, check for updates by reputable health organizations such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO).

2. Pay attention to how your feeling

Feelings of anxiety are normal and to be expected given the circumstances. Ignoring the anxiety will only make it grow louder in order to gain your attention. Paradoxically, only focusing on your anxiety can make things seem worse than they are.

Mindfulness can be a great tool to help you notice what you’re feeling, allow yourself to acknowledge the feeling without judgment, and continue on with what you were doing.

3. Identify other factors that may be influencing your anxiety

While there are valid reasons to feel anxious, there may be more happening beneath the surface. Get curious about your anxiety, and consider what other aspects you are responding to, especially if you are aware of heightened sensitivities to germs, death from illnesses, or hospitals.

4. Controlling what is controllable

There are plenty of things we have no control over. There are also a lot of things we do have control over. Consider engaging in habits that you do have control over, such as: hand washing, disinfecting household or workspace surfaces, and traveling with hand sanitizer.

5. Take a break from the news and social media

More information is not always what will help us feel safer. It can be easy to get pulled into echo-chambers of anxiety and fear when we’re constantly plugged in to the latest updates. Mindfulness can help us understand why we’re checking the news and how it serves us.

6. Grounding activities

It can be easy to get caught up in our worries about what might happen. Grounding yourself in the present moment can be done wherever, whenever. You can mindfully take a walk, wash dishes, or cook dinner all by noticing what you see, feel, and hear right here, right now.

You can also try, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique works by noticing and taking in the details of your surroundings using each of your senses:

What are 5 things you can see?

What are 4 things you can touch?

What are 3 things you can hear?

What are 2 things you can smell?

What is 1 thing you can taste?

Part of a disease's impact is psychological in nature. As humans, we tend to respond to information emotionally. This can include feelings of anxiety, hyper-vigilance, catastrophizing, and helplessness. Mindfulness can be a helpful tool to help us notice our fear, acknowledge it without judgment, and respond proportionally.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to support your child during this global health crisis.

Chances are, you've heard of breathwork. In recent years, it’s made its way into yoga studios, the latest meditation apps, and wellness circles across the country. But what’s so special about breathing?

What is breathwork?

Simply put, breathwork is an intentional practice of breathing. It can be understood as a form of active meditation in which there is a sole focus on a specific breathing pattern for a set period of time.

Some techniques utilize a three-part breath--inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding again for four counts each--whereas others practice six breaths per minute, inhaling and exhaling through the nose for four minutes or more. Consciously controlling the breath can have positive effects on our emotional, psychological, and physiological states (Morningstar, 2001).

How does it work?

Generally speaking, breathwork is a means of regulating the autonomic nervous system. When our sympathetic nervous system is activated by a stressor, we may feel anxious and overwhelmed.

We often spend more time than we realize in our sympathetic nervous system throughout our daily lives--feeling frazzled at work or in an argument with a significant other. Especially during the holiday season, stress can run high. Often, patients will report challenges interacting with family and having difficulty shifting gears to focus in on their internal experience. By taking even a five-minute break to check in with ourselves, we have the power to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and bring the body back into balance (Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. 2006).

Tapping into the parasympathetic system, colloquially called the “rest and digest” system, improves the ability of regulatory centers of the brain to manage over-reactivity in the emotion-processing centers of the brain (Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. 2006). Breathing techniques that stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system induce a relaxed state, allowing for greater emotional regulation and mental clarity (Morningstar, 2001).

Breathwork can be especially helpful for the following issues:

anxiety
panic attacks
depression

(Jerath, R., Crawford, M. W., Barnes, V. A., & Harden, K. 2015).

As we breathe deeper, we start to slow down and become increasingly present. We learn to quiet the mind and connect to our bodies. This heightened awareness allows us to not only feel more grounded, connected, and safe with ourselves--but also with others.

Using breathwork in therapy

In my experience, ignoring bodily sensations in therapy means we’re only doing half the work. Sometimes the body--and especially the breath--expresses emotions in ways that cannot yet be verbalized. In session, I utilize breathwork to help patients anchor themselves and begin regulating difficult emotions.

Sometimes, this can be helpful at the start of a session as a way of establishing safety in the room. Here’s how we might begin:

Close your eyes and identify sensations in the body.
Locate the breath in the body and notice if you’re breathing mostly in your chest or more deeply, from your diaphragm.
Begin to deepen the breath.
I would then guide the breath through a short exercise: inhaling for a series of counts, holding the breath briefly, and then elongating the exhale.

Guiding you through a breathing exercise usually takes a few minutes and may involve visualizations. With practice, it becomes easier to bring the body and mind back to a state of calm. Ideally, this is a practice that you could ritualize and implement into your daily life, outside of session.

REFERENCES:

Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. (2006). Physiology of long pranayamic breathing: neural respiratory elements may provide a mechanism that explains how slow deep breathing shifts the autonomic nervous system. Medical hypotheses, 67(3), 566-571.

Jerath, R., Crawford, M. W., Barnes, V. A., & Harden, K. (2015). Self-regulation of breathing as a primary treatment for anxiety. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 40(2), 107-115.

Morningstar, J. (2001). Breathwork as a therapeutic adjunct in counseling.

Morningstar, Jim,“Breathwork-Therapy of choice for whom?”, The Spirit of Breathwork, (2001).