Finding Calm within the Chaos

On Tuesday I was home with my family, trying to provide some sort of normalcy to my kids as their school was closed and we were on day two of social distancing. I was an emotional mess, crying one minute, snuggling and laughing with them another, yelling at them a few minutes later. It was ugly but I was trying to be kind to myself and allow myself to feel all of the feelings that apparently you feel when you are socially isolated with your kids and husband during a pandemic. This was uncharted territory, so of course I would feel all of these roller coaster emotions. But then I went for a walk by myself. I plugged in a favorite motivational podcast and became reconnected to my calm thoughts and emotions. It was lovely and healing and I felt motivated to learn and grow and help my kids learn and grow while we are home together.

Then I walked in the door, sat down on the couch with my phone and started reading the news. Because of course I need to stay connected to what is going on during a pandemic, right? My thoughts instantly went back to spinning in all directions and my emotions fell in line and  followed right along like good little sheep. I went from peaceful and motivated to anxious, scared and worried in a matter of minutes. 

I do not want to continue riding that emotional roller coaster so I made some rules around my pandemic information consumption. It  has made a huge difference for me over the last few days and so I share it with you.

Limit your exposure to the constant news feed.

It is not serving you or anyone around you to be constantly connected to all of this information. You have probably already heard someone else suggest this exact thing already, but it helps me to understand why I should or should not do something, so I want to try to help you understand why limiting the exposure to news can be so important for our mental and emotional health, especially right now.

Let’s talk about the brain for a minute.

In terms of evolution, our brains were designed to sense danger, to always be on the lookout for things that might hurt us. This was beneficial back in the days when there was the potential to get eaten by a tiger –  we needed our brains to be constantly scanning the environment for danger. But in our modern lives (and especially in the past week), this function of our brain that was helpful to our ancestors is really wreaking havoc on our emotional stability. Why? Because there is a constant feed of scary information coming at us and our brains are on full alert, scanning the incoming news feed for scary information that might be life threatening. Our brains cannot seem to stop impulsively  seeking out this information. For many of us there is a constant buzz in the background of our minds that keeps telling us how much danger we are in and that we need to stay alert. Our brains are like “What is the scary information today? I need to know what is happening at all times!” So we pick up our phones and read another article or watch another video – the cycle continues.

But I need to stay informed!!!

Listen, I am not saying that you need to cover your eyes and ears and ignore what is going on. We do need to stay informed, to pay attention to what is happening and take it seriously. I do, however, think it is helpful to understand that your brain literally gets addicted to seeking information that it interprets as “life threatening”. The constant seeking of that information causes us to feel really yucky. We are on edge, over-stimulated, anxious, and scared. While these are all really normal emotions in response to what is happening right now, wouldn’t you rather feel more neutral, more helpful, or maybe even more positive emotions?

It is possible to feel positive emotions even in the midst of a pandemic.

Not all of the time, of course. We are all still going to experience the moments of feeling scared, worried, and anxious. We do, though, have control over our feelings and the first step for me in gaining back control was to stop the constant news feed. 

Interested in doing the same? Here are a few suggestions:

Limit social media. Now, maybe you have friends who are constantly posting pictures of puppies and bunnies. If so, great – you can spend as much time on social media as you want. But most of us have feeds that are peppered with articles and information and ideas. This can be a great thing, especially if you have really smart friends who are posting from intelligent and credible news sources. However, if you are scrolling the feed constantly throughout the day, you might be allowing your social media feed to lead your emotions and this is just not helpful right now.

Decide on 2-3 times per day that you will dedicate to news and social media consumption and avoid it for the rest of the day. This is really hard, I know, but give it a try and see how it feels for a few days.

If you have your phone set up to push news notifications throughout the day, turn it off. Now. 

Resist the desire to check your phone or tablet constantly for updates or new information. Your brain is going to tell you: “you need to check your phone right now or you will not survive!” But your brain thinks you are going to get eaten by a tiger. It is just trying to help you survive, but when it starts freaking out on you, you just remind it that there are no tigers coming for you right now.