Currently, I am sitting in a beautiful vacation condo overlooking Aspen trees, fields, and wildlife as the sun rises. My family is asleep in their beds, resting up for a day of hiking and mountain views. It’s pretty gosh darn idyllic.
And here I am, anxiously scrolling through Post articles, tweets about school reopening, my kids’ principal’s emails, summaries of the Mayor’s press conferences, parent facebook groups, etc. It’s the beginning of yet another COVID school year and with it comes a ton of uncertainties, especially given the rise of the Delta variant.
How long until my kids get quarantined for exposure?
How do we deal with frantically changing work schedules to accommodate the back and forth?
Why are the communications from the powers that be so varied and who do we trust?
Are the holidays going to be spent in our home for yet another year, forgoing visiting family because of travel quarantine procedures?
When, oh when, will vaccines be approved for children under 12yo?
Is daycare and school worth the risk of infection?
Will I finally, truly lose my mind this year? (Kidding, not kidding.)
Uncertainty makes it hard to plan. The inability to rely on plans leads to feeling out of control and let’s be honest, most of us reaalllly don’t like feeling out of control. In fact, taking control is often a tried and true coping mechanism when you’re feeling particularly anxious. But if there’s any lesson that COVID has taught us these last eighteen months, it’s that we’re really not in the driver’s seat on this one.
The first half of the pandemic was filled with grief and loss. Yes, grief for the loss of life, but also for a way of life. For plans made, modified, canceled, made again, and canceled again. And then came May 2021. It started to feel like we could cautiously start to make plans again. Travel, indoor dining, and visiting with friends and family started anew. People began to tentatively take steps towards living again.
And then came July and August. Slowly, but surely, more and more alarming articles about the spread of the Delta variant began to invade my news feed. My fragile sense of safety and security started to splinter and dread started creeping back into my life. Cue the impending start of school and its accompanying anxiety. So, how does one manage through the anxiety? First, of course, you come up with a plan to mitigate risk. Some of this planning has been done for us, by school districts and health departments. I’m lucky, for the most part, in my community bubble, folks are usually on the same page. We typically rely on the same sources for COVID guidance and if there is some divergence on comfort with risk, when there is a group effort involved, everyone basically respects and cheerfully honors the needs of whomever may have the lowest tolerance of risk. So, while my neighborhood and school community aren’t wholly without discord around COVID, it doesn’t approach the level of animosity and drama that we hear about in other locations. (Thank goodness!)
Second, we remind ourselves that there are multiple risks involved in keeping our kids in school as well as taking them out - obviously there’s COVID, and then there’s academic, social, emotional, and physical developmental delays. And so we do what we’ve done alot these past 18 months - we choose the least bad option (whatever that ends up being for you personally).
Now what? We’ve taken pseudo-control of what we can but unfortunately, that doesn’t make the anxiety go away.
This may sound completely unreasonable. The next step is letting go of the need for certainty. It’s about developing greater comfort with the unknown. For many of us, the way we cope with life’s question marks is to try to solve for them. That’s what soothes our anxious souls. But inevitably, there will come times, whether COVID related or not, where we’re not in a position to exert much control over our situations. Unfortunately, this knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean that we can always take the attitude, “Oh well. It is what it is. Might as well move on!” Instead, our brains and bodies get wholly immersed in worry - looping over and over into the what ifs and the worst case scenarios without any relief or results. For some of us, the idea of letting go of all that worry can feel scary. There’s an illusion of control we cling to that if only we worry enough, we might come up with the solution. It happens all the time that a client will come to me seeking to be relieved of their anxiety but when faced with the questions, “is there anything about your anxiety that helps you? and “is there anything scary about the idea of not having anxiety?” that we discover strongly held beliefs that inhibit a person’s ability to truly let the anxiety go.
So, now you’ve decided okay, I’m ready to let my anxiety go and develop tolerance for uncertainty. I suggest becoming more closely aware, in the moment that it’s happening, when the anxious thoughts and irrational worries start to consume you. Just start to notice the nature of your thoughts and then recognize what your brain and body are telling you to do with those thoughts. Next, and this is key, don’t do whatever it is that your instincts are screaming at you to do.
Sometimes, it helps to have something of a script that you say to yourself, whether in your thoughts or out loud. Something like:
“It’s happening again. I’m having those thoughts again. They’re bringing up feelings of anxiety and fear. I can feel those emotions in my body. I see my instinct to worry on them despite the futility. Instead, I’m choosing to sit here with my thoughts and feelings and just observe them, without judgment.”
At this point, you may run through a breathing exercise or meditation to help regulate your body and anchor your brain in the present moment as you simply allow yourself to feel the uncertainty. Virtually all the time, if you sit with your emotions long enough, they will eventually diminish or pass. Your nervous system just can’t hold onto the intensity of the anxiety forever. You’ll learn that you have the ability within yourself to calm or self-soothe without having to grasp at control and eventually the feeling of uncertainty will lose some of its perceived threat.
Finally, bring yourself back to whatever task or activity is at hand. Anxiety is, by it’s nature, about the future. You can’t be truly present in your life in the now while at the same time worrying about what may happen in the future. Focusing on the present moment removes any space available in your brain for anxiety to latch on and grow.
Does the above solve the problems listed at the beginning of this post? No. Sadly, there is no way to guarantee with absolute certainty that this school year will go off without a hitch. I’ve done what I can to protect my kids as they go back to school, the rest is out of my control. So, excuse me as I go back to deep breathing and intentionally relaxing my hard as a rock shoulders and proceed with my day as planned (during which, I’m sure, I’ll go through a couple more rounds of deep breaths and muscle relaxation, haha!).
For more information on how our practice can help you learn how better to manage through your anxiety, check out our page on Depression & Anxiety. Our therapists are here to help, feel free to contact us to schedule an appointment.