Coronavirus – Managing Your Anxiety

Introduction

In this unprecedented period of global uncertainty, we felt it was necessary to put together this workbook to provide our community with much-needed support.

The first thing to note right now is that it’s completely normal to be experiencing a wide range of emotions. Accepting your feelings is an important first step to building resilience. The simple act of naming your emotions has been found to benefit wellbeing. So, take a moment now to tune into your body and notice how you’re feeling. Circle the emotions that you identify with:

• Anxious
• Stressed
• Worried
• Fearful
• Low
• Lonely
• Overwhelmed
• Helpless
• Frustrated
• Guilty
• Angry

Remember: It’s okay to feel discomfort. Accepting distress is often the quickest way to feel immediately calmer.

What Are Stress and Anxiety?

The terms stress and anxiety are often used interchangeably. To develop a deeper understanding of mental wellbeing, it’s helpful to understand how they differ.

Stress

Kelly McGonigal, an expert in the new science of stress, offers us this definition: “Stress is what arises when something we care about is at stake”. Many of us are now in positions where things that matter to us feel more uncertain, which understandably gives rise to our stress response.

Stress is best understood as manifesting in the body. It’s the racing heart, sweaty palms and funny tummy we’re all familiar with. Central to the experience of stress is the amygdala, the area of your brain responsible for generating your body’s stress response.

Experts agree that a core component of stress is the perception of threat and danger. You’ve probably heard of the ‘fight-or-flight’ stress response as a reaction to perceived danger. In fact, we have various stress responses. For example, there is one response that encourages us to reach out for social support, named the ‘tend and befriend’ response.

Dr. John Arden, an author of several books integrating neuroscience and psychotherapy, recently put forward the term auto stress for describing what happens when our body’s stress response goes on for a long time. He explains:

If your body is in auto stress mode, you’ll experience a wide range of physical stress symptoms on an ongoing basis, regardless of your situation. That’s why people often reporting feeling anxious for no apparent reason. If you’re suffering from high levels of distress triggered by the pandemic, you might continue to feel this way after the virus has passed.

Signs of auto stress include:

• Chest tightness and feeling like you can’t breathe
• Muscle tension, aches and pains
• Headaches
• Difficulty sleeping
• Restlessness and an inability to relax
• Heart palpitations
• Digestive issues

Anxiety

Anxiety is commonly described as having both mental and physical symptoms. The distinction between mental and physical anxiety is important because different tools are required for addressing physical symptoms (what we label auto stress) and mental symptoms (what we label anxiety). Anxiety is best described as the unhelpful thinking patterns we experience when our mind fixates on threat, uncertainty and negativity.

Anxiety can occur on its own, as a response to stress, or it can trigger stress. When it occurs as a response to stress, it can intensify the stress, and, in worst cases, lead to panic attacks. It’s important to understand that you cannot control anxiety from occurring – this is your brain’s automatic survival mechanism. What matters is learning how to respond to anxiety helpfully, so that you don’t get carried away by it.

Here are five examples of what to look out for:

When your mind searches the environment for what you fear (consciously or subconsciously). Threat scanning is often associated with your mind assigning meaning to harmless events.

Examples

• Frequently checking your body for coronavirus symptoms
• Obsessively checking the news for coronavirus updates

When your mind jumps to worst-case scenarios, i.e., ‘making a mountain out of a molehill’.

Examples

• You feel chest tightness and your mind tells you that you have coronavirus and that your life is in danger
• Your mind gives you the mental image of losing all the people you love

Hypothetical Worry

It’s important to note that worry is completely normal. It only becomes unhelpful when you focus excessively on hypothetical worries instead of practical worries. Hypothetical worries include ‘what if’ thoughts and are typically about things you don’t have much control over.

Practical worries concern things you do have control over, and they can help you be more proactive. If you’re very uncomfortable with uncertainty, you’re likely prone to hypothetical worry and spend a lot of time focused on the future instead of the present.

Examples

• “I know I’m following all the guidelines, but what if I spread the virus?”
• “What if someone gets too close to me at the supermarket and I catch it?”

Emotional Reasoning

When your mind tells you that your emotions reflect reality. While emotions can act as helpful messengers, they often aren’t reliable.

Examples

• “I feel scared, so I must be in danger.”
• “I feel guilty, so I must’ve done something wrong.”

Fortune Telling

When your mind interprets predictions as facts.

Examples

• “I’m going to be stuck inside for months on end.”
• “My mental health will keep deteriorating and I’ll have to go back on meds.”

Part 1 - Tool To Manage Your Anxiety

Planning Your Information Diet

The media is fully aware that our brains are built to fixate on threat, uncertainty and negativity – and they capitalize on it. Most news sources are negatively biased, sensationalist and speculative in order to win your attention. Anxiety is easily fuelled by consuming this kind of information. To reduce anxiety, it’s important to be aware of and take control over your information diet.

My Current Information Diet

Which information sources are you feeding your mind and how often? Take some time to write your answer on a piece of paper

Key Coronavirus Facts

If you’re prone to catastrophizing, you may find it helpful to redirect your attention to the facts:

• The vast majority of people only experience relatively mild symptoms.
• Coronavirus is fatal in about two to three percent of cases.
• Health advice for the public is to wash your hands with warm water and soap for at least 20 seconds:

After coughing or sneezing

Before, during and after you prepare food

Before eating

After toilet use

When you get in from the outdoors

When hands are visibly dirty

When caring for the elderly or sick

After handling animals or animal waste

• Use alcohol-based hand sanitizers as a substitute for washing your hands, but do so sparingly.
• Maintain a distance of at least 2 metres (6ft) between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
• Cover your coughs and sneezes and throw your tissue into a closed bin immediately after use.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
• Frequently disinfect surfaces, like your desk, phone, tablet, smartphone, and countertops.

Trusted News Sources

We recommend finding and sticking to a credible source you can trust, such as:

• GOV.CA
• CBC News
• The Economist
• CDC.gov
• WHO.int

Uplifting News Sources

• Coronavirus chronicles: Here’s some good news amid the dire reports
• Coronavirus: Creativity, kindness and canals offer hope amid outbreak
• Positive News Amongst Coronavirus Outbreak
• Italian 101-year-old leaves hospital after recovering from coronavirus
• 98-year-old COVID-19 patient discharged from hospital
• 63 Positive News Stories You May Have Missed During The Coronavirus Outbreak
• Uplifting stories from New York Times
• Positive News Magazine
• Uplifting news stories from BBC News
• German firm Bosch to cut coronavirus test time ‘to 2½ hours’
• Chinese Company Donates Tens of Thousands of Masks to Coronavirus-Stricken Italy, Says ‘We Are Waves of the Same Sea’
• China’s richest man to donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits, 1 million masks to the U.S. to help ‘in these difficult times’

Good News Newsletters

• The Week
• The Telegraph
• CNN
• Good News Network
• GoodGoodGood

Planning My Information Diet

To reduce anxiety, we recommend checking your trusted news source once per day. We also recommend balancing out your information diet with uplifting news sources (as listed above). Which news sources will you use and when will you read them? How else can you limit your exposure to anxiety-provoking news (e.g., by doing one digital detox day per week and limiting time on social media)?

Take some time to write down your trusted source and add them to your favourites.

My Spheres of Influence Worksheet

If you’re prone to hypothetical worry (i.e., the ‘what if?’ thoughts), you may find it helpful to practice noticing these thoughts and then redirecting your attention to things within your control. Research shows that when we shift our focus to what we can control, we see meaningful and lasting differences in our wellbeing, health, and performance. So, write down what you have control over inside the circle below. Then, note the things you cannot control outside of the circle, using the table below as inspiration.

Remember: You cannot stop hypothetical worries from occurring, but you can control your response to them.