Prevention is the best treatment for coronavirus!
Frequent mistakes people can make increase the risk of getting sick
At this time it is more important than ever to take into account the personal and collective hygiene, to choose home isolation and to inspire our loved ones to do the same.
Social panic, a common suffering
As this crisis unfolds we will all feel fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, guilt and the list can go on. Let us here feel the unpleasant emotions and be gentle with us. We cannot stop them, but we can make room for them, recognizing them as normal.
Stress and immune system
During a pandemic, the state of panic and psychological distress can spread, with effects that can be more harmful than the strictly biological, medical ones. When we go through a crisis of any kind, fear and anxiety are inevitable. These emotions are automatically generated from an area of the brain called the amygdala.
They are the natural answers that appear when we face a dangerous or uncertain situation. Research has shown that emotionality and the immune system are two highly connected systems, so when one system is affected the other one will be affected as well (D’Acquisto, 2017).
What to do?
How do we get through this, how do we get out of this?
A first step would be to focus on what is really in our control. We cannot control the virus itself, the world economy or what other people do, not even our own thoughts and feelings. But we can control what we do here and now, we can choose to be present. As a journey into the inner world, it may be helpful to take a few moments to listen to us, to review our own thoughts and emotions, our past pleasant memories. Even our needs need to be listened to. Some of us will feel fear at the thinking they might get sick, others may feel very lonely.
As we get caught in thoughts and emotions tornado we can choose to come back into the body, to connect to the body sensations by slowly pressing our fingertips, breathing deeply or doing stretching exercises.
It takes just one more step to get to mindfuless. Staying with our thoughts, emotions and body sensations we can pay attention to the here and now. For this we refocus our attention on the activity at hand, using all our senses to anchor us in reality.
In this state of presence, we can ask ourselves what can we do that is important to us and according to our values? Of course, this includes following the official hygiene guidelines but in addition, we can ask ourselves what can we do right now, no matter how small it may be, that improves the life for us, for those we live with and for the community.
Bibliografie
1. Fulvio D’Acquisto, MSc, MRes, PhD. Affective immunology: where emotions and the immune response converge. 2017. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442367/
2. FACE COVID – How To Respond Effectively To The Corona Crisis 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmvNCdpHUYM&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1hnfliTI3aoxXZZeClqL91BPuftM7h5u5ityfV0Q_YGdJLsa2m5Rh56KU
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