Coping with Coronavirus Anxiety and More. Live with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

Hey there everybody. I am trying this. It's a little bit new, so bear with me while I try to figure out what I'm doing. But I did want to try to be available to answer any of your questions about helping people deal with the stress of the coronavirus and the stock market crash as it is right now. So let me see. Obviously I couldn't get it going on my regular computer, so I'm using my mobile device. But so, hello, Do you have any questions that I can answer? I will try to read the messages as they come in, but I guess I will prattle on for a little while until we get give people time to log in. With the current anxiety around coronavirus, around being quarantined, around the stock market, around flu, there's a lot of stuff that people are really stressed out about right now and it's going to be important for them to recognize that staying stressed out is actually making them more vulnerable to getting sick. So it's going to be important to practice good physical health care, get enough sleep, eat well, wash your hands. I know everybody's saying wash your hands, but it's so important. In addition, one thing people aren't talking about as much is wiping down your mobile devices as well as door handles and switch plates, even if you are staying at home with your kids. I know my kids have a bad habit of not using tissues and not washing their hands as much as they should. So it is definitely something we need to do. Question comes in, oh, gosh. People have gotten crisis calls and cancellations. Something short term to keep people uplifted until cities return to normal. It's really important to encourage people to focus not only on what's going wrong, but what they have that's going right right now. There's a bunch of stuff out of their control and focusing and being upset about the things that are not within your control. That is just like sitting in a vehicle that's stuck in the mud and spinning your wheels. You're going to use up a lot of gas and not get anywhere. In fact, you're going to get deeper into the mud, focusing on what you can do. You know, if your kids are home, I know in this area, the kids, because of the tornado followed by the coronavirus, the kids have been out of school for like three weeks now. And people are starting to feel like they're going a little bit stir crazy. And it's important to encourage parents, if they're home with their young ones, to go online, find different things that you can do that Might be fun to encourage kids to be creative about what can be done instead of just watching TV or doing something like that. We need to keep a routine going for adults in general. Encourage them to look at the facts. If they're focused on the stock market right now because their 401k is disappearing, all right, you know, accept, be mindful, accept how they feel in the moment, and then decide how they're going to use that energy. If they use that energy to get anxious about it, it's just going to drain their immune system. If they use their energy to do something positive, if there's anything positive that can be done, then by all means do that. If it's out of their control, which right now, in my opinion, the stock market really is figuring out something else to do that they can, you know, as Linehan would say, use our distress tolerance activities. Because certain things we just can't control. And we're going to have to wait till the stock market comes up. We're going to have to wait until certain things are in place for us to know more about the virus we're dealing with. And, you know, really identifying those things that we can do to feel empowered, to feel like we are doing the best that we can to use our energy to stay safe is really important. You know, what is it? And how can, how can people benefit? How can people use this as an opportunity or look at it as a challenge to, to overcome? Because we know, and we hope that this is going to be very short lived. But what can they learn? What skills can they develop? What can they do in the short term? Maybe they're home from work and their kids are home from school. All right, so how can you make the best of it? What can you do to turn these lemons into lemonade, so to speak? Sitting around the house being anxious is probably just going to stress the kids out more. And when kids are stressed, stressed out, they tend to act out. And it's just this whole downward cycle. So what can you do as a family to benefit to, you know, make this something that you can look back on and go, okay, we survived that. In terms of people who have a lot of general anxiety, encouraging them to look at the facts of the situation and not confuse feelings with facts just because you feel anxious, just because everybody on TV seems anxious, what are the facts that you need to be anxious in your situation? Are you in a high risk group or not? And I put together a series of short videos this morning that we're hopefully going to have up on our Channel by the end of the day that provide some practical tools pulling on distress tolerance skills from dbt, pulling on living in the and and mindful acceptance from acceptance and commitment therapy to help people identify some practical tools that they can use. But ultimately, if you think back to dialectical behavior therapy and your distress tolerance skills, we're going to be talking about activities. What activities can you do to turn your focus? You know, if you went to the doctor and you had blood work done and it was gonna be a week before the work came back, instead of sitting there thinking about what could come back in the blood work and getting worried about it, what would you do to take your mind off of it? The same thing applies now. Some of this stuff we just don't have answers to. So while we're waiting, what activities can we do that would contribute to us having a rich and meaningful life right now? We don't have to wait for a month. We don't have to wait six months from now. What can we do to have a rich and meaningful life today? And this could be an opportunity. So A is for activities, if you remember, C is for comparisons. And I was talking about that a little bit earlier, the making comparisons between your risks and other people's risks. People who are, you know, emergency room physicians are at much higher risk than people who are able to stay at home. People who are 10 to 39, they're saying, tend to be in a low risk group. So if people are in that age range, you know, they can compare themselves and their risk to someone, for example, who is 65 with COPD, who is like the highest risk possible, and recognize that comparatively speaking, they've got relatively low risk. We want to look at the differences, compare the US and our medical system to some of those other countries that are getting hit really hard right now. And I like to believe that we have a more advanced medical system which will be able to handle some of these issues, more so than some of the other places. So those are comparisons. So we have activities comparisons. The other C is for contributing. Now we want to exercise, social distancing and things right now. Got that? No problem. But there's a lot you can do to contribute. You can go to a state park and pick up trash. You know, you don't have to get within 20ft of anybody when you're doing that, but you're contributing, you're doing something. Or you can go out into your own yard and do yard work and, you know, just get some stuff done. So activities comparisons, contributing emotions, doing something that Excites the opposite emotion. We want excitement, we want happiness, we want joy, we want contentment. Making a list of things that cause you to feel that way and doing those things every day proactively. Not just waiting. Not just eliminating distress, not waiting for maybe a happy wave to come by, but doing something actively that makes yourself happy. P is for pushing away. Push away some of those negative thoughts. When they come into your head and they will, you start thinking, oh, my gosh, this is going to be a big deal. Or, you know, maybe I should go turn on the news and see where the stock market is, or maybe I should do this. Push those thoughts away. Set aside a specific amount of time if you feel you need to, that you can get on the news or get on social media each day. Set aside a certain amount of time if you feel you need to, that you can worry. If you're one of those people who just feels like you've got to worry. Give yourself period of time every day that says, okay, this is my worry hour. And then the other 23 hours. Focus on some of your distress tolerance skills. T is for thoughts. It's important to use optimistic thoughts when you start having overgeneralized or negative thoughts. And we have a lot of videos about addressing negative thoughts on the YouTube channel. But when you're having negative thoughts, you're going to notice negative things and you're going to focus on the negatives, which is going to increase your anxiety. Focus on optimism and empowerment. What is the possible positive coming out of this, and in what ways are you empowered some people? And I'm really hoping, I'm really hoping that one of the positives of this is going to be that a lot more businesses start recognizing the ability for people to work from home, that a lot more licensing boards are going to start realizing the validity of live interactive webinars as opposed to forcing people to be in the same brick and mortar building. Not only will that make it easier on people, it'll reduce their stress. It'll also reduce some travel and some, you know, help us reduce our carbon footprint. Some, which is, you know, a big issue for me. But, you know, so I'm looking at what possible good could come out of this. And there's a lot of bad. Don't get me wrong, I am not blind to the negatives of this, but I'm also trying to find some of the optimism and I'm trying to use positive thinking. I'm focusing on the things that I'm in control of. My daughter and I are Both in high risk groups because we have underlying physical conditions, okay? So we have to take extra good care of ourselves. But that doesn't mean I'm going to put my life on hold and spend the next two weeks or two months in a constant state of anxiety about what if I am going to live every moment to be as rich and meaningful as I can possibly make it. And finally, the S is sensations. Sometimes it's hard to stop thinking and it's hard to turn our attention to a different mindset or a different feeling. And in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, she talks about using strong sensations. Sometimes it is a maybe a whiff of an essential oil. Maybe it is for me putting my hands. I have bad carpal tunnel anyway, so if I put my hands in a ice bath, I'm not thinking about anything else except for the fact that I've got to keep my hands in there, which means I'm not thinking about these other things that are outside of my control. And then when that's over, I'm so happy that my hands are out, I don't even remember to think about the stuff that was stressing me out. So sometimes we just have to break that cognitive cycle. If you go online and you search for DBT Distress tolerance skills, you'll come up with a bunch of different handouts. You can also find videos on them on our YouTube channel. So, you know, please feel free to peruse those and see if you can find other skills that can help you during this time. There is no magic, there is no do this, and everything's going to be better because it's not going to be better for a while. But we can make the best of a bad situation instead of choosing to hold on and feed that anxiety and feed that anger. Are there other questions coming through? And that's a very good point. Parents and, you know, older siblings, we are in prime places to model coping skills, you know, doesn't mean we have to be perfect at them. But if we model these skills, then our children, our younger siblings, the people around us are going to learn vicariously, if you want that. Vicarious learning that. Who was it Watson talked about? It's been a while since I did Intro to Psych, but when we see other people doing something that seems to work, we're probably going to do that. If you watch or if you've ever had children, you know that they watch you and they hook onto what you do more than you say. If you tell them to do something but you do the opposite, they're probably going to follow what you do instead of what you say. We as humans, as creatures, are very perceptive and aware of what other people are doing. And yes, as I mentioned before, acceptance and commitment therapy, we were talking about living in the. And. And acknowledging, using mindful awareness to acknowledge how we're feeling and saying, you know, it is what it is. This is how I feel right now. It doesn't mean I have to continue to feel this way. This is how I feel right now. And. And I can look at my options and decide what the best course of action is so I can live a rich and meaningful life right now, in the moment. And on all CEU's education on the YouTube channel. If you look on at the videos on psychological flexibility, it does go through applying some of the ACT concepts. Another thing that they talk about in acceptance and commitment therapy, another tool I really like is unhooking. And he says that when we tell ourselves something is so it is dangerous, then it feels like it's unchangeable. It feels like it's permanent. If we set. Insert the phrase I'm having the thought that in front of it, most of the time we feel that our thoughts can be changed. We can learn things, we can discover things, we can validate or invalidate our thoughts. And sometimes we can just forget our thoughts. And that is definitely true. If we say it is dangerous, it feels much scarier than we say. Than if we say I'm having, I'm thinking that it's dangerous or I'm having the thought that it's dangerous. Well, if I'm having the thought, that means I can look at the facts because my thoughts aren't always right. And it does buffer it a little bit. It helps us unhook so we can examine it more objectively. Are there any other questions? I appreciate those of you who are sending me questions. And like I said, I haven't done this before, so I'm still trying to figure it out. I appreciate you bearing with me. Okay. Good coping skills to address interpersonal addiction. When we talk about addiction, what we're talking about is engaging in. And I'm going to use the relationship example specifically. We're engaging in this behavior and we're not able to stop. We've tried to stop and we can't stop. We spend more time than intended, either thinking about the person, spending time with the person, or recovering from time that we spent with the person. And those are all signs of addictive behavior. Now we need to look at what's the purpose, what's the function addictive behavior is usually something we do to help us cope, escape from, or avoid dealing with immense distress. So the fear we need to look at, what's the benefit of staying this relationship? What is it protecting me from? And then start addressing those things. And you're going to use the same coping skills that you use for dealing with other distress. Identifying alternate social supports that might be there, working on your self esteem, exploring abandonment fears. In particular, when we're talking about relationship addiction, a lot of times there are a fair number of abandonment fears. I would suggest looking at the videos on the YouTube channel that talk about abandonment issues as well as codependency in order to address some more of those particular coping skills that might be helpful for somebody who is trying to break the pattern of addictive relationships. In marriage and family counseling. When you're doing intakes, and this is another question that's coming in, one of the things that you want to make sure is that you're hearing from both parties. And I personally find it most effective to have both parties complete a screening questionnaire. And I read that ahead of time before we go in for the full intake. And that way I have an idea about where each person is coming from. It's important to help both parties figure out a mutually, mutually agreeable goal and then start examining the different perspectives. Intake. Obviously you're in marriage therapy, you're going to have both people there. So ensuring both people feel they have adequate time and the ability to be heard. And during that, I find a lot of times, even in the intake, I need to work with the couple on active listening skills because one person will be speaking, the other person may get defensive or withdrawn, and it's important that they both communicate and we start practicing paraphrasing because I find a lot of times the some of the conflict is caused by both parties thinking they know what the other person is thinking and engaging in mind reading. So it's really important to make sure that both parties are saying what they need to say and it's being heard by the other person the same way. Thank you, Pastor Lyons. I appreciate any feedback you guys have about different topics you want to hear about. You know, I love hearing that and you know, obviously I have my way of doing things and I try to find research to give you guys some pointers. But there are also a lot of other great resources out there. One of the things that I recommend if you're looking for different approaches or different interventions is to go to the Cochrane database because that identifies the research on Current best practices. You can also go to pubmed and it's this long URL. But if you just go to your search engine and you type in PubMed P U B M E D, it will come up. It's like PubMed, NLM, NIH or something. But it's a.gov website. And that takes you to the National Library of Medicine where they have the majority of research studies that have been done and they are available. The majority of them are available to you to read. So you can actually get the information from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So if you want to look at the impact of using essential oil of lavender on concentration in people with adult adhd, you know, that's kind of specific, but you can put that in and it will pull up any studies that have been done on that topic, you know, in forever. And do remember that this current situation, whether people are stressed out because of the virus or they're stressed out because of quarantine, or they're stressed out because of the stock market, there's a lot of things that people are stressed out about right now. It can be triggering some traumatic reactions in people. If they have been in situations before where they felt powerless, this may ignite some of those feelings. Again, if they've been in situations before in which their movement has been restricted, maybe they were in a domestically violent relationship and they weren't allowed to leave the house, this may trigger some of those feelings. Again, not saying that they are in the same position, but it can bring back memories. And it's important to recognize if you are feeling anxious that you know, there's a lot that that may be going on. If you have experienced trauma, for example, because maybe you had a loved one who died of the flu, you know, this may be bringing back really painful memories for you. And it's important to recognize that where those feelings are coming from and be compassionate with yourself and recognize that your feelings are your feelings and they are okay. It is what it is what you do with it. Whether you feed those feelings and you stay stuck in them, or you choose how to improve the next moment, you ask yourself, you know you're not going to feel great, but if your emotion dial is on a five, you want to ask yourself, what can I do to turn my emotion dial down to A4 so you can feel a little bit better. Y' all know if you've watched the videos on my channel that I am a huge fan of dialectical behavior therapy, specifically distress tolerance skills. So look those up, make a list of five examples of what you could do for each Distress tolerance, skills, skill. Remember activities, comparisons, contributing emotions. The opposite, you know, happy ones. Pushing thoughts away. Positive thoughts and sensations. Alrighty. Well, thank you everybody for being with me for this little broadcast. And, you know, remember to subscribe and click the little bell so when I go live again, you will be notified. And as we add new videos, you will also be notified. Have a great rest of your day.