Anxiety & Negative Thinking in Parents During the Pandemic

This article is written by guest contributing writer Katiuscia Gray (A.K.A. Kat). 

You may recognize this beautiful human as this is her second MINI SERIES, with Yoga to Cope. Her first series consisted of two episodes, one exploring “What Does Being Triggered Mean”? and her other episode '“What Does the Mind Body Connection Mean?” Kat was on our Yoga to Cope podcast back in October.

Kat combines the world of psychology with yoga in her practice and approach to mental and physical health. This is accomplished by integrating talk therapy with body work practices in the form of yoga to create a truly meaningful and impactful therapy for her clients. This series intention is to shine light on the dynamic changes in parents and children through this pandemic. Uncovering the complexities of emotions and this impacts both sides!

Picture given by Kat Gray

This pandemic has thrown our lives upside down.  Working from home, the stress of the future particularly related to ones jobs, helping children with school, and between you and me, the current curriculum is super complicated!

Home used to be our sanctuary.  One used to be able to separate between home and work. Now everything has been intertwined, with no end in sight. It is enough to make anyone feel anxious and all over the place.

This feeling has been named pandemic fatigue.  Pandemic fatigue is the mental and physical exhaustion that occurs with continually navigating uncertainly with no end in sight.  It can trigger loneliness, sadness, anxiety, stress, fear, restlessness, irritability, and anger. In addition, you also feel it somatically in your body; examples include stomachaches and headaches. 

Did you know 1 out of every 4 people struggle with anxiety. During the pandemic I would image those numbers are probably a lot higher.  I have mentioned this in previous blogs; anxiety is fear based its irrational thinking.

We have about 12,000- 50,000 thoughts a day, and about 80% of our thoughts are negative.  Part of the brains job is to sort through all of your thoughts and determine which ones are important enough to focus on and which thoughts are like spam. 

I like to think of thoughts like spam in your email.  They are unwanted ads from your social media feed.  (Which btw are super annoying). Spam thoughts are distracting, irrational, and sometimes they are so ridiculous they should be blocked out completely.  An example would be the thought that everyone in the world will get the COVID-19 virus and will die. Which is an unlikely outcome.

The brain functions like a computer, if you open it up, nerve cells are connected to important functions within the body.  Sometimes what happens especially with anxious thoughts is that the brain gets confused. You get what I call a “brain glitch” much like a virus in your computer.  You cannot tell if something is real or if its anxiety. When this happens, it is called a “thinking error”, which leads to anxiety.

Examples include:

1)   All or nothing thinking- you see things in either black or white. (If I don’t do this project for my boss right now, I am a failure).

2)  Overgeneralizing- using one bad example to describe all experiences. (I never get recognized by my boss even though you just started the job last month).

3)  Jumping to conclusions- believing you know what others are thinking. (Your coworker looked at you in the bathroom and you assume they think you look weird).

4)  Magnification/Catastrophizing- If I do not get this job, I will not be able to pay my rent, then I will become homeless, and never make money.

When we have anxiety and thinking errors, it is important for us to come back to center, to come back to some sort of grounding to bring us back to present moment.

My go to is a felt sense exercise called heart and belly breathing. Find yourself in a seated comfortable position in your chair. Take one hand and place it on your heart the other on your belly. Your feet in fully planted on the earth. Closing your eyes here if that feels comfortable to you. Stay here for a few moments and feel your heart, feel the rise and fall of your belly.

Allowing yourself to feel all those sensations, and noticing how that makes you feel. Maybe you say a positive affirmation here, examples include” I am safe, I am calm, “I am at peace”. Say those words and have them resonate though out your whole body. Stay here for as long as you like, and when you are ready open your eyes and come back to the present moment.