From how to manage your own fear to how to manage bored kids at home, psychiatrist and counsellor Dr Adrian Wang had a long list of advice for our listeners who tuned into our WiT Virtual last Friday.
Here are our key takeaways.
1. Manage social media anxiety
“You have to have your own internal filter. It’s a double edged sword. We need social media because that’s how we connect at a time like this where we were social distancing. Just educate yourself before you hit that forward or share button. Pause for a bit and ask yourself, is this real? And does it help people?”
2. Get up and keep going
“In dealing with trauma, somebody who’s involved in a car crash, or fallen down in some way, the first thing you do is you tell them to get up and you keep going. So have a routine and ritual, you mustn’t let this thing paralyse you.”
3. Give shape to your fears
“Write down your fears. Is this really as bad as it looks? What are the pros and cons? What are the realities and exaggerations? How do you make your anxiety actionable? Write it down and ask yourself, okay, is this a real fear? And how can I turn this into an opportunity and something I can work on?”
4. Educate yourself
“In overcoming fear, the first thing to do is to educate yourself to learn a little bit more about this illness but rely on trusted sources. Learn to separate real news from just rumour.”
5. Manage stress, pace yourself
“It’s crucial that we manage our stress and we pace ourselves. That means looking after yourself physically and mentally – common sense things, getting enough sleep, eating well, making sure you exercise. Anxiety means you over-focus on something – your mind dwells on something fearful and it looms larger than it should –stop, pause and breathe, exercise, go for a walk.”
6. Keep the travel fantasy alive
“I’m hopeful that there’ll be a rebound. This cabin fever we are going through because we’re stuck at home … people always want to travel. There’s a wandering spirit in all of us. So if you can’t physically get on a plane and fly to that destination, as long as we’re reading about it and thinking about it and even fantasising about it, and that’s not a bad thing at all.”
7. View problems, even this one, as finite
“The virus is a finite thing. It has a reservoir – humans – we control that. And eventually the virus will pass, this storm will pass. The companies that see this and are prepared for the uptick that’s going to come that’d be the ones who come out strong.”
8. Dealing with retrenchments and job loss
“You need to take a step back and look at the situation realistically. Educate yourself, we try to look for positives, we look at problems as solvable here. So, in dealing with job loss, it is always about re-educating yourself, making yourself relevant again.”
9. Three tips to snatch moments of joy
One, improve your relaxation skills, two, have something to look forward to, three, have a hobby, an interest – “something that keeps you going”.
10. Focus on what you can control
“Once you steady the ship, you realise that the next step comes a little easier. And then the third step also comes a bit easier.”
11. When fear becomes a disorder
“Fear becomes a disorder when it lowers the quality of your life – if it’s impacting your sleep, your productivity at work, you’re getting cranky at the spouse or the kids. Then you have to take a step back and check this.”
12. On managing loneliness
“Loneliness is a tough thing. True loneliness is when you’re truly alone. But in this situation, we’re not alone. We’re all in the same boat. It’s just that we are in little isolation cells.”
13. Channel that travel energy into something else
“You have to take the emotional energy that was in that and invest in something else. If you’ve got the travel bug in you, and now that’s withdrawn from you, you’ve got to invest that energy that used to be in traveling in other things – relationships, hobby, religion, spirituality. Put that energy to good use in a different dimension in a good dimension.”
14. This thing about toilet rolls
“When people panic, we reach for the comforting things. There’s also a bit of herd mentality you read about toilet rolls running out, I better get some for myself. Everybody needs a good four-ply.”
15. Conquer fear as a group, and as societies
“If we can stand united, you see the other person staying at home and doing his part, pulling his weight and realise that while we’re all in this together, then it goes a long way. As opposed to societies where it’s every man for himself, then it becomes a bit dog-eat-dog. So if we can stand together, if we can manage our fear both internally as well as a group, then those societies will do better.”
16. The responsibility of business leaders at this time
“We need to set the example for the people that look up to us. We need to practise what we preach. We need to manage our anxiety and our fear and we need to give them a sense of hope. We need to tell them that the storm will also pass, this disease is finite and we have plans in place that we can move the ship forward with.”
17. The positive outcome – resilience
“There is going to be a greater sense of resilience. The opposite of depression, sadness or stress, is not joy and happiness. The opposite of depression is resilience. Resilience means the ability to endure pain and know that you can overcome it, or you can outlast it, and you can recharge and rebound and transform into something else.”
• You can download the video of WiT Virtual here, or listen to it on the WiT Podcast here.