Coping Through Covid-19
"Stay physically distant, but emotionally close."
- Dr. Bruce Perry
To The Inspiration Ranch Family,
I am Debbie the new mental health professional at Inspiration Ranch. I look forward to meeting each of you in person when we are all able to return to this wonderful place! I am a Licensed Psychological Associate with Independent Practice with additional training in trauma and hope that the information here might help you cope with Covid-19.
We are living through a time for which none of us has any experience. We are all experiencing disruptions to our schedules, uncertainty, and isolation from much of our support system. Uncertainty about physical and financial well-being is at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Looking at this from the perspective of someone trained to understand trauma, it’s clear that these uncertainties are creating a situation where many of us are functioning in survival mode. At some level, many of us may be in a flight, fight, freeze state at some point every day. This can be experienced in many ways: mild anxiety, irritability, restlessness, lethargy, boredom. We might find it difficult to breathe deeply, experience muscle pain or tension, stiffness, and balance issues. When this happens, it’s easy to interact with others and make decisions we wouldn’t under less threatening circumstances.
Awareness of when we are in survival mode can be very helpful. It is very hard to think, problem-solve, make decisions, and connect with others when we are in survival mode. Understanding that some of what our brains and bodies are telling us is coming from a sense of threatened survival can help us switch over to a more regulated, in-the-moment way of thinking. Being able to help regulate and organize the survival parts of our brains helps us have access to all of our intellectual, emotional, and social resources. This doesn’t make what is happening in the world any better, but it does give us the internal resources we need to respond to what is happening.
Here is some information you might find helpful as we go through this:
Also remember:
This crisis will end at some point
When it does, we will continue and rebuild our lives
You are not alone in this
Inspiration Ranch is looking for ways to support you. Let us know what you need, and be on the look-out for some of the ways we are working on staying in touch!
