Wondering how to work through COVID anxiety yourself or in helping your daughter?
It’s common to feel some degree of anxiety when it comes to reentering life after COVID. After all, you’ve been living in quarantine for the past year doing your best to stay away from others and those nasty germs. For those who already have a disposition to anxiety, the fear can be heightened.
One idea is to take it slow. You don’t have to go all out in attending every social function and dinner offered to you. When it comes to working with most anxieties, exposure is recommended. This method entails exposing yourself to what you fear in manageable steps. You might first start out with a small, outdoor gathering and stay for 30 minutes. The next week you might do another small gathering but staying for 1 hour. Eventually building up to whatever your end goal is. Exposure helps us build tolerance to what we fear.
Using Nature To Ease COVID Anxiety
If you’ve really been isolated, using outdoor spaces is a great reentry point. The fresh air and literal space can be a nice place to begin exposing yourself and working through your fears. There are many local, state, and national parks to roam. In fact, starting local and moving to bigger parks could actually be a great step in exposure as bigger parks often have more people. Or even going super early in the morning could be a great first step as midday and evening foot traffic in hiking spots can increase.
Not sure where to go? Here is a link to both Sonoma County Regional Parks and California National Parks for my fellow California Natives. For those of you residing in other states, a quick google search can open up a variety of possibilities. There is so much beauty in the natural world. Being in calming environments can be great when it comes to anxiety, helping us to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system.
Stay tuned for more ideas on healthy ways to cope and even live well with covid anxiety and stress!
If you would like some help on how to work through covid anxiety, please feel free to contact me for support. Sometimes therapy is the better way to go; you can find out more about my therapy work here.
