At the end of one of my sessions last week a client asked how I was doing.  “This isn’t really something they prepared you for in grad school.”  No, no they didn’t.

None of us are prepared for this.  We are not prepared for this pervasive fear for our health and the health of those we love.  We are not equipped to work from home, homeschool our children, and care for ourselves under stay-at-home restrictions.  We were not prepared for this dramatic and terrifying shift in our financial circumstances.

We don’t know how to do this, and we don’t know what is going to happen next.

We are scared, anxious, uncertain, and unsettled.  We are sad and disappointed.  We are angry, irritated, and impatient.  When we aren’t any of those things, we are most likely feeling numb.

I want to tell you that I see you.  That I have big feelings too.  That nothing feels normal and everything feels weird.

In the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of people tell me they aren’t handling this well.  When I ask what that means, they say that they are feeling big feelings and sharing them.  They are crying, thinking and talking about what is happening, and expressing their emotions.  Some are not sleeping well, some are tackling big projects with restless energy, others are unable to focus on much of anything.

And I actually think all of that qualifies as handling this well.  When we feel scared by things that are scary, when we feel uncertain about things that are unknown, and when we feel angry about things that aren’t as they should be, our emotional systems are working exactly the way that they were made to work.

We have our emotions for a reason.  They were given to us to help us understand and navigate the world, and right now the world feels scary, uncertain, and not as it should.  There’s so much going on right now, and having a strong emotional reaction is a normal and healthy thing.

So what do we do with big emotions that are healthy and necessary?  How do we care for ourselves in times of crisis?

First of all, we give ourselves and each other grace.  Mountains and piles and heaps and heaps of grace.  Most of us are not feeling like our healthiest, happiest selves right now.  We can still choose to be gracious and kind to one another.  We can speak gently to ourselves and to each other.  We can choose to overlook minor offenses, to be compassionate to each other, and to recognize that we are all doing our best.  We are figuring it out as we go along, and we are in this together.

Second, we take good care of ourselves.  We need to remember that we are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational people, and we need to care for all those parts of ourselves.  We need to get outside our houses, every single day.  We won’t wither in the cold or melt in the rain.  We need to sleep, move our bodies, drink water, and focus our minds on things other than the coronavirus, the news, and social media.  We need to rest and work and play, just like we needed to rest and work and play three weeks ago.  It just looks different now.

Next, we need to avoid becoming too self-focused.  It’s not selfish to think about how this impacts you and to struggle with how hard this is.  But we cannot stop there. Reach out.  Check on your friends, family, and neighbors (from a safe social distance of course).  Give what you can give.  Combine shopping trips to limit the number trips outside.

This is hard and none of us have navigated this before.  It is healthy and appropriate to have big feelings about what is happening.  Give yourself grace, take care of yourself, and take care of others.  We are in this together.