Pulling Inward and Staying Together through the Pandemic

By Katthe Wolf

"The world ... is increasingly tribal and polarized—some studies suggest that empathy itself is in decline—and yet so many of the challenges we face require us to act together. And none more so than this pandemic that is testing our collective strength even in isolation. What does it take to get us to see beyond ourselves, beyond our divisions, and look out for one another?”  — Edward Felsenthal, CEO of Time Magazine

Who remembers the TV public service announcement growing up? “This is a test of emergency broadcast system. This is only test.” A long, annoying sound and then… “if this had been a real emergency you would have been given information and instructions.”  I always wondered as a child what a real emergency was and what the test would be preparing us for. I didn’t know that the system was tied to what was perceived as the largest global threat in the 60s, 70s, early 80s — Nuclear War. Thankfully, nuclear war didn’t happen. The real emergency never surfaced, and we weren’t given instructions to head to the nearest bomb shelter (wherever that might have been).  

Now, it seems we are in a real emergency. Many of us may feel unprepared and a little like we’re living in a movie that we’ve seen before that didn’t end so well. The information is plentiful, overwhelming, and conflicting. The instructions are not clear. It’s unlike anything we have experienced — and what we might think should be happening to deal with the Coronavirus doesn’t appear to be happening.  For example easy access to testing, ramping up production and dissemination of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers and public alike, and a clear and consistent message from our government leaders. It may feel like, as a country, we’ve been caught with our pants down. 

So, how do we navigate this difficult situation? People have different reactions and responses. 

Personally, I’m paying a lot of attention to the way energy is moving. It feels important to me to resist entropy, the natural force that splits things apart before dissipation—in other words, chaos. In seems important to pull in, pull together—both at work and at home. Social distancing can pause some relationships, and at the same time it intensifies others. For those that are intensified, e.g., being around those people who are closest to us physically, an opportunity emerges to look at the dynamics, the ties that bind. It’s also an opportunity to potentially change some ground rules and agreements for how our homes work and how we support each other in our most intimate relationships. It may be time to renegotiate our social contracts with our family members. It is definitely time to turn to each other for comfort and strength. 

I’m not trying to be a Pollyanna here by identifying silver linings and opportunities—although that’s one way I make myself feel better. But, as the world slows down a little and as we pull in—as people do during a long winter in a harsh, dark, cold place—we are faced with ourselves. We are up close and personal with our patterns and with how we handle stress. We can notice what specifically is getting to us and we are afforded the time to think about why. 

For me, I’m minding my inner hypochondriac. I have self-diagnosed PTSD about respiratory illness which comes from a life struggling to breathe: as a child with severe asthma, in my 30s with a strange pneumonia that had me hospitalized and undergoing major lung surgery, and then for 15 years after with chronic bronchitis. I have issues with how the Western medical establishment dealt with my illness and a lack of trust in their methods. So, this situation is triggering to say the least. I watch myself having symptoms, weighing whether to try to get tested, wondering if I will go to the hospital if it gets to the point that I can’t breathe, and taking the Chinese herbs that have boosted my immune system and kept my lungs healthy and recovering quickly from any colds or flus for the past decade. I am also actively and continually talking myself off the ledge, thinking healthy thoughts, distracting myself from ruminating by pouring myself into service of others, checking in with those I care about. I am also focused on doing more of what I know are my healthiest habits and looking at the opportunity to maximize them and come out of this more like my best self than when I went in. I am cooking all my food, eating healthy, taking walks, playing Pokemon Go, sleeping a lot, and doing my spiritual practice. 

My colleague, Nadia says her focus is 100 percent about being there for her young children. Most times she shares her emotions with them openly. This time, not so much. She feels that she needs to represent calm and faith in this crisis and shield them from her fears about what might happen. She says she feels as if she is on an airplane and the oxygen masks have been released.  In that case, she would be afraid that the plane was going to crash, but she knows she would also do everything she could not to scare the small child sitting next to her. It takes her back to when her mother died and her kids were relying on her to be strong for them, to make it bearable that they had lost their grandmother. Back then, she told them, "I'm sad."  She saved releasing her overwhelming emotions for times when she was with her her adult confidantes. Nadia says she knows this is a learned behavior: her parents didn't tell her some of the major things they were dealing with because they didn't want those to be her burden. Along the same lines, she's declared emotional "amnesty" with her kids. They are allowed to express any feeling, any way it comes out—even with curse words that aren’t usually allowed—because she wants them to feel that they have a safe place to express everything. 

What specifically are you worried about? How does that worry tie to your past experience? How do you deal with stress generally? What works to calm you down? What do you need to do that you’ve been putting off doing to make you the healthiest and best version of yourself? What healthy habits is this a good time to start practicing? How are you protecting your children during this time? 

I have been told that there is peace in the eye of a storm, at the exact center of a tornado or a hurricane. I haven’t experienced that myself (thankfully) but metaphorically, that's the situation we're in. If we go to the center of ourselves, if we pull inward and we pull together, I am confident that we will find the peace that will carry us to health and safety when the storm is over. 

We know what we need to do to keep ourselves and our families strong: we just need to do more of it, more intentionally, right now. 

Join us at our daily webinars and look forward to the virtual Cafés that will be coming soon. Those of you who already do Cafés, we’ll be hosting a free online training for taking your cafes online Thursday, April 2. Learn more about that and stay connected to others in the Café Community of Practice Facebook Group and Facebook Live with Sara Gonzalez and Sarita Sashington Tuesday and Thursday nights, Spanish at 6PM CT and English at 7PM CT (this private FB Group is open to anybody trained on Be Strong Families Cafés). 

Don’t forget about these helpful resources:
Living the Protective Factors Playbook (in English and Spanish) and Living the Protective Factors Affirmation Cards!