When the World’s on Fire and You’re Beyond Maxed by COVID: What Then?
In the past year, it feels like the heat has been turned up on the world. Our world is under an unprecedented amount of pressure stemming from a worldwide pandemic, social protests calling for equality, fires in California, a difficult election year—and the stress of it all can be overwhelming. Conversations around that stress and ways to cope are essential. In our recent webinar When the World’s on Fire and You’re Beyond Maxed by COVID: What Then? , Be Strong Families’ Katthe Wolf and Robyn Harvey engaged with attendees about the issues we see around us, what hasn’t worked to deal with the stress, and where we go from here.
The stressors and pressures we’ve faced since the start of the year have been challenging, to say the least. This webinar began with attendees sharing the challenges they had been facing. When talking about these emergent experiences and events, a common theme was a sense of disillusionment with the world and a struggle to learn how to deal with the “new norm.”
How do we cope with this new norm? In a year fraught with economic uncertainty and an absence of regular stress relievers for many, it certainly can be difficult. Attendees shared which of their go-to strategies for decompression that aren’t an option right now. Shopping, travel, and social gatherings are radically changed for the time being. Due to how strange they feel, they don’t feel like stress relievers to those who usually turn to them. In a similar vein, even keeping up with family can become a stressful challenge, now that face-to-face interactions are much less common. For those who struggle with technology, texting and video chats add another layer of difficulty to keeping in touch with their loved ones.
Of course, when the old strategies to decompress don’t work, it’s time to try new ones. In doing so, we can reimagine what stress relief looks like. What is your light in these dark times? What has been helping in finding solace and strength? The answer is unique to each person. Webinar attendees catalogued a wide variety of potential outlets—prayer, meditation, counseling, journaling, exercising, or just getting away from media, which can all be essential to dealing with stress. In a nutshell, anything that helps us let go and focus on ourselves goes a long way to feeling better.
To cap off the webinar, Katthe and Robyn shared two videos that focused on different aspects of stress relief. The first was Eye of the Universe, a Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom where viewers can enjoy a unique, transcendent experience.
For the second video, humor was highlighted as a necessity in coping with stress. By finding levity in the events and world around us, we are able to better confront and handle significant, stressful changes in life. Attendees were encouraged to provide links to funny videos that had been helping them during this year.
We hope that you enjoyed this webinar and the discussion it sparked, and if you’re interested in joining the conversation for future webinars, you can register here, and be sure to invite your friends! If you or your colleagues would like to host a webinar with us, contact us.