How to Manage Your Covid-19 Anxiety

Advice column #4

The World of Tomorrow - Today - with the U.S. Army Recruitment Poster by Ted Gotthelp (Photo by K.J. Historical/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

In this week’s edition of Default Wisdom, we talk about managing our COVID-19 anxiety and overcoming our jealousy.

Have a question? Drop me a line at defaultefriend@gmail.com. 

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Managing your COVID-19 anxiety

How do you deal with the fact that there is a solution to end this crisis, but that the US is not equipped to do so? How do you deal with knowing this is our life for years to come? 

When I was in my early twenties, I was terrified of drastic, near term climate change.

It wasn’t the kind of fear that elicited a “let’s get an EV and be more intentional about what we consume” reaction. It was a deep and visceral fear that shook me to my core. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I was an entirely different person. 

Suddenly, everything felt like it was at the mercy of something that was completely out of my control. I couldn’t imagine a future, because the future I thought I was prepared for didn’t exist anymore.

Then, one day, my ex-husband said to me, “If this is really what you think life is going to look like, how do we plan for it?”

I’d never considered that adaptation was a serious option, until we started talking about it like it was a tangible problem and not a nebulous threat.

Up until that point, it felt insurmountable. It felt like no matter what I did I’d have to surrender to a world that was inhospitable. That suffering was my only option.

So, we started talking about it like it was any other problem in our lives. How that manifested is another story for another day, but I will say this: building concrete adaptation skills and creating a plan made me feel less powerless.

I think, in a lot of ways, COVID-19 is similar to climate change. How you’re feeling might be similar to how I felt about it, too. 

It’s real, it’s scary, it’s all-consuming. It touches all aspects of our lives, from the food to eat, to how we interact with our friends and family, to how we make a livelihood. And pertinently, there isn’t a lot we can do on the individual level.

We can, however, find a navigation route for ourselves and our communities. In fact, that’s the only thing you can do. You can’t change COVID and let’s be real, we can’t change our government’s response, at least not in a real way.

What we can change is ourselves, and hopefully, some of the people around us.

We’re dealing with serious problems right now, ones that should be solved at the institutional level. Now is the time to figure out what tools we need to survive, and what we need to harness those tools.

And on that note, if any readers know of reliable resources for people who are unemployed or need other kinds of support, shoot me an email or leave a comment below. I’ll include them in the next newsletter.