Exhausted? Top Therapists On Fighting 'Pandemic Fatigue'
Our mental health crisis has recently… exploded. Renowned therapists Lori Gottlieb and Guy Winch, are here to help: “We want people to hear they aren’t alone.” Their new podcast, Dear Therapists, brings listeners into sessions where they guide people through difficult personal situations — like a teacher who’s struggling with her inability to help her students right now. Lori and Guy weigh in on the project, fighting “pandemic fatigue,” and more, below.
Lori and Guy, your new show Dear Therapists is launching right at a time when many Americans are experiencing increased mental health distress. What would you say to those of us struggling with this new normal?
One of the reasons we feel like this podcast is so relevant at this particular moment is that we want people to hear that they aren’t alone. It’s such a basic human need — whether in “normal” times or during a global pandemic — for people to feel: I see you. I hear you. I understand you. And yet often we keep so much of ourselves hidden because we feel like either we should have it all together because we’re under the misguided impression that everyone else does, or because we minimize our pain.
The thinking might go that if I have a roof over my head and food on the table, then my sadness or anxiety or relationship issue isn’t “that bad” compared to people who seemingly have it worse. We don’t do that with our physical health. If you break your leg, you don’t say, I’m not going to get this treated because somebody with, say, cancer, has it worse. We need to treat our emotional health the same way — if you’re not feeling well, get that checked out. … We’re inviting people into these conversations about what it means to be human, letting them be a fly on the wall in our sessions that normally only we have the privilege of witnessing.
Some people are experiencing what’s being referred to as “pandemic fatigue.” First, could you explain what exactly the term encompasses? And what are some things we can do to take care of ourselves during this time?
The thing about the pandemic is that it’s not a discrete stressor with a clear beginning and end. We are living in ambiguity — how long will this go on? And how do our circumstances change week to week or month to month?
So, first, we have to have a lot of self-compassion and notice how we talk to ourselves. Do you know who the person is that you talk to the most in the course of your life? It’s not your partner, or parent, or best friend, or sibling. It’s you! And often what we say to yourselves isn’t kind, or true, or helpful. We need to give ourselves a break and acknowledge how hard it is to endure a stressor with no clear end in sight.
And then we need to look at how we frame this story for ourselves. For instance, we aren’t isolated in a dark jail cell in solitary confinement. We need to be physically distanced, but we can still walk outside, Facetime with a friend 24/7, catch up on our reading, laugh with family or friends. And maybe this is a time when we really look at our lives with more intention and shift our priorities — what’s meaningful and what can you let go of, not just now, but as we emerge from this.
We should also pay attention to how we label what we’re feeling. We keep using the word anxiety in a negative way, but there are two kinds of anxiety: productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. We can turn our anxiety into something productive (using our worry to take actions such as hand-washing, social distancing, sending meals to elderly relatives, or calling a neighbor who lives alone) or unproductive (spending all day clicking on the latest coronavirus headlines).
One thing we do in the podcast is help listeners to edit their stories. We’re all unreliable narrators, and when people present us with their story, we help them to see it from a new perspective, which in turn helps them to have agency and make positive changes in their lives.
https://medium.com/wake-up-call/exhausted-top-therapists-on-fighting-pandemic-fatigue-1ab6ebd17885
I know I can barely watch the news anymore.
