Anxiety and the Coronavirus
I know a lot about coping with anxiety because I’ve had it all my life. I didn’t realize until I started addressing it that it is rampant in my family – on both sides. Since Jewish people overindex to anxiety, I thought I had inherited it from my father’s Sephardic side, but turns it out, it’s everywhere in my family tree.
What I’ve learned is that anxiety does not just happen. There is not an event that triggers it, it’s more insidious and keeps building and building till bang it paralyzes you. So I now know that when I start feeling anxious I have to address it at the onset – meditation, exercise, and positive thoughts. In my times of deepest darkness, I have flipped it. In 2018, I spent a year documenting at the same time every day a #positivememory because dark memories are easy to conjure, the positive ones get overshadowed.
Twitter:
@RachelDanger·Sep 16, 2018#PositiveMemory – The a/c went out and it spiked inside to 95° and my friend Ann sent her husband Ed over to put in two window units. Bay Saint Louis community. It’s why we live here. #BaySaintLouis
Routine exercise is also very important. I went to go meet up with our quarantine friends for our 6PM bike ride. Tin had complained the day before that we didn’t ride long enough, and so I asked if he wanted to ride alone with me, and he said, “No way, we have to go meet Ann.” I told this to Ann and she said, “It’s more fun with friends.”
Anxiety Antidote #1: A long bike ride along the water with friends (at appropriate social distance, of course).
