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As of this posting, I’m 11 days into self-quarantine and almost all of my patients are under similar self-imposed restrictions. Telepsychology has enabled us to continue the good work we are doing together, which is great, but it’s not really the same as being in a room together. Still, it’s much preferable to not being able to do therapy at all.
Many of the conversations I’ve had with folks recently have followed this theme of being somehow restricted in the things we depend on to keep our batteries charged. “I need to spend time with friends, with family, with my significant other(s)” or “Not being able to get out of the house is getting me down” or “My work is important to me.” Social distancing and self-quarantining means we can’t do the thing that humans are built to do: be with each other. Humans eat together, work together, make love together, argue together, play together. (Even those of us with a more introverted bent are not entirely isolated; we just emphasize different aspects of relationship.) There’s no part of our lives that specifically not being with other people doesn’t affect. So, what do you do?
I think the first thing is to remember that our situation is, by definition, not optimal. Taking care of our individual and collective selves in a time of pandemic means things are not good. Even so, we still have a kind of knee-jerk expectation that a given way of coping needs to provide us with our usual quality of life or it’s not worth doing. It’s like, for example, if a video chat with your bestie is only 80% as fabulous as actually hanging out with them, we focus on the loss of that 20% of the je ne sais quoi you have together and because that’s lost, the rest is just not worth it. Suboptimal won’t cut it; it’s either the best or bust.
This might seem like a strong statement. “Of course a video chat with my bestie is still worth doing,” you might say. But notice how many of our decisions seem to line up with that sense of all-or-nothing. “I can’t go visit grandma, so I end up just not talking to her.” “My gym is closed, so I’m not exercising.” And the like. It’s easy to do and we often don’t notice it.
Humans have a negative cognitive bias that leads us to focus on the downside of things (this is adaptive: it’s more useful to remember that place where your cousin got eaten by a bear than that place where the dogwood blooms) and one place that that can show up is this automatic, often unconscious, intolerance of the suboptimal. The problem is that, in this case, that bias robs us of getting at least some of what we need, even if it’s not all of what we need.
In a situation like a global pandemic, getting as much of what we need as possible is extra important, especially because we’re unlikely at a given moment to be able to get all of what we need. So, embrace the suboptimal. If the best you’re going to get is a videochat with your bestie, take it. If you can’t go visit your loved ones, call them. If your favorite park is closed, walk around your backyard or your block or your apartment roof or your living room. If your guitar is in the shop, listen to your favorite music (or sing!). None of this will be enough, but it will be more than you’d get otherwise. And, if you take advantage of enough of the opportunities for the suboptimal, they might add up to something close to what you would normally get.
Our ability to care for ourselves affects our ability to care for others and, right now, we all need as much care as we can get. So, do your part to take care of yourself, because your wellness affects us all.
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