Managing Your Mental Health During Covid-19

Jena Booher, Ph.D.
10 min readApr 8, 2020

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(Over the last 2 weeks, I gave the same talk to nearly a dozen institutions on how their employees can take care of their mental health during COVID-19. This prompted me to translate my talk into written form. I am a classically trained therapist, but I work only in corporate settings. See below my main ideas: stay strong y’all!)

In response to COVID-19, social-distancing policies have been put in place by governments around the world. As a result, millions of people are now isolated from their loved ones and communities.

In these unprecedented times, many people are struggling with fears, anxieties, health concerns, and adjustment issues surrounding the many unknowns with this pandemic. First, if you are struggling, know that you aren’t alone. These are all common reactions and everyone is struggling to find their new normal. This is the first pandemic of this scale in our lifetime so these problems are new to us. However, it’s not the first time that there’s been a global virus outbreak (Ebola, SARS, and MRS are a few that might sound familiar) so the mental effects have been studied on a smaller scale.

I’m a classically trained counselor and have been working directly with patients to help them manage this situation as best as possible. Below are the common struggles I have witnessed over the past few weeks with tips to better navigate them during stressful and uncertain times. Even if you aren’t experiencing any of these issues, a loved one, colleague, friend, direct report, or team member may be facing them, so having the knowledge is important to identify symptoms and offer help.

1. Anxiety

At a minimum, everyone is experiencing some level of COVID-19-related anxiety. Anxiety isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In a way, it protects us from danger. However, we can take anxiety to an unhealthy level where it can interfere with our ability to function throughout the day. I’m seeing anxiety manifest in the following ways:

  • Rumination: Rumination is a thought pattern where you keep “chewing” on a distressing thought and continue to come back to the same thought over and over again. With COVID-19, there are a lot of questions: What’s going to happen? Who is going to get sick? What if a loved one gets sick? With ruminative thoughts, the brain is trying to find an answer to something in order to lower your stress levels. But we’re looking for an answer that’s impossible to find. If you catch yourself in the middle of a rumination, interrupt the thought pattern by telling yourself that you’re looking for an answer you don’t have — no one does right now. This will bring self-awareness to the thoughts and help distract yourself and move on.
  • Panic attacks: Many people are getting panic attacks for the first time. Panic attacks (especially if you never had one before) can be scary. A panic attack can look different from one person to the next, but it can feel similar to a heart attack. Common symptoms are tingling in the hands and feet, feeling cold, and having your heart pound as if it’s going to jump out of your chest. If you’re experiencing panic attacks, it’s good to seek help in the form of a medical or mental health professional. One way therapists will help treat people with panicky episodes is by telling them to carry a stone and pull it out when you feel an attack coming on. It’s a way to divert your attention to something other than your panic. Ask yourself questions: Is this stone smooth? Is it heavy? Is it cold? By bringing your attention to something else combined with deep breathing, you can self-soothe yourself through the panicked feeling.

How to help manage Anxiety:

  • Sleep and eat well: It’s easy to start forming new routines right now, and they’re likely not very good ones. Do your best to stick with your typical schedules to find some resemblance of normal in your daily life — this includes eating and sleeping the same as before. Insomnia is also common with anxiety so be sure to practice good sleep hygiene.
  • Ice cubes: When you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, go into your freezer and grab 3–4 ice cubes. Hold them in your hands over the sink and watch them melt. This will literally cool you down and is helping people find a bit of relief when their anxiety levels get to be too much. This practice is a form of mindfulness: by watching the ice cubes melt and paying attention to the coldness of the water between your fingers is a way to divert your anxious thoughts off COVD-19.
  • Decrease news consumption: Put rules around your consumption of news, social media, and other media surrounding COVID-19. Watch or read news updates once in the morning and once in the evening to keep yourself informed but not overloaded. If you have kids in the house, it may help their own fears and anxieties if you don’t turn on or discuss the news in front of them.
  • Practice mindfulness: Practicing a few minutes of mindfulness throughout the day helps to calm your limbic system and the stress response you’re experiencing. I’d recommend practicing mindfulness twice a day with an app like Calm or Headspace.

2. Depression:

As this virus and the necessary interventions continue to persist, depression is likely to set in for some people. The folks I’m personally most concerned about when it comes to depression are caregivers and people who live alone. Caregivers are clinically at higher risk for both depression and anxiety due to the combined increased concern about protecting their loved ones and guilt about causing or not preventing a loved one’s illness if they become sick. Individuals who live alone and are unable to have human contact in weeks are also at high risk for depression. Depression can manifest in the following ways:

  • The effects of social distancing: Social distancing is brutal for people who are already diagnosed with depression. When we treat someone with depression, we ask them to engage in the world because those with depression tend to pull away and dis-engage. We encourage them to grab coffee with friends, go to the movies, etc. With social distancing, we now can’t do any of these things.
  • Suicide ideation: This is really important to talk about. The more time people spend in their heads due to social distancing, the more opportunity exists for these thoughts to form. If you’re feeling out of control, call a hotline or 911, schedule a virtual therapy appointment, get help, call a friend. It’s not unrealistic to think more dark thoughts will be present when we’re trapped in our homes. However, it’s important to get immediate help if you see this happen.
  • Motivation: Without the need for a regular routine since we’re all working from home, you may find your motivation lagging. It can become a struggle to get out of bed in the morning, to get dressed and ready for the day, and to give it your all during the workday.

How to help manage Depression:

  • Beef up your support systems remotely: Thankfully, in today’s society, social distancing doesn’t mean being completely separated from friends and family. Instead of scheduling coffee dates or brunch with your support system, schedule a FaceTime or phone call, use Netflix Party to virtually binge-watch shows or movies together, and check in daily via texts. These are all achievable ways to build a sense of community without leaving your apartment. I also recommend people who live alone to “book-end” their day with some contact. This means to have a call with a friend, family member, colleague just to talk about how you are doing at both the start and end of every day.
  • Establish a new routine: Similar to managing anxiety, a routine is critical for someone struggling with depression! You’ll feel a lot better if you can establish a new “normal” for yourself by creating new routines and rituals while working from home or self-isolating. It may even be helpful to map out your schedule by day, by week, and by tasks to visualize your new expectations — and to feel a sense of accomplishment when you cross items off your list. Be sure to have small accomplishments such as making your bed, cleaning your dishes, and getting dressed in the morning.
  • Be physically active: Even though none of us are going to the gym, there are still many ways to be physically active and release endorphins each day. Many fitness companies and apps are offering free trials or hosting virtual workouts in light of COVID-19. There are also tons of video resources available on Youtube. And even walks throughout the day (while maintaining a safe distance from everyone else) are enough to help you feel better at the end of the day.
  • Increase team communication: When you’re hosting or participating in a virtual meeting, save five minutes at the start or end of the call for “check-in” time. Give everyone a chance to check-in and voice how they are doing throughout their remote experience. And if your team enjoys spending a lot of time with each other in the office, there’s no need to let working from home keep that from continuing. We can create a semblance of normalcy and camaraderie in unconventional ways with virtual happy hours after work or a team hangout where anything but work (and COVID-19) is discussed. This bonding doesn’t have to stop. We’re all in this together despite the difficult environment.

3. Adjusment Issues:

Everyone is experiencing adjustment issues right now. Adjustment issues include disruption in routine and missing the predictability of everyday life. Employees are now sharing their “offices” with their partners, children, and roommates. Parents are now school-teachers. Here are some ways I’m seeing adjustment issues manifest during COVID-19:

  • Disruption to routine: We’ve all been thrown into a new “normal” and it’s hard to adjust. We’re no longer leaving our homes for the morning commute and no longer have a clear transition from workday to evening activities. And while some people may thrive in a work-from-home environment, it has come during an incredibly difficult and stressful time that makes it hard to appreciate. Days can start to blend together: it’s easy to lose track of time.
  • Restlessness and boredom: The effects of social distancing seem to never end. With our entire lives now rooted in our homes, it’s easy to become restless, bored, and just plain tired of being cooped up indoors.

How to help manage adjustment issues:

  • Have lunch with your family: Schedule a break on your calendar to give yourself the time and space to have lunch with your children and family. These are unprecedented and difficult times, but also a unique opportunity to be spending so much time at home with everyone — appreciate it! Your kids shouldn’t be a secret, so don’t feel like you need to hide them from your coworkers or employer.
  • Set up an after-work ritual: Not leaving the office at a specific time each day can make it hard to set healthy work boundaries. Your brain will benefit from a signal that tells it that you’re done with work for the day. My personal after-work ritual is to put aside my computer and spend 10–20 minutes reading a book for pleasure. It helps me decompress and get into “home-mode.”
  • Optimize your “new office”: If you’re sharing a workspace with other people it’s good to have a conversation with your partner/roommate/whomever how everyone who shares the space can make the most of it. This may include setting specific times to take phone calls, deciding who works where in the apartment/house, and expectations around when work is done for the day.

4. Grief:

There is a deep sense of loss right now. People are losing loved ones, but there are also other forms of grief. These include canceled or postponed events such as weddings, graduations, religious celebrations, sports events, etc…the general joys of life. Grieving requires us to sit with our pain. It can be uncomfortable to sit in our sadness. Typically we usually try to ignore our grief or “look on the bright side.” However, right now it’s incredibly important to acknowledge in ourselves and in our kids and partners the grief we are all experiencing.

As it relates to COVD-19 I’m seeing two forms of grief that no one is talking about:

  • Disenfranchised grief: Grief that’s not “socially sanctioned” by society. A current example of this could include grieving the cancellation of a basketball tournament. I imagine if I was to tell someone I was feeling a sense of loss over this, I would be met with statements such as “at least you aren’t sick.” However, grief is grief. Loss is loss. We’ll help each other heal by leading with empathy versus passing judgment over the degree or loss someone is experiencing.
  • Ambiguous grief: This grief is slightly different — it’s grief over future losses. Ambiguous grief can leave us in a state of perpetual mourning. It’s grieving loss that has not happened yet, but you believe it could happen.

How to help manage grief:

  • Confront your loss: Talk about what loss you are feeling with others. Ask your partner and child what they are “missing” or what they are sad about.
  • Let yourself and others experience loss in their own way: Grief doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Avoid passing judgment on both your losses and the losses of others.
  • Don’t mourn losses that haven’t yet happened: Aim to live in the present and avoid thinking too much about losses you haven’t yet experienced.

5. Substance use:

This is the struggle I’m most concerned with outside of the general pandemic and what’s happening in the world. Any new habits — good and bad — you form during COVID-19 won’t stop once the pandemic is over. And in each of these areas — anxiety, depression, adjustment issues, and grief — there is ample opportunity to distract yourself from what’s going on with some not-so-good habits. But science has proven that we don’t have the luxury of flipping the switch on and off with habits, so be careful about what habits you form during this time. Out of everything that’s out of our control, substance use is something we can control during these stressful times.

Managing teams during a pandemic is its own source of stress. Leaders should take active measures in making sure their teams are set up as best as possible. Here are a few tips:

  • Talk about mental health, isolation, work/home boundaries, managing parental/elderly care responsibilities. Companies who are avoiding discussing the things we are most struggling with are missing an opportunity to support their employees.
  • Create consistent and simplified communication across your company. People are easily overwhelmed by communication that is overly wordy or confusing. Keep it clear and keep it consistent.
  • Use video updates to stay connected with your team and keep them informed
  • Encourage your employees to move and meditate daily
  • Highlight company wins during these times of change

For companies looking to discuss some of these issues further, I’m available at jena@jenabooher.com. You can also find me at jenabooher.com or on LinkedIn HERE

Stay strong!

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Jena Booher, Ph.D.
Jena Booher, Ph.D.

Written by Jena Booher, Ph.D.

Jena Booher is a strategic advisor and entrepreneur. You can find her at jenabooher.com

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