How to Deal with Anger in Times of Coronavirus
You talk to your relatives and they still didn’t understand why this new coronavirus is so dangerous.
Turn on the TV and see politicians using this situation to make a campaign instead of concentrate efforts to unite people against this common enemy. Turn off the TV and memes based on nothing are shared like serious things in social media. The economy is breaking down and you see your money going together if you are lucky. Because you know there are hundreds, thousands in the world who are already starving.
We are blind sailors, navigating in a new ocean without at least a compass. We are afraid of losing people we love, afraid of getting sick, of being made fools. And our kids are destroying the house. Of course, we are angry!
There’s no recipe to deal with this nightmare (oh, no, what am I doing here?!), but calm down. Breathe. Take my virtual hand and let’s make together a path to let our brains scape.
This is how I calm myself while Covid-19 is messing the world
First things first, I’m not a guru or a kind of Buddhist master, neither a psychologist trying to gain your attention to sell some books, but just and ordinary woman who tries not to get crazy in all this insane situation.
Below, I listed the 5 things in coronavirus crisis that makes me angry and what I do to recover self-control:
Fear of losing someone I love
I tried not to be paranoiac and I got it in the very beginning. Living in Brazil, it took some time to Covid-19 reaches us, and, listening that the virus wouldn’t reproduce itself very well because of the hot weather (we were still in the Summer), I thought I had nothing to be a concern.
Guess what? It’s here! Making people sick, killing some folks, letting us afraid of hugs. And we are Brazilian — hugs, here, mean a lot. When I finally realized how risky was the situation, I tried to talk, share information to alert everyone about the virus. To my surprise, some of them simply don’t believe in it. Some that I really care keeps comparing Covid-19 with other diseases like dengue or H1N1 (yes, these are serious too), unseeing the difference between the velocity of the contagion and its impact in the healthcare system. I have to repeat that: I live in Brazil! We never had hospitals enough and lack of beds is our problem since decades ago.
First, it got me scared, then, got me angry. The perspective of losing people we love is terrifying.
One day, feeling bad with all of this, I got to the obvious conclusion that death is part of life. Simple like that. I can’t control what my relatives and friends are thinking or doing, and I don’t know what is their role in this existence. Just to be clear: I’m not asking you to believe in an afterlife or something like that, your spirituality is completely yours. Yet, the way they choose to deal with this chaotic situation has to be respected, and anger has nothing to do with respect.
They have the same right to you of passing by this moment the way they want, and, as much as you love them, you must accept. When you do this, the anger goes away. I’m still afraid of losing them, of course! But now I’m in peace.
Politicians taking advantage of the situation
Into a perfect society, you should expect crises like the one we are living would be faced for politicians like an opportunity to do their duties, uniting resources to fight against the common enemy: Covid-19, of course. Instead, what I see is politicians being politicians, with a few exceptions.
Fighting with each other, manipulating numbers to gain followers, using the fear to herd new voters, they perpetuate the same cycle over and over. It’s outrageous! And people still fight for them, like they are a kind of hero or something. This makes me angry a lot of times, not just now. For me, don’t let politics have power over my mood is really hard. So, what I do?
As much as I try, I can’t ignore them. If you can, congratulations! You probably don’t suffer from this kind of anger, so, go ahead, read the next topic. Yet, if you are like me, here is my recipe:
- First, I do my best: I follow their actions more than their speeches, trying not to vote twice in someone who disappointed me;
- I vote;
- If you do not have a better system, accept the democracy as it is — I keep repeating that to myself;
- I focus on those who are taking advantage but are still contributing to reducing the damages of the crises.
These help to keep me away from anger, and, more important, to let that kind of people manipulate the way I feel. Because they don’t deserve to.
Stupid memes
Yes, people say stupid things sometimes. And write it too. And share. It sucks! It happens all the time since we, as a species, learned to talk. But it became huge with social media.
When we just talked, stupid memes could be restricted to small groups, making low noise. Now, it’s a mess! You open Facebook and there is a post telling that coronavirus is just a media invention to create panic. Or worst: a message in WhatsApp telling it’s a China strategy to dominate the world gains a lot of claps! Serious? Why would they spread the virus in their own territory, for God’s sake?
To avoid the sensation of “come on, do you really believe in this cheat?” one of the things I do is trying not to answer. Another hard thing for me, I admit. Yet, when I got it, the sensation of power starts to grow inside me. “See, you are not controlled by this,” tells me my not so angry mind. The next step is remembering everyone can be mistaken, and so do I.
Another trick is to stay away from any kind of social media. When you feel that desire to escape from isolation, call someone, open a book, start a new series. That always works.
Economy breaking down
I don’t know where are you from but, here, in Brazil, the economic scenario looks more like a Greek tragedy. The boat was punctured, its engine was not working well, yet, however, we were seeing land. Now, there’s a fog blinding us and we will have to row because the engine starts to fail.
There’s nothing good on the horizon for most of us, for a long time. Yeah, that makes anyone anger! How to deal with this feeling when the perspective is so sinister?
I can’t answer this question for those who need to get money every day just to eat, for those who are no place to go, no one to appeal. Because I never been there, and I can’t pretend to know what they are going through.
For those who have food and house, like me, but will have to row — or swim a lot — in the next months, my advice is: don’t focus on money. It doesn’t matter.
The most important thing right now is being alive.
If you have the basic to support yourself, you can start over. Yes, it will be hard. But you are in a better situation than a lot of people in the world, so, you will have big advantages when the economy recovers. Because it will happen, soon or later. Remember, there are billions of people interested in this, and the smartest part of them is working to getting us out of this situation. You just have to stay safe until this crisis goes away.
Kids are destroying the house
You wake up in the morning and the news is presenting the new dark numbers about coronavirus. If you change the channel, the dark numbers are about employment. So, you give up and look around. Your living room is a mess, and it’s just 8 a.m.
Kids have a lot of energy and they have to use it.
So, they have to play and it doesn’t matter if you live in an apartment (like me). I have a daughter who is 2-years-old, very creative, and loves to invent new games, which demands things in house being moved every day. Sometimes every hour. Believe me, it’s crazy.
Of course, kids' mess contributes to increasing our anger with all this situation and gets us out of control. What I do to escape from it is let my daughter plays during the day and make her mess, with three exceptions: she can’t break anything (which applies to her body too); in the evening, the mess must be tidied up and stay that way until the morning (my husband is being an angel helping her in this activity every day); during the cleaning day, the mess must be tidied up to (and I help her to make it).
Every other moment, I assume toys everywhere are part of the decoration.
Furthermore, one day her childhood will pass and I will miss these moments. You will miss it too. So, enjoy while your kids are close to you, it will not last forever.
It will pass
Curiously, weeks ago, just before coronavirus invades our lives, I was thinking about making a tattoo with this message, but in Portuguese, what would be translated as “vai passar”.
At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about diseases or economic crisis. It was more an intent to remember me that every bad moment will always be irrelevant in the future, no matter how big is it.
I’m part of that group of people who has the tendency to be stuck in the bad moments, what wears me out, and let me sad (and angry) more times than I can handle. Just knowing it wasn’t enough to change this behavior, so, now I’m trying more practical things. Like a tattoo reminder.
The tattoo is waiting for the isolating ends up and gave place to another initiative: the effort to try to remember the expression every time I’m angry. And this is my final tip to you: it will pass. Someday, in the future, you will see no sense in the anger you feel right now. So, why invest so much energy on it? Keep it to the next corner, to all those big plans you have for the end of this chaos, and make it useful.
Stay safe.
