Quarantine Quests: The Anxiety Wars
I’ve mentioned many times before that anxiety is a huge part of my life. It used to be my motivator, but I am slowly learning to find healthier alternatives like actually feeling better, and being an active contributor to my own life. That being said, these aren’t ordinary times.
My first awareness of an epidemic was with West Nile virus in 2002. I was 19 years old, had a brand new baby, and did nothing but watch CNN Headline News all day while I rocked her. I was afraid to leave my house, afraid any mosquito here in Mosquito Country would infect us both. But then it didn’t. Then there were others: flus, Ebola….. I stopped paying attention, really. The media blew things out of proportion all the time, and my anxiety couldn’t handle it.
Fast Forward to now, to Coronavirus. When this thing started getting real in my area….when my family started talking about what will happen if it gets here, if we get it, how that would affect us…. WHEW!! That was a lot of REAL anxiety. But I stayed calm. Really, I healthily dissociated from those panicky feelings for a bit and observed myself and the situation. Turns out all those coping skills I have been learning work. I learned how to communicate my needs without freaking out in a real situation that created fear for me. The unknown of this virus frightened me for the safety of some of the closest people in my life. I have a child with asthma. I know he has a lot going for him, being a child, but Jack has a history of having a harder time with it when he is sick. His being a child did not make the anxiety go away. My Papaw also has respiratory issues, and for him to get it would be just awful. My husband works for the community. As the virus crept closer and closer to home, I worried about the exposure and how every time Matt came home, it was new exposure. What happened if I got it, maybe nothing, but would Jack get it? How would it affect him? I have a very close relationship with my grandparents and am the closest of our immediate family that is living near them. If I got it not only would I worry about Jack, but I wouldn’t be able to help my grandparents. They for sure didn’t need to get out. If my grandparents got it, I don’t even want to go down the road of anxiety that gives me….not being able to help them or be with them when they were sick. No thank you.
I was worried, yall.
But, instead of panicking and buying up all the toilet paper, I talked to Matt and we discussed a plan to get him working from home, or at least in a way that gave him less contact with the public and the ability to still do his job. It was an anxiety-ridden situation in itself, but we prayed about it, talked about it and decided it was the best situation for us until we understood the situation more. The kids were all dismissed from school during this time, and we started preparing. My kids are old enough to understand the stress of this situation and this thing hit them hard, bless them. They also have anxiety, and have their own ways of dealing with it. Being children, not all of their coping skills are healthy ones. This talk with Matt lessened my anxiety and gave us a plan to begin to handle the situation, but it brought its own stressors along with it.
Handling isolation and learning how to exist in this new world was definitely going to be an adventure. I would be lying if I said I didn’t worry about my own mental health and ability to maintain security within my home. I had fallen a little deeper back into my pit, regressed in my healing already from all that had happened these past couple of years. I worried I would regress, isolate myself more, and lose any progress I had acquired. I wondered if I would be able to be enough for everyone in my household, be able to keep everyone safe, sane, and maintain some semblance of normalcy for my children. God always has a plan, though. And like usual, His plans go a lot deeper than our own.
“Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Phillipians 4:6
