Adapting to the current social circumstance and changed work conditions brought about by this pandemic, is also about adapting to the intrusive fears that arise in these strange days. There is of course going to be anxiety and concern. Its only natural in these days of the unpredictable. What we spend time worrying about at these times however is usually much greater than what actually happens to us. What we worry about is inevitably unlikely to happen.
I’ll coin a word. The word is Ante-Corona. As in ante-diluvian ( before the flood) or ante - bellum ( before the war ). Anyway in ante-corona times it was very common to be in counselling and someone would begin to roll a metaphorical snowball. Small proclaimed anxieties quickly became an over whelming avalanche. It was never my role to give anxiety oxygen as they had been weeks or months in their growing and nurturing. The imagination is a wonderful servant but its cousin fantasy ,a vicious master. In counselling you have to be awake and contain things to the manageable size of a tissue box before they became as big as the room you meet in.
Anxiety has a way of overwhelming and distracting us and torturing us about matters that are not likely to happen in the future. Worry hurls us into the future. Never the present day. Its tomorrow, next week. next month or next year. We have no focus or energy for today because we are days or months ahead of ourselves. The other thing we need to keep in mind is that with this Virus, as with some things in life, we have no ultimate control. We are pretty used to being in control of life in our normal Australian lives. We can navigate or negotiate or expend money. And some things bend to our needs. The reality is, that our level of control and autonomy has been suspended for a season. Our broad life choices are restricted. We cannot do much about that. Accepting things as they are is foundational. If we demand as a right that things ought, or should be different, we will be easily over whelmed by the clear world realities. We need to attend to the tasks of this day and this space, between waking and going to sleep. Be creative in this space and competent and take the initiative and ownership of issues today in the current time. Not the time wasting ,vague and worrying dreams that morph within minutes into worries of the days or times to come.
A wise man once said don’t worry about tomorrow , for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
