The Emotional Impact of Social Distancing

By Theo Tsaousides, Ph.D., Clinical Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

All of a sudden, and while no one was expecting it, the world was dealt a big challenge that has affected everyone. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the lives of so many people and has caused a lot of suffering.

For individuals with brain injury, unexpected change is nothing new. They know a lot about change, and the challenges that come with it – taking care of health problems they didn’t have before, working hard to learn how to use their brains and bodies in new ways, having to rely more on their loved ones for help, and rebuilding their identities are all examples of changes that occur after brain injury. Dealing with these challenges for months and years can lead to a fair amount of frustration, worry, dismay, anger, fear, sadness, grief, confusion, guilt, shame, or helplessness.

Helping people with brain injury become better at handling all these distressing emotions is my area of expertise. For the past 15 years, my colleagues and I at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York have been working on cognitive rehabilitation interventions to help people with brain injury become better problem solvers. We noticed that what often gets in the way of being a good problem solver is… well, our own feelings. The better we are at understanding our feelings, the more effective we are at solving real-life problems. Through research, my colleagues and I have found that teaching people how to recognize and manage their feelings improves their ability to handle a variety of situations.

The ability to recognize and manage our feelings is called emotion regulation. Emotion regulation allows us to explore what we are feeling at any given moment, why we are feeling this way, and what to do about these feelings. Strong emotion regulation skills are helpful in solving problems more effectively, and they are also the foundation of good mental health.

With new challenges brought upon us by COVID-19 and the changes it is causing in the way we live, work, and connect with other people, many distressing emotions will surface and intensify. The emotional struggle may become overwhelming. To help you deal with the emotional storm that is passing through all out lives at the present moment, I’m sharing three important strategies from our work on emotion regulation.

Remind yourself that feelings are normal

During these difficult times, you may experience a barrage of uncomfortable emotions: fear, anxiety, worry, insecurity, frustration, defeat, confusion, anger, despair, loneliness, gloom, sadness, grief, grumpiness, impatience, or resentment, to name a few. Remind yourself that having these feelings is completely normal. Emotions are part of being human; our brains are wired to create them. Emotions are the way in which our minds and bodies interact with our environment. When we perceive danger, we feel fear. When we encounter challenges, we feel frustration – but also motivation and determination. We can experience a wide range of emotions depending on our circumstances.

The risk of getting infected with coronavirus, the restrictions that limit what we can do and who we can see, and the uncertainty of when the situation will take a better turn means that we will experience a wide range of uncomfortable emotions – and that’s OK. You don’t have to fight the feelings. Just accept them and let them be, without letting them take over. And then use the next strategy.

Shift your focus to what makes you feel good

How we feel is affected by what we pay attention to. This includes what we read, what we hear, what we talk about, and what we think about. Currently, for example, what many people pay attention to and focus on is news about the spread and the impact of the coronavirus and how to stay healthy. Because their focus is on something potentially dangerous, they are more likely to feel worried, scared, anxious, and depressed.

It is important to stay informed, especially about something that can have a serious impact on our health, our livelihood, and our communities. But we don’t need to spend every minute of our day reading, hearing, or thinking about the pandemic. Instead, we can shift our focus to topics or activities that are uplifting and joyful. What are some things that you enjoy doing?  Listening to music? Cooking? Watering your plants? Spend a few minutes and make a list of things that make you happy. Then, look through your list each day and choose one activity to do. You will notice that, when you shift your focus to an activity that you enjoy, your mood will also become lighter and brighter!

Use technology to stay connected

Finally, being around other people helps when dealing with difficult emotions. Whatever you are feeling these days, you are not alone. The majority of people are worried about their health, scared about the future, and often lonely from lack of contact. The good news is that our technology has advanced to a point that it allows us to stay connected with one another in ways that would have seemed like science fiction only 20 years ago.

Here are some ways to use technology and stay connected, especially if you have been affected by social distancing measures:

• Schedule video calls with family and friends. Many people are planning coffee or dinner dates online, so consider scheduling celebration dinners on video with family and friends for birthdays, anniversaries, or major holidays.
• Take a class online. Many instructors have switched to teaching their classes online, which is a great way to pursue your hobbies while also interacting with other people. One of my clients recently told me that her guitar class started meeting online. The students practice their “homework,” the teacher gives them feedback, and at the end of class they all play a song together. See if opportunities like this are available to you.
• Join an exercise class online. This is helpful especially if exercise has been part of your daily routine. Many applications allow people to join and follow an exercise routine with a trainer while in their own home. The sense of being in a group, sweating, and panting together is a great way to feel connected. It is also a good way to reduce anxiety and to elevate your mood.
• Stay in touch with your health care team. Many providers are now doing telehealth visits. This means that if you are in a state with “stay at home” measures, you can still “meet” with your providers. Most therapists are available to do video sessions. At Mount Sinai, we are doing a research study that focuses on teaching people with brain injury emotion regulation skills. We meet online in small groups for a few weeks and no one has to ever leave home. The feedback we get from our participants is that working in these groups helps them learn emotion regulation skills and feel connection and support.

Having worked in the field of brain injury rehabilitation for almost 20 years, I have learned that people with brain injury are resilient, tenacious, and persistent despite their challenges. Since you’ve dealt with unexpected change in the past, it will be easier to get through these trying times and come out stronger.

Try this activity at home to shift your focus away from distress and to improve your emotion regulation skills!

I used a lot of different emotion terms in this article, and I did it intentionally. One of the ways to improve our emotion regulation skills is to increase your emotional vocabulary or the number of words that we use to describe our feelings. Here is the challenge for you: can you go through the article again and count how many emotion words you can spot?

This article originally appeared in Volume 14, Issue 2 of THE Challenge! published in 2020.