On March 15, 2020 I had posted a list of things that could be done in the public spaces around the Bon Air Neighborhood.
- Cleaning around the Bardstown Road Mural (the panhandlers leave their trash)
- Cleaning north of the Thorntons on Bardstown Rd
- Clipping the branches along the chain link fence on Brockton Lane on the Taylorsville Rd Ramp (on the Highgate Springs side of the fence of course)
- Cleaning up the trash on Goldsmith Lane around Beargrass Creek south of Seneca High School
- Cleaning up Brockton Lane both around Bon Air Estates and Highgate Springs
- If you are really ambitious, there is Beargrass Creek between Bardstown Rd and Downing Lane.
- For the really stir crazy, there is the Bardstown Road median between Bashford Manor and Hikes Lane (this one also seems the most nerve-racking/risky one, but we will try to do it on 4/18/2020 during Operation Brightside and there will still be a lot of trash)
Well today item number 3 got finished. On my third Sunday being home and not going to church, I finished the three overgrown trees.
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| Smaller tree prior to cutting |
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| Larger Tree Prior to Cutting |
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| The after picture of both trees from a distance. |
While I was cutting up the branches into bundles I got the emergency warning system's message encouraging me to cloister at home. Should I be encouraging people to still get out in social distancing fashion to do things to improve the neighborhood? Why not. We are still not ordered to stay in our homes yet, and if you are wanting to do something, consider getting out there in an appropriate socially distant fashion and clean things up while taking a walk. Your anxiety level has a chance of being lowered.
The Antelope and Anxiety
This is where I will don my professional hat. Anxiety is the number one subject that patients talk about in my groups. Anxiety disorders are the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders. . Besides talking about washing your hands and maintaining social distance, people are talking about anxiety and I think I am qualified to talk about anxiety as a mental health professional for 25 years so here goes my two cents (well maybe seven cents).
Anxiety is a normal human emotion. It is our response to danger. It is that emotion that signals to get away from someone or something we observe or feel to be dangerous. I like to call it our "safety emotion" because it sends the message
"You want to live don't you?"
We all get anxious. It is normal and perhaps even helpful as the Chinese proverb says
A little anxiety helps to focus the mind but too much paralyzes it.
Anxiety tells people that something is a big deal and to pay attention and be cautious in situations such as tests and driving on rainy or snowy days. So, it serves a helpful purpose in our lives.
However, anxiety fosters concrete thinking and can make us feel and act as if we are in a tunnel. With people being forced to stay at home, and getting a deluge of COVID19 information and having other struggles with losing of jobs and concerns over whether we will have enough and whether we will be able to pay the bills, the anxiety can really add up.
We are not rational people when it comes to anxiety but managing it requires us to be a little more rational about it and try to step outside of it and understand it a little bit more.
Anxiety is Physical
As mentioned Anxiety is an emotion or an energy in motion. When we feel anxiety it stimulates the production of Adrenalin, which in turn stimulates the body to get ready to run. This includes:
- Our muscles get tense,
- Our respiration increases,
- Our pulse increases
- Our digestion system goes into action, and
- Blood goes to our skin.
Anxiety has different levels of intensity
It is important to note that there are different levels of anxiety that we get for different reasons.
However, it serves to note that anxiety can compound and escalate. We can move from feeling uncomfortable to insecure and up to panic. Anxiety is generally based on what is important to us and how long we dwell on something.
Aaron Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy discussed several negative or distorted thought patterns or types of thoughts that contribute to both higher depression and anxiety. For our purposes here, the one distorted thought pattern that fits our current situation is the
"Negative Mental Filter."
A negative mental filter colors and distorts the way we see everything. At times some of these negative filters are reality-based. Personally, when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May, 1996 and told that I would have surgery to remove it on June 14, 1996, I dealt with a true negative mental filter as I stressed about whether I was going to leave my wife a widow and most all of my thinking was around whether or not I was going to live to the extent that I wrote my first will and cleaned my desk at work as if I was never coming back. I just could not see beyond June 14,1996.
COVID19 is also a negative mental filter, but it is of the institutionalized kind where our whole society is organized around it these days and it is hard to see beyond it. You name it and it has been affected, canceled, postponed or closed down. Furthermore, we are confined to our homes and anything that has to do with people congregating together is discouraged or has been canceled. We are stuck in our residences looking hearing, and thinking about COVID19 all the time. COVID19 also has affected people's livelihoods and whether or not they will have what they need. This leads to the story about the antelope that I read in Hinduism/Buddhism class in college that fits this situation:
A Hindu disciple went to his guru and asked, "How can I know Shiva?"
The guru sent him into a small room and told him to meditate on the antelope and to stay in there until the guru told him that he could come out.
The disciple complied but came to the door of the room a few times and asked to come out. The guru asked: "Have you been meditating on the antelope?"
The student said, "Yes."
The guru said "Stay in there. You have not done it enough."
At the end of seven days the guru came to the door of the room and said to the disciple, "You can come out now."
The disciple said, "I can't come out because my antlers will not fit through the door."
The guru said, you are now on your way. Start meditating in Shiva in the same way.
I find that the story illustrates that we can brainwash ourselves into higher levels of anxiety all the way up to paralytic panic when we dwell on the same negative mental filters and other stresses every day.
I have found that many of my patients over my career with panic attacks had them when they were alone late at night and they were dwelling on their problems; they tended to brainwash themselves that the worst is absolutely going to happen to them.
Worry is that form of anxiety that can be that antelope and we feel it when we dwell on problems that
- Are not solvable in that moment
- Belong to someone else but that we try to own or that
- We imagine could happen to us or someone else.
So with that in mind, to keep us from brainwashing ourselves into be being paralyzed and panic my suggested strategy starts with an affirmation written by the late Wayne Dyer.
- My feelings come from my thoughts
- I can control my thoughts
- Therefore I can control my feelings.
By getting our minds on something else and doing something else we can likely reduce our anxiety. When we dwell on our stresses we are going to feel anxiety.
By distracting our minds regularly with stuff other than Covid19 and all of the "steps" that government officials are ordering we can reduce our anxiety . . . I did not say eliminate it. It is okay if you are not perfectly coping with our current situation, coping is not an all or nothing matter, but if we get through our days without panic attacks, and we can get to sleep at night and have our daily needs met we will be okay.
There are a ton of strategies we use in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to get people to think differently, but a common technique for distracting our minds has been the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr that is promoted in AA and other 12 step groups:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
This has been a long post, so I will close with saying that there are many more resources online these days if you are interested in reading about managing anxiety. There are numerous mental health resources in Louisville too if you are feeling overwhelmed.
But if you live in the Bon Air Neighborhood and feel the need just to get out of the house and lessen your anxiety by getting active, there are six other tasks on the list that can be excellent distractions in a socially distancing manner to help you manage your anxiety and I would love a before and after picture if you do one of the list (remember safety equipment if you do).
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