By Kusumanjalee Thilakarathna
“Why does my brain feel so foggy? Sometimes it takes me a while to gather my thoughts with everything that is going on,” is one frequent complaint that mental health practitioners are nowadays presented with. This can’t come as a surprise to you, as living in chaos is nothing new to us in Sri Lanka. Some of us felt as if our dreams were put on hold during the pandemic; some of us had to put extra effort to get closer to our goals. Adjusting to the new normal demands a lot of tolerance and energy. And now, just as we thought we could put the pandemic aside, we have yet another crisis to deal with.
During a crisis or a disaster, we experience a wide range of emotions. During the pandemic, we dealt with uncertainty, and this made some of us experience a difficult mix of emotions. With the unpredictable political and economic situation of the country, some of us are experiencing fear, anxiety, confusion, and intense dread as the outcomes of the crisis are affecting us deeply on a personal level. The anxiety can be devastating for younger generations, as they haven’t faced anything like this before. When you don’t know the devil, it can be much more frightening!
When we feel that there is nothing we can do to make the situation better, we may experience hopelessness. Similarly, if we accept the situation as a threat and if we perceive this threat to be larger than something we can fight, we feel the situation is hopeless. Helplessness is the feeling that people have that they have no power to improve their situation or defend themselves.
If a person feels helpless to protect themselves, they may withdraw mentally or physically. If we let our feelings of fear, anxiety, and confusion go unchecked, we are more likely to fall victim to feeling hopeless and helpless. This flux in the mind can hinder our progress and lower our productivity. In addition to a crisis that already exists, we let ourselves create another crisis in our minds. If this happens, we can be less motivated and less able to take actions that could help us.
Whether it’s emotional or situational, there are things that you can do to help ensure your psychological and physical well-being during a time of crisis.
Focus more on short-term goals. Long-term planning is difficult even when the circumstances are stable. It is especially challenging now, as the depth of the economic downturn and the time needed for recovery are unclear. You can break up your goals into bite-sized portions and take one bite at a time. As time goes on, we can target biting larger chunks.
Prioritise your time, and focus on what’s important at the moment. This can mean getting yourself out of an unsafe situation, or it can mean just focusing on the basics so that you can get through each day. Avoid taking on too much and conserve your energy so you can deal with the problem you are facing.
It’s okay to take a break. Adjusting to your very new normal, cutting down costs, and shifting to less costly but more energy-consuming methods of running daily chores can be very tiresome. Added to the psychological strain, it can become exhausting for us from time to time. You must take breaks to re-energise and take care of yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup!
Lean on your friends and let your friends lean on you. It’s important to lean on friends, family, and loved ones during a crisis. Seek help from support groups. Sharing our experience with a group of people who are going through the same experience helps us to explore new perspectives and sometimes learn easier ways of finding solutions or alternatives.
Talk to a professional. If you feel that the situational and emotional crisis is too overwhelming for you to handle, talk to a professional. They are trained to help you!
Ask the following questions from yourself every day to assess yourself. This will guide you to understand what you need to do to achieve your personal goals during the chaotic period.
- What do I need to give more priority to today?
- What are the actions I can take right now?
- What are the resources available? Am I using them?
- What are the resources I do not have? Can I find an alternative?
- What can I control? How does it benefit me?
- What can I not control? If I can’t control it, should I worry about it?
During the pandemic, and even now, you may have noticed how different people respond to challenging situations in different manners. To understand this, it is important to note how the term “crisis” is defined in mental health terms: A crisis does not necessarily refer to a traumatic situation or an event, but to how a person may react to the event. Seek out ways in which you can improve your response to this troublesome situation that we are all experiencing.
(Kusumanjalee Thilakarathna is a mental health professional and has, over the past ten years, contributed to several Sri Lankan media publications in both English and Sinhala languages. She mainly focuses on topics related to psychology and counselling in her writing)
