A COVID-Shaped Door

Perhaps I needed a COVID shaped door to give me permission to slow down. While this pandemic is full of fear and uncertainty and has shifted the way we live our daily lives, maybe COVID-19 can also serve us in positive, empowering ways. Maybe it’s here to teach us a lesson.

For me, it has led to acknowledging my emotional and physical exhaustion and welcoming longer nights of sleep, noticing and feeling increased anxiety rather than distracting myself with to-do lists, and using time to reconnect with old friends and get really creative in taking care of self. 

Prior to COVID-19, my schedule ran me and my heart ramped from 5a – 9p. I felt needed and important. I don’t think anyone can argue against our innate desire to feel both. In that same breath, I realized why I love being a therapist. I love that I am afforded the opportunity to sit and truly listen, all in, to the lives of my clients. As therapists, we can be one of the first people to allow our clients to feel acknowledged and seen. I feel infinitely grateful for this. My job has made me a more intentional person in every aspect of my life. 

I keep having these conversations centered around normalcy, and I think the best advice I can give… if I were one to give advice… is that it’s all a toss-up. It’s a toss-up as to whether we’re experiencing trauma on a global level and/or if we’re transitioning to a new normal for the long-term. Emotions are data points, but we often neglect or distract before we allow them to really settle in our being. Instead, we look at the tangibles. We look to grab reality as a way to dampen our anxiety. During this time, we likely find this harder to do, and instead may notice resorting to old behaviors, ways that historically comfort us. It is ok. Your heart and self are healing and working simultaneously to protect you.

Within the past three weeks, my normal has shifted away from running strict and straight from 5a – 9p. Instead, I sleep long hours. I spend quality time with a book and coffee seven mornings a week compared to two. I hand myself a daily permission slip for the pain, grief, uncertainty, anxiety, discomfort, and the various emotions that wave through my day. Being a therapist doesn’t mean I escape the reality of life; it just means I have built a healthy level of self-awareness around my experiences. I still need help from my friends, support from my family, and a way to connect to humans just like you. I still go through periods of self-doubt, crippling expectations of self, and self-inflicted consequences for not upholding my own high standards. I read, and sometimes I mindlessly put on tv just to sink into my couch and eat a tortilla drenched in peanut butter. Sometimes I listen to really nostalgic music and scrub my shower and base boards. 

I can no longer teach or take yoga, go to my gym, or hug my colleagues and friends. But I can take a walk, go for a bike ride, and sit in stillness with myself or my book. I can nourish myself in ways I had forgotten how amid the chaotic schedule I followed for more than three years. It’s ok to sleep. It is ok to resort to comfortable habits, and it is ok to remind yourself that you’re a human adapting to changes you didn’t ask for. Changes you didn’t plan for and changes you can’t alter. Yet. 

Authored by: Jess Mattson, M.S.