COVID-19: Those "What If" Questions?

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“What if” questions pair up with anxiety and take on a frenetic and panicked pace:

“What if I get corona virus? What if I don’t know I have it? What if someone at work doesn’t wash their hands enough? What if we run out of hand sanitizer? What if we have to cancel….”

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This new virus is leading to a lot of uncertainties because we as a culture have not practiced social distancing and quarantining in such a mass before. And we only tend to cancel so many parts of our busy lives when we are under attack, responding to a threat such as a pandemic or a terrorist event.

So, it is really normal for our nervous systems to be searching for danger and trying to predict. That’s the job that they do when they are trying to keep us safe and want to be prepared. The issue comes in when the questions take off at a rapid pace and we become irritable (fight), panicky (flight), or can’t move past the questions to possible solutions (freeze). We go past the point of effectively meeting stressors to being in so much distress that we can’t take effective action.

And just a reminder, it is normal for your mind and body to try to take care of you and get a bit stuck at points. There is no shame in that. We just want to work on taking steps to come back into a more effective and less anxious place. Notice that I didn’t say that you should be relaxed. Because that wouldn’t be effective either. The idea is to take the anxiety down a few notches from pure fight, flight, and freeze,

So, with “what if” questions, you can take a few steps:

  1. Recognize when they are happening by noticing the pace of your thoughts, tension in your body, or maybe the feedback from a trusted person. A little awareness can take us out of the spiraling energy of “what if” questions.

  2. Do something to come into the present. Put your feet on the floor. Notice your breath. Pet your animals and notice the feel of their fur and warmth of their bodies (as well as how cute they are). Splash water on your face. Take a walk. Go to the floor in child’s pose. The body will drive your thoughts so do something in the present and grounding before moving on.

  3. Break up the onslaught of “what if” questions and examine one or two that are most important to you. Maybe write them down with some room to answer them each as writing things down can help us slow down and stay on one questions at a tim

    Answer what you can answer of your most important “what if” questions, going to trusted sources to do so. When anxiety is too high, we get in the way of actually answering the questions. We may stop trying to find answers and the questions just pile up. So if your questions is “What happens if I get COVID-19?” or “What if I feel symptoms like fever, cough, and shortness of breath?” you can start to imagine a few things that you would do. You would go to a trusted source for directions, like your doctor or public health department. You would follow the instructions from the CDC or City of Austin and react based on your symptoms. You would isolate to the best of your ability and do things like hydrate to treat your symptoms at home unless your symptoms were more severe.

    It can be helpful to have a trusted person to talk to you when you have your “what if” questions. I want to stress the word “trusted”. There are still folks (although fewer every day) who might gaslight you for your concerns or tell you “don’t worry about it, you’re not going to get sick”. This does not help people to feel less anxious; it just causes shame and isolation as folks are trying to take care of themselves.

    Also, there will be points where you can’t come up with a plan. That is normal. We like to think we can predict everything, but there will be points where we have to accept what we don’t know or know that we will deal with it when we have to. For instance, if we have symptoms of COVID-19, we can call our doctor’s offices. But we don’t know every step that we will take all through the illness because we don’t know how the course of our illness would go. Answer that you can as you can.

    See y’all tomorrow. Wash your hands, stay hydrated, and breathe the whole time.