I keep coming back to the thought, “We cannot lose ourselves during this.” And, of course, I’m thinking of the pandemic. But I’m also thinking of where I was before our lives were interrupted. Seventeen months ago, I lost my mother to a long illness. Not long after, I committed myself to a psychiatric hospital at the urging of my therapist.
I had a plan to take my own life.
Looking back, losing my mother wasn’t the catalyst for the depressive episode that overwhelmed me. No. It had been anxiety that had crowded out my own voice, filling my head, instead, with the voices and actions of those who had bullied or rejected me. It had been anxiety that skewed my perspective, so that all I could hear and see about myself was worthlessness.
During these days of isolation, the words we fill our own heads with will become the loudest to us. We must take special efforts to guard against anxiety. “How” you might wonder, “in these times of Covid-19 and the 24hournewsstream and the rising unemployment rate and I’m so lonely can we keep anxiety at bay within our heads?”
Try this: each day, choose an affirmation or phrase that inspires you. Carry that phrase like a talisman with you throughout your day. If an anxious or negative thought catches within you and begins to repeat itself, interrupt it with your mantra. One of my favorite phrases, which I read in an issue of The Sun, is “The human heart has not changed.”
The point is to interrupt the anxiety. And to keep perspective. We cannot lose ourselves during this.
What I mean is: one must not let oneself be completely disabled by just one thing, however bad; don’t let it impede the great stream of life that flows through you.
Etty Hillesum
No Accounting for Happiness 