Managing Anxiety and Fear Part 3: Slow Down

Slow down.

This advice is almost heresy in our fast-paced, performance-driven culture.

If there’s one thing we learn from the Coronavirus lockdown, perhaps it will be the value of slowing down.

This post is Part 3 in my 3-part series on Managing Anxiety and Fear When Life is Crazy.

In Part 1, we talked about giving yourself permission to feel all the feels.

In Part 2, we talked about staying social even while social distancing.

Strategy #3: Slow down.

Just after the schools shut down, a friend called me to get some advice about homeschooling her kids. She didn’t want them to fall behind while waiting for the school district to implement their distance learning protocols. At the time, she wasn’t sure the district would have a program at all.

So I gave her some helpful resources to get started quickly, easily, and (mostly) for free. After all, she won’t homeschool them through an entire school year. There’s no need to invest in expensive curricula just to bridge a few-week gap.

Then I reminded her that crisis schooling isn’t the same as homeschooling. I encouraged her to embrace the slower pace of the quarantine and not drive herself crazy trying to recreate school at home. Everyone’s in the same boat, after all. The schools will figure out something for the kids. It’s OK to slow down.

Not just for homeschool

That’s advice we can all take, myself included.

It’s hard to slow down. You may feel the pressure to keep up your usual pace of production and activity.

But slowing down may be just what you need right now.

If you’re home from work, or working reduced hours, you might feel as if you “should” replace your missing work time with some other activity like finally clearing out the garage or finally making your ten-year-old’s baby album.

If you’re in the online space, like many of my coaching clients, there’s this prevailing notion of business as usual. The gurus encourage us to “Be the leader!” and “Think positively!” and “Rise to the challenge!”

What if rising to the challenge looks different from moment to moment?

But what if rising to the challenge sometimes means getting out of bed and taking care of your family?

There’s nothing wrong with that.

We’re facing a collective trauma like most of us have never seen before. My clients tell me their anxiety is at an all-time high. They’re scared. Depressed. Some are having full-on trauma responses.

Each of those responses is completely normal and it’s okay to feel everything you feel, even when the emotions conflict.

For example, you may feel hope and fear. Sadness and relief. Emotions are not mutually exclusive.

No one can dictate how you navigate your way through this crisis.

Most of us are NOT on vacation right now. Even if you’re not working, you face new pressures and challenges unique to this pandemic. Negotiating remote schooling with your kids (who are also going through this collective trauma, by the way), new working conditions, uncertainty.

You don’t have to power through and be Superwoman.

It’s OK to slow down. Give yourself breathing room. Time and space to deal with all the changes and challenges.

Be the leader if you want to be. Step back if you need to. Alternate from day to day and from moment to moment if need be. Keep selling. Give back. Whatever you need to do.

Don’t be pressured to conform to the expectations of other people.

You do you, now during the pandemic and every day.

Stick to your core values, and you can’t go wrong.

And don’t let anyone shame you into thinking you should handle it any differently.

There is no shame in slowing down.

There can be great wisdom in it, actually.

To read Part 1 of this series, click here.

To read Part 2 of this series, click here.