Love in the Time of Coronavirus

“May you live in interesting times” is allegedly a Chinese¹ curse reflecting that times of drama are harder to live through than times of peace. While there is undoubtedly some truth to this, challenging times can also be times of great personal and societal growth. An example of the latter is during the second world war, when individuals found great togetherness in their fight for a common purpose. On a personal level, many people who have been through trauma find that it can lead to lasting change for the better². 

Let’s hope the current times don’t become as interesting as World War II, but it is pretty tumultuous at the moment. The media report increasingly frightening messages about Coronavirus throughout the 24-hour news cycle. Governments have either implemented draconian measures to stop the spread or are considering it. It’s hard to continue as normal in such a fear-based climate, although many of us are trying to.

So how do we cope with this fear and live a meaningful life in such circumstances? The first thing I suggest is to figure out who you want to be in this crisis. 

Take a step back and ask yourself “what qualities would I want to embody throughout this situation?”.  If I was observing myself going about my life through these few weeks, what kind of person would I like to see? I suspect that most of you aren’t going to say: “someone panic buying toilet paper and elbowing pensioners out of the way to get to the last hand sanitiser”. You already have a kind of an idea about who you don’t want to be. You don’t want to behave from selfishness and mindless terror. So, what kinds of values do you want to embody?

Take a moment. Close your eyes if you can³. Move away from the thinking verbal mind and travel down into your heart area. See if you can get in touch with that deeper, more intuitive part of you. Imagine you have a bit of paper in your mind’s eye and write on it “who do I want to be?”. Then fold it up and place it in your heart. Give it a moment and then see what comes to you. You might get an answer as another bit of paper with something written on it. Some words may come to you; or a feeling, an image, a colour, a sense. It doesn’t matter how your answer comes to you but just notice if it does. This is your deeper self, letting you know who you want to be in this life. (For a brief video of this process see Using the Heart to Make Decisions in my Free Resources section).

Hopefully you’re beginning to get an idea of who you want to be through this moment in time. Now you can use this word/phrase/image/sense to guide you. This is probably easier to explain if I use myself as an example. For me, my purpose here is always to be love. I use this purpose to help me through every issue, big and small. I use it as a simple heuristic, asking myself these simple questions:

• Is this (behaviour) about love?
• How can I most embody love in this situation?
• How can I be love towards myself and others right now?

Why not replace the word love here for your word (or if it’s more of an image or a sense, compare how you feel against that instead). See if this helps you make sense of how you need to act during this outbreak. Compare it against your urges to behave in a certain way. You might find it a lot easier to be the kind of person you want to be using this method.

But what about the fear? It’s great to embody our values through a time of crisis; in fact, it’s nothing short of miraculous. But it doesn’t take away that dread feeling in the stomach, the fear of contagion, the terror when someone sneezes on someone you love. What can we do to help us feel less scared?

The first thing is to limit your exposure to fear-inducing information. Yes, it’s good to be informed but this doesn’t mean you need to spend hours each day watching the news, reading papers online and following Coronavirus on social media. Just as if you were forced to watch The Exorcist on loop for 24 hours, this will raise your anxiety levels and put your body into a state of hypervigilance. You won’t think clearly in this state. Why not set some sensible limits for yourself? Perhaps check the headlines in a reputable⁴. newspaper each morning at breakfast then each evening after dinner. Or maybe click on the government guidelines once or twice a day. You do not need to do more than this. News outlets thrive on sensationalising all stories and this is topic is no different. Keep a little perspective even as you keep abreast of the latest events. 

The second thing is to spend some time focussing on things that you love. Keep going with your hobbies if you can. Watch enjoyable films with your loved ones. Go for a walk, watch the spring flowers blossom. Read your favourite books⁵. Remember that there is so much more to life than this one virus and these events, like everything else, will eventually pass.

The third approach is to work directly with the fear using psychological methods. The good news is that there are a number of very effective ways to reduce fear. Energy psychology approaches are excellent at reducing anxiety and physiological arousal⁶. Using these can reduce the intensity of your emotions and it’s much easier to embody your values when you are coming from a sense of calmness and peace⁷.  

You can also take a more mindful approach and sit with your fear and just allow yourself to feel it. You’ll find that initially it gets more intense and then, as you sit with it in a non-judgmental and accepting way, it starts to lessen and calm down. This allows you to be more at peace, and good decisions always come from a place of peace. Why not try this using my free audio meditation Sitting with Our Emotions, which is available in the Free Resources section on my website? See if this helps you to accept the fear around this issue and lessen its intensity.

Here’s what I suggest you do in a nutshell: First, be the person that you want to be, whatever that is for you personally. Second, manage the fear by reducing your exposure to fear-inducing information and focussing on what you love. Consider working with the fear through psychological methods; be that through mindfulness, an energy psychology session or using some of the free resources online.

Be love, not fear, and the way forward will be clear to you.

1. Apparently not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times.
2. This is called “posttraumatic growth” in the psychology literature.
3. Read this first, obviously.
4. Not the Daily Mail.
5. I do not recommend reading Stephen King’s The Stand at this current juncture
6. For a review of the evidence base, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550830718303513
7. Two common energy psychology techniques are the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and the Tapas Acupressure Technqiue (TAT). Both have a lot of free resources online you can find through a Google or YouTube search.