Covid-19 has forced us to become parents, teachers, and workers all wrapped into one. One person, one household, and for some even one room. This is no easy feat. In Part 1, I explained the way our brain responds to stressful situations like this and shared ten tips to manage anxiety. In Part 2, I will share my list of ten tips to retain some form of work-life balance in our lives during these chaotic times.
Marcia
The Neurological Impact of a Crisis and How to Cope
There are moments in time when you can feel the history books being written. I was 16 years old when 9/11 happened. It was one of those defining moments of which even my pubescent brain knew that it would change things forever. It did. The world was never the same. And I think the covid-19 situation will be the second one of those moments. For the past few weeks, I have been wondering what the post-covid world will look like. But I can’t seem to figure it out. Will this solve our climate change issues? Will it bring us together as people? Will it sink our economy? Is this the mass extinction event that some have been fearing for years? The honest answer is, I don’t know. I do know that in a three-week time span, my life has completely changed. And I’m not sure I know how to deal with it. Being a neuroscientist means I have a lot of theoretical knowledge about how to deal with uncertainty, unpredictability, or crisis. It doesn’t mean I’m able to put it all in practice. I’m struggling just like everyone else. But since I know that helping others is an effective way to reduce anxiety (more on that later), I figured I could at least share what I know.
The corona virus: prehistoric brains, predictive overdrive, and the power of play
The world is scared. Scared that the end is near, that God is punishing us, or that we’ll run out of toilet paper. We are experiencing mass anxiety on an unprecedented scale. It is global, there is no getting away from it. And even if there was somewhere to go you wouldn’t be able to get there, because up to 90% (!) of all air travel has been suspended. I’m not an epidemiologist, not an infectious disease expert, not a physician, and not Donald Trump (who has ‘a natural ability for science’, because his uncle was a professor at MIT). So, I can’t tell you if we’re going to be OK, or if this is the prologue to some end-of-days, apocalyptic mass extinction event. But I am a neuroscientist so I can tell you why not knowing how dangerous COVID-19 actually is, freaks us out even more than knowing for sure that it is dangerous.
Downtime, the Importance of Recovery
With the Formula One season finished and the final race at Abu Dhabi back in December feeling like a very distant memory, now is a great time to look at the importance of drivers (and all of us) having some downtime to rest and recover.
At the time of writing, there are just 71 days until the 2021 season kicks off with FP1 in Bahrain. Now, with the current pandemic situation, it’s very possible that the season start may be postponed, and various race dates changed around like last season. This kind of unknown in its own right can cause underlying anxiety and stress.