Free Yourself From Fear: Coping with the Coronavirus, COVID-19. Day 7

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Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

A colleague, Dr Naomi Baum, has written a free booklet, which I will present here, with her permission. It is a 7 day journey, which I will present over the next 7 days. Her website: naomibaum.com

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Before getting started, I recommend that you get a notebook that will accompany you as you read this book and do the exercises. Any size notebook will work. I personally favour notebooks with nice covers, but that is up to you. This notebook will be your Journal. Keep it near you, as you read this book, so that you can do the exercises that require writing and track your progress.

HOW THIS WORKS

The is written as a seven-day journey. That means that each day covers a different topic. You can work through the book in one week, choosing one exercise from each chapter. However, many of you may prefer to take it more slowly. In order to do that, you may turn each day into a full week, and spend some time over the week doing the exercises, trying out some new behaviours, and reflecting on what worked for you and what did not. There is often more than one exercise suggested. Feel free to experiment. Be forewarned. Not every suggestion here will work for every person. Each one of you is different. Find what works for you.

This course, written by Naomi Baum, uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT.

There are many other forms of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is called the talking therapy, after Sigmund Freud. There is no "one-size-fits-all".

DAY 7: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Congratulations! You have reached Day Seven. It has been quite a week, and quite a journey! We have covered a lot of ground very quickly, and you may want to actually slow down the clock, and turn each day into a week. Thus, you can spend a week learning how to breathe, another week looking at your thoughts, and so on. This will give you more time to reflect on where you are, as well as a chance to incorporate some of the suggested changes into your life.

Change takes time and does not usually happen overnight. This book has introduced you to many new ideas and activities, and now you can go back at your leisure, and choose the chapters or exercises that really spoke to you.

As you review each exercise, you may be surprised to discover that each time you do an exercise the experience will be different. There is an ancient Greek proverb of the philosopher Heraclitus that speaks to this. "No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man." What that means, is that life is always changing, as are our feelings, thoughts and behaviours.

As you integrate the various pieces of the puzzle of thoughts, feelings and behavior as they relate to your life in general, and more specifically to the way you are dealing with your fears related to the Coronavirus can be helpful to consider activities that can help you cope better. Psychological research shows that people cope better when they engage in activities that:

1. Give them a sense of achievement

2. Bring them closer to others

3. Are enjoyable

Think about the activities that fill your day. How many of them provide one, two or all three of these benefits? If you are curious about how your typical day or week measure up, try the following exercise.

EXERCISE: ACTIVITY LOG

You will need your Journal for this exercise.

1. Title a fresh page in your Journal with the words "Activity Log."

2. Then number the lines from 1-24. Each line represents an hour of the day.

3. Draw four columns, with the first being the widest, and the last three of equal width. Title the first column- Activity, the second column- Achievement, the third column-Closeness and the fourth column- Enjoyment. The table should look something like this:

UNFORTUNATELY, I CANNOT REPRODUCE THE TABLE HERE. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO TO NAOMI'S WEBSITE TO SEE IT!

hour Activity Achievement Closeness Enjoyment

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

4. Think about yesterday. What did you do? How did you fill your hours? Try to recall what you did, and fill in the activity column. Some activities may take several hours (for example, sleep). Some may take much less than an hour.

5. After you have completed the activity log, rate each activity on a scale from one to five. Ask yourself:

- How much of a sense of achievement did I feel when I finished that activity?

- How close did I feel to other people as I was doing that activity, or immediately afterwards?

- How much enjoyment did I get out of the activity?

6. Have a look at your chart. What do you notice? How many activities give you a feeling of accomplishment? How many bring you closer to others? How many give you a sense of enjoyment?

7. Balance is key here. Most individuals need a healthy mix of all three areas: achievement, closeness to others and enjoyment. Have a look at what is missing in your life, and think about ways you might increase it. Do you need to find something meaningful to do, to fill your days with a sense of achievement? Are you working very hard, and achieving lots, but feeling very lonely? How much are you enjoying the activities you are doing? Is there a way to infuse more enjoyment into your day?

CONCLUSION As you continue to navigate the journey of life, I wish you all the best and hope that some of these tools, exercises and ideas have helped you. I would love to hear from you about your experiences with these exercises, and hope to continue improving this book with your feedback and comments. I can be reached at: [e-mail] or through my website at naomibaum.com .

Safe journeys and best of luck!

If this has been helpful, remember: you can do as many of these exercises as you like. You can even engage inn online activities, such as taking a course, or talking to friends and family via Skype, FaceTime, Zoom.

Be creative & be well!

Ros