Staying Well While Sheltering in Place for COVID-19

We’ve been under “Shelter in Place” orders in the Bay Area for three weeks now. Time has felt alternatively condensed, expansive, and difficult to track for many of us who have had to change up our reliable, structured day-to-day habits that keep us well, healthy, and in contact with ourselves.

Right now, we are facing a “bizarre object,” a new virus that can be deadly for some, and painful and arduous for others. We are responding in the best way we can, by physically distancing ourselves from each other to prevent the transmission of the virus. What I’m finding is that when it comes to our mental health and how we’re coping with this, there is nothing new under the sun. The way each of us are facing this virus is a lot like how each of us face other disruptions, fears, chaos, and bizarreness in our lives. For folks who prefer to stay at home, it can feel good that everyone else is on board with this way of life, though it may also feel stifling and overwhelming to consider the reasons for this social change. For some folks, it can feel a lot like we’re avoiding each other for reasons other than public health, especially for folks who have a history of being fearful of others in general, or are used to feeling anxious about people rejecting or dismissing us. It can really mix people up to be forced to limit our social contact and ease of moving about in the world; with gyms, pools, and trails being closed, lots of outlets for stress and aggression are off-limits. And, for folks who need companionship, this kind of social limitation can sting. It may feel pretty easy to take it personally. (Please don’t.)

It is essential to not neglect your mental health. We need each other right now in so many ways: We need each other to do the right thing and stay home; we need to help each other out but maintain our boundaries; and above all, we need to stay well. 

For many of us, the things we have turned to to help us cope with the inherent challenges of life and death may not be available to us right now, and for other things, moderation may be more challenging to maintain. My advice is to do your best to keep focusing on tending to yourself gently and with compassion. Have some chicken soup, take naps, find some slow yoga poses, create art. You don’t always have to be on screens— try collage, mail art, writing poetry, sending voice memos to friends. Keep in contact with people by text or video chat so that you can check it in your own time. 

Treat yourself well and with care, lovingly, with a healing focus. Leave love notes to yourself. Paint a room in your house. Go through a drawer you haven’t gone through in a while. Clear out the cobwebs. Sleep more and often. If you’re a social person, contribute to a mutual-aid project in your neighborhood, by offering to buy groceries for your neighbors, mow their lawns, and drive people to appointments, if you can ensure you are taking proper safety precautions. There are support groups helping with food (East Bay Punks With Lunch is one) and there are ways to support our unhoused community members (Link to Hands On Bay Area: https://www.handsonbayarea.org/covid19). You could also organize a street- or apartment-wide “Howl at the Moon” each night, in honor of the healthcare workers who are supporting us. (Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-04/coronavirus-has-people-howling-at-the-moon)

By sheltering in place, we are not trying to hide: We are trying to be well, and protect each other. In this way, we have a real say in how our community fares, health-wise, in the long run. 

(Though it’s perfectly okay if you need to hide- sometimes, waiting for the storm to pass is the best coping mechanism we have.)

Boost your emotional care through tending to your heart, so that when you find yourself on the other side of this shelter-in-place, you have found more openness inside yourself as you re-engage with the social world. In this way, you can support the emotional health of our community, and yourself.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet