Compassion In COVID

Over the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a lot of mental health campaigns telling us to pay close attention to our minds and there was good reason for this. We all felt it, the pandemic took a mental toll on all of us. There were many causes for this mental toll and many things that we can do to help us recover from it. I spoke to Dr. Stan Steindl, the adjunct associate professor at the UQ School of Psychology about this matter and how compassion can help us make it through these tough times.

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BEN: The pandemic has caused a lot of change and that has scared a lot of people. Why is change so distressing? STEINDL: I think one of the things that humans are almost innately wired to struggle with is change. We don't deal well with uncertainty. We like the familiar.

Change or uncertainty activates what we think of as the threat system, which is a part of our brain that is programmed to respond to threats by activating all sorts of physiological aspects. You may know it as the 'Fight or Flight' response. We're not great with change, because change means uncertainty and uncertainty means danger. B: In your work, you talk about how our emotions manifest into different selves within us and essentially take over our personality and actions. How does that relate to COVID-19? S: I think there are three main different responses that people are having at the moment. We can have a part of ourselves which is like our 'angry self', which feels like having obstacles put in our way or things are being taken away and we react with frustration and have this urge to kind of fight back. We also experience anxieties. This 'anxious self' stems from us not knowing what is going on. We keep asking 'What if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong?' and we feel a lot of stress because of these thoughts.

And finally, our 'sad self'. COVID-19 has caused a lot of loss for everyone. Whether this loss is practical and significant things like job loss and financial loss, or whether it be just through social distancing and the loss of contact with loved ones, people that are really important to us. This loss really translates into sadness.

And those are probably the big three really is we have angry, anxious and sad selves that in one way or another are all rising up in response to this situation at the moment.

Essentially, this is to say we all have conflicting emotions within ourselves. B: Do you reckon being introverted or extroverted has anything to do with the reactions people are having? S: Like, always, introversion and extroversion both have their good bits and they're not-so-good bits. In a situation like this, one might feel like introversion would be useful because actually the introvert might like to stay at home and do their own thing work on their own projects or something like that. But on the other hand, extroversion is actually helpful too, because it might be the extrovert that actually feels motivated to stay in contact with others and reach out and offer support to others. To be honest, I actually feel like there are some positives with both of these styles. I think what is really important is the idea of mind awareness. What I mean by that is just if we can be aware of our own minds, then we can notice what's happening in our minds and if these more difficult emotional selves are starting to arise.

Mind awareness can be as simple as asking yourselves questions like Am feeling angry anxious or sad? What is my tendency towards extroversion or introversion? How is this tendency manifesting right now and do I need to change it?

Then to take mind awareness further, you start to think about the choices you can make to begin shifting in a more positive and helpful mindset. Compassion plays a key role in this process, both self-compassion and compassion to others. B: In your work, you have also mentioned the compassionate self within us and how we should be, I guess, invoking it during this time. So what does being compassionate to ourselves mean? S: As well as the threat system, we have another aspect of the human brain: the soothing affiliative system. This is the ability of humans to comfort or nurture or look after or feel safe together. Out of that system comes this idea of compassion. Compassion really is a sensitivity to suffering in both ourselves, but also others around us, and the commitment to try to alleviate or prevent that suffering. I think that that's the kind of shift I was alluding to before. Is there a way with mind awareness to shift into something more like a compassionate self? Shifting into this mindset helps us think of the why behind our actions and looking at the reasoning behind our sacrifices grants us a little comfort B: Do you have any advice on how we can be compassionate to ourselves? Are there any questions we should be asking ourselves? S: Well, the first bit is that the threat system is very much about the sympathetic nervous system activation. The sympathetic nervous system is kind of like the accelerator of the brain and the central nervous system. We want to try to think of how to regulate it and slow us down. And the best way really to hack into all of that is through breathing. And I know some people think 'Yeah, yeah, breathing.' and accompany that sentiment with an exaggerated eye-roll but it's very powerful to be able to slow down the breathing. Creating a slow, smooth, regular soothing kind of pattern to our breath really does calm us down. The next bit is to think, 'Okay, I've slowed down the body. How can I create a sense of safeness?' COVID-19 is affecting our sense of social safety, the sense of being safe with others, and safe in our environment and we want to try and think of ways to bring back the social comfort we used to feel pre-COVID.

Imagery is really useful for creating a sense of safety, being able to imagine faces or contexts or experiences, or people with whom we feel safe and just using the power of imagery to create some comfort. The third step is essentially taking care of you: Self-compassion. It's a tricky one because it's not always the thing that just feels good in the moment. Self-compassion might sometimes be 'No, I need to get up in the morning and go for that walk.' or 'I need to that study and those chores.'

You have to think about doing the things that will relieve the stress you are experiencing. B: Just out of interest, compared to past global disasters, how do you think the psychological aftermath will differ? S: I was thinking about this the other day, World War Two, that lasted for six years. Six years of people back home waiting to hear about the latest casualties. There was a long hard road to recovery with something like that. Us? We are just a few months into it. And if it is to continue really to go well from here, then perhaps we will bounce back in a fairly OK amount of time. The world has been through some major disasters which have been embedded in the psyche afterward. But certainly, even with this pandemic, it's just so pervasive and on everyone's mind, it creates such a sense of threat that I think there will be something of a - even at the risk of sounding sensationalized - mental health pandemic that will follow all of this around the world. We will be having to work with people and help people to recover psychologically after an event like this.

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The struggles we went through, no matter how small or how big, impacted us. For me - and I think a lot of us were - I was left with questions about the purpose of trying and staying strong during quarantine and social isolation, especially when it was so easy to let go, give up, and watch Netflix instead. Being compassionate to ourselves means sometimes doing the hard tasks that will give us a sense of achievement and accomplishment. Doing this helps us still progress in life even when everything feels so stagnant right now. Dr. Steindl also spoke of how we should still strive to have the communal mindset even when we are isolating. Humans are pack animals and when we do things that are a part of the group, it feels comfortable.

This also goes as far as having a little empathy for those around us and the struggles that they are going through. If you want to look at more of Dr. Steindl's work, here are few links you can check out: https://psychologyconsultants.com.au/teammemberprofile/dr-stan-steindl/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCujCvGkc_TFF7KmA0Sk4E7A