The corona pandemic can’t help but make you think about time: time in lock down. We’ve never lived through anything like this before. No one knows when this will be over. The unprecedented halt to life as we’ve known it comes with an uncertainty level that goes beyond the uncertainty that heretofore has run parallel to our lives. Anxiety flows naturally from uncertainty. Hope is the antidote.
Usually, a good plan in the face of uncertainty is to stay grounded in the present. But when in a pandemic-fertility quest, the present feels like an enemy. You want what nine months from now could bring, and you want it this minute. And likely your clinic has been closed.
Lockdown only ratchets up uncertainty and with it anxiety and disorientation. ‘Fertility Treatment Interruptus’ thrusts the whole parenting quest into another dimension. If your emotional well-being doesn’t fly out the window, replaced by fear, I’ll eat my hat without salt and pepper.
No amount of money or influence can match up to the power of this microscopic viral enemy. But to rail against the unfairness or lousy luck with woulda-coulda-shoulda, doesn’t change the fact that you are where you are. But you are not entirely powerless under these circumstances either. Fearful, anxious, uncertain or whatever, you can invest in learning and practicing ways that keep hope alive.
Fear, anxiety and uncertainty act like a guillotine separating mind from body. Your body may be walking the earth, but if your mind is touring the solar system in a frenzy, this separation both causes and intensifies the fear, anxiety and uncertainty like a snake devouring itself by its tail. Those emotions are logical when your dream seems to be denied. But just as logical is your capacity to ”re-inhabit’ your body. When you do, anxiety subsides. That allows you to live through this challenge without donating months or years to not being at home within your Self.
Waves of anxiety are bound to sneak up on you. But anxiety is a thief that robs you of hope. You can train your mind to override your anxious brain, episode by episode, thereby re-membering your connection to hope, even when hope is lost intermittently.
Social distancing is how we are standing up to the pandemic. Intimacy with yourself is what can make it possible for you go the distance to your victory. A very powerful combatant to anxiety is the oasis that can be found in a hypnotic trance. Self-Hypnosis can be your superpower in this double-barreled battle of pandemic and parenthood.
To find out more about how to learn self-hypnosis, contact Helen Adreine, LCSW, at helen@helenadrienne.comhelen@helenadrienne.com or call 212-758-0125.
