If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that there is always another crisis around the corner in life. For many of us, crises come along maybe every two or three years. A job is downsized, a loved one passes away, or a health problem crops up. We tend to go into survival mode then we typically adjust accordingly until we reach another routine and wait for the next crisis to come.
In 2020, for many people it seemed that just as we became accustomed to one “new normal”, the next one came along. Just a quick perusal of any search engine for “mental health 2020/1” brings cornucopia of results ranging from adults to children. Obviously, 2020 was (hopefully) an outlier year with more disruption to people’s lives than any year arguably since 1941/2 and the beginning of World War II.
Of course, the difference between the 1940s and now is large. People had already been struggling with the Great Depression and even before the Depression the standard of living for most Americans was much lower than it is today. Many Americans were accustomed to change always lurking around the corner in some form or fashion. In the present there seems to be more of a sense that change in some ways can be avoided or at least put off until a more convenient time.
People were thrust into situations that were completely unforeseen and the results of which are only just now being reckoned. Of course, when something like this happens, it can be understandable to have difficulty grappling with the consequences. Our health can be taxed in many ways, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Just as with the virus itself, our response to the effects of the pandemic are typically a function of our “Mental Immune System” so to speak. There are ways to combat the effects of the virus that are just as within our control as the means of boosting our physical immune system. We decided to dive into some of the basic areas of our Mental Immune System and look at ways we can battle this situation just as we would a physical version of the virus.
Before we dive into these suggestions, please understand that despite anyone’s best intentions or ability to handle the situations at hand people can still have difficulties with coping due to mental problems or disease. That is why we used the term “crisis-resistant” instead of “crisis-proof”.
Learn to Expect and Welcome Change
If there is one thing that we at psychdomain.com will constantly advise a parent, it is to practice what you preach. Don’t expect your child to simply “deal” with a situation in any way more maturely than you as a parent do. Change is often a scary process and most people build their routine around the hope that they will never experience change. Then when it arrives our lives are suddenly thrown into upheaval. People panic, they say things they don’t mean, old fears and traumas come back to surface, and even when things settle back into a routine the scars are left behind making change even more feared the next time.
Learning to understand and, dare we say it, value change is not to say we don’t value family, tradition, heritage, culture, or anything we hold dear. It is precisely those things that carry us through times of difficulty and allow us to flourish. As Stephen Covey put it “The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value.” To not accept change as a fact of life is as foolish as jumping off a roof because you don’t believe in gravity.
Just the very act of accepting change and letting it show in your life gives you the ability to genuinely be happy if you choose to do so because there is not situation you need to fear if you understand that change is as much a part of life as gravity.
Equate Change with Opportunity
This may be something you have heard before in some context and it may seem “Pollyanna-ish” to say but just the very act of changing the way you frame problems changes the very nature of the problem, especially one you can do nothing about. Does worrying or falling into negative habits make the problem go away? Or does it make it larger? Is the way we handle problems the way we want our children to handle them? As mentioned above, the way you, as an adult, handle problems is often the template your child will use when they need to begin to learn to solve problems themselves.
Changing one’s mindset from a crisis focus to an opportunity focus can be so powerful as a means of finding something bigger and better in your life than you ever would have accomplished being stuck in the same rut for 25 years. Maybe losing a job leads to you going back to school and getting better job than you ever would have imagined. Maybe a health problem leads you to getting into better health than you have ever been in your life. Which template would you want your child to have in their head?
Do Not Try to Hide the Situation from Your Children
When unexpected changes come along in life it can seem natural to want to shelter your children from as much of the problem as possible. While this is likely a good idea in some cases, the older your children are the more they need to have information and guidance from you so they do not build assumptions in error and build a narrative of the situation that does not fit the actual situation. One way to avoid this, especially if you have embraced the above suggestions, is to sit your family down as a group and give them all the same information.
Children of all ages are typically dependent on their parents to some degree, which often means their feelings of security are tied to their interpretation of your mood or situation. If you try to hide a change situation from them, they will still often sense that something out of the ordinary is going on. This can lead to a change in behaviors on their part that may seem to you, and possibly even them, as being unconnected to the problem. This situation is sometimes called a “collective disturbance”. The child may not know explicitly what is happening but still can see that your reactions have changed which can cause them to overreact themselves.
Our suggestion for disseminating information when a situation like this happens is to structure a meeting with your family in a way that allows them to have information and guidance while being allowed to express how they feel about the situation in the moment. You know your children. Sugarcoat the information to the extent you need while giving them enough information to not allow them to fill gaps with distorted thinking. Tell them your plan for attacking the situation and ask them for any suggestions they may have for the situation. Allow them to express their fears and then validate those fears and use the situation as a means of helping them adjust their mindset in positive ways. If done earnestly, you may find your children will come out of this crisis better prepared and with a better mindset than before.
Of course, there are some children, and adults, who are not capable at the present time to face unpredictable changes. Obviously, they will need extra support and care. Allow them to move at their own pace to the extent you can given the situation. If they become overwhelmed, it may be time to seek help.
Change is always going to be part of all our lives. The better you are able to communicate and exemplify this to your children, the better they may be able to show it in their own lives. They will at least have a template that gives them that opportunity.
Please contact us at psychdomain.com and we will be more than happy to help you structure your responses to change during these unpredictable times.