How Online Therapy Can Help You Through COVID19
In the midst of COVID19, social distancing, and economic crisis, the stress during this uncertain time is through the roof. Our individual lives and the way our communities look has changed drastically in a very short period of time. Every hour brings a different news report. We’re trying to figure out how to get supplies like toilet paper and disinfecting wipes, how to support local restaurants and small businesses, how to work from home and home school, all while wondering when this will end and what the lasting impact will be. So, here’s how online therapy can help you through COVID19.
If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable.
We tend to agree with the beloved Fred Rogers, and know through brain science that when we put words around an experience, it helps us to navigate through the experience. At Harper Therapy, we specialize in anxiety, trauma, and its impact on relationships, and here’s what we see…
Collective Trauma. This pandemic is a threat to our safety, security, and sense of well-being.
Grief. We’re grieving the way things were before. Lives lost. Not being able to say good-bye in person to students, clients, colleagues, and even friends and family members before implementing social distancing.
Strain on Relationships. All of the stress comes out sideways on the people we care about the most, and before you know it you start to feel that even your partner is a threat.
Here’s what you should know …
So, we’ve put words to some of the things we are experiencing during this unprecedented time. Now what? Understand that…
Feeling Anxious and Overwhelmed is Normal. The brain’s job is to keep us alive, and when it perceives a threat, it engages the primal fight/flight/freeze/panic stress response. This threat response is meant to allow us to take action to keep us alive, but it’s not meant to be turned to the “on” position for long periods of time, as we’re experiencing during COVID19. The ongoing stress taxes our nervous system, making us less able to take helpful action and actually makes us more susceptible to getting sick.
Getting Support is Necessary. As social beings, humans were never meant to go through crisis alone, and this is especially true during an ongoing global pandemic. But getting support is a bit more complicated with social distancing in place and that fact that our existing social support systems are currently taxed by the same stressor.
Online therapy can help you through COVID19
During times of crisis, we tend to revert to old, unhelpful ways of coping.
Therapy can:
Create new neuropathways to more helpful coping skills.
Help you look at challenges from a different perspective to develop more effective tools.
Strengthen your ability to pivot and be resilient (these are muscles that we all have that can be strengthened).
Save your relationship.
Help you to navigate through a difficult time while maintaining your values and integrity so that you can look back on this time in the future with no regrets on how you handled it.
Online therapy looks like:
You, stepping away from the chaos for 50 minutes so that you can return a better version of yourself.
You. Your computer, phone, tablet, or other device. A quiet space. Your therapist. Similar to a session in the office, but with appropriate social distancing.
Find out more:
Check out our website and like our Facebook page to get our daily tips for navigating through COVID19. Call 813-434-3639 to schedule a free consultation to see how Online Therapy Can Help You Through COVID19.
Special help for our heroes:
We value the work of those who are on the front lines of the crisis and are offering reduced fee sessions to:
First Responders
Health Care Professionals
