5 Tips to Dealing With Anxiety, Depression, or PTSD Right Now

Manhattan is quiet again today. The sound of traffic is like a trickle of water compared to the rushing waterfall that it used to be. You don’t hear the cars honking like you normally do. It’s mostly just the occasional truck, ambulance, or police sirens now. I guess I’ve gotten used to this “new normal.”

The energy of the city is off, but you can still hear her heartbeat if you listen closely. Her heartbeat is carried on by the millions of essential workers around the city who are holding it together for all of us while we stay inside. Medical professionals, sanitation workers, doormen, delivery people, pharmacists, grocers, transportation workers, food service employees, police, firefighters, first responders, and many others. These are the New Yorkers that are sustaining our city’s heartbeat while we stay inside to protect what is left.

Today is Day 15 of my quarantine in New York City. Although, I’ve been kind of “unofficially quarantined” for the month of March since my trip to Europe was cancelled March 1st… Today, I woke up around 12pm-ish to the sound of my phone buzzing from the million notifications I missed all morning. My sleep patterns are totally crazy right now. Going to sleep anywhere from 2am-5am and waking up around 10am-12pm. Not really knowing what day it is, what the hell is going on, or when we will have more definitive answers about what the future holds.

It’s been 2 weeks since I was laid off from my job because of COVID-19. At first, I thought this time away would be an amazing opportunity for me. “I love living alone! I finally get to work on all the creative things I’ve been wanting to do! This will be totally fine!” I thought all of these empowering thoughts to myself. They were propelling me forward and keeping me positive during a time of uncertainty. And they helped for a while. Until they didn’t. My mind has certainly had its fair share of ups and downs in the last couple of weeks.

Like many others, I’ve been struggling to keep myself somewhat together on a daily basis because of the loneliness from isolation, the fear of uncertainty, the anxiety surrounding this situation, and the anger at myself for not using this time “productively” to achieve my goals and dreams.

I found myself in a negative downward spiral of beating myself up because I hadn’t been as productive as I had wanted to during the last two weeks of quarantine. I was trying to focus so much on the outer elements of self-care—eating well, doing face masks, working out, etc—that I failed to address the inner parts of self-care that matter just as much, if not more, during a time of crisis.

Did you catch that part? OUR MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS JUST AS MUCH AS OUR PHYSICAL HEALTH!

It brought me back to a moment last summer when my partner at the time had experienced a life threatening accident that left him with a broken neck (yes, he has since recovered, thankfully). The doctors kept telling us that he was lucky to not be paralyzed or dead with the type of injury he sustained. We hung onto that positivity for a while until the emotional whiplash of the trauma started to settle in. It wasn’t until a week or two after getting home from the hospital with him that my mind and body started experiencing the same post-traumatic stress symptoms that I’m experiencing right now in the middle of this pandemic. It’s like your mind holds onto all of those emotions and feelings while you’re in the thick of things, and then releases them onto you all at once when you’re finally in a “safer space” or when the dust settles a bit.

Last night, I realized that that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I’m feeling the PTSD of this experience hitting me and my city all at once. Even though the signs were all around us—China warned us/Italy warned us—we ignored them and carried on living our lives not thinking this would affect us. Cut to present day and it’s easy to see that we’re all currently experiencing the whiplash of this thing hitting us harder than we expected. We were not at all prepared for what just hit us.

Just like my ex's accident last summer, it took me about a week or two to really start to feel the mental effects of this situation. This past week was filled with hours-long crying episodes from the loneliness and sadness, going multiple days with only eating a few things because I couldn’t stomach food, having strange dreams, sitting in silence staring at my phone trying to find things to bring me comfort or laughter, and feeling a complete lack of motivation to do absolutely anything because I was so mentally drained from…I don’t know…nothing? On the one hand, I knew everything was going to be fine and that this would pass; but on the other hand, I kept going back and forth between the sadness, anger, grief, loneliness, and depression that was starting to plague me.

Little rays of hope have started to pull me out of this head space. Things like hearing the roaring sound of applause outside my window at 7pm the last few of nights because the city has been collectively doing it to show support for our essential workers; getting phone calls, texts, or messages from loved ones telling me they are here for me if I need anything; and finally, hearing that little voice inside say to me, “It’s perfectly OK to take the time you need to get back into the mental space of feeling safe to create again. You don’t HAVE to do anything to be good enough. You are ALREADY good enough. It is OK to allow these emotions to pass first instead of forcing yourself into something you’re not ready to do.”

Wow. Even just re-reading that over and over gives me those good vibes that I’m so desperate for right now. We’re all going to be dealing with this situation differently. There is no right or wrong answer on how to feel or how to work through your emotions about this. The good thing is that we will all get through this and come out the other side of it stronger together.

So for those of you who might also be struggling with anxiety, depression, or PTSD right now because of our current circumstances, I’ve come up with some points that will hopefully bring you a bit of peace while you’re on your path to healing on this journey.

1) Know That It Is Perfectly Fine To Just “BE.” You Are Already Good Enough

Yes, we have a lot of down time right now. But you don’t NEED to do anything to be good enough, worthy enough, or even productive right now. If you feel called to doing things or using this time in a way that feeds your soul and feels good for you, then go with that! But it’s perfectly fine to just let your mind, body, and spirit do the healing it needs right now. This is an unprecedented path we’re all navigating together and there are no rules here. It is safe and acceptable to just “be” right now and let your soul rest. When else in our lifetimes are we going to get this time to just let our minds and bodies chill the fuck out? (Sorry, Mom. I had to say the word fuck for this.)

2) Take Time For You—Whatever That Means

Use this time for yourself to do anything that you feel called to do. If that means watching crazy Netflix documentaries about tiger guys, do that. If that means painting your nails and doing a face mask, do that. If that means taking 10 naps a day because your mind is on overload, DO THAT. Use this moment of silence to really stop and listen to what your soul is asking you for right now. Answers come in the stillness and the silence. Quiet your mind and ask yourself what you really need right now and do it. Follow your soul’s guiding words towards the path that it’s leading you towards. The more you follow your inner voice, the happier you will be and the quicker you will continue your path to healing.

3) Rest + Breathe

This should go without saying, but please make sure you’re getting adequate rest right now. Proper rest will help heal your body so that it can have the energy to keep you in good health. This past week was so difficult for me to sleep. Every time that I heard the sirens outside, it made my heart drop. The sirens are always going off in this city and you can normally drown out the noise…but it’s different now because the sirens are often all that you hear. I was finally able to get myself to properly rest and sleep for at least 8 hours the last few nights and it made the biggest difference. I started to notice my anxiety shift and my overall mental state throughout the day has been stronger. Breathing techniques and meditation have also helped soothe me throughout the day. It centers me, puts me into alignment with myself, and reminds me that everything will be OK. Shift your focus to what is happening right now within yourself and trust that everything will be OK.

4) When You’re Ready, Recognize The Good Things Coming From This

Thankfully, I’ve been slowly coming to a place of acceptance and gratitude in my grieving process and begun to see a lot of good things that are coming from this. People in our communities are coming together in ways that they weren’t before. People are smiling or giving a nod at you in the store when they normally wouldn’t have in the past (anyone who has ever lived in NYC knows how huge this is). People are showing gratitude, love, and support in ways that we couldn’t have ever imagined.

But the true heroes of this story are the ones that people normally brush off: the grocers, the sanitation workers, the doormen, the drivers, the pharmacists, the medical professionals, the delivery people, the restaurant workers, the transportation workers, the bodega clerks, and all of our other essential workers who are risking their lives every day just to keep all of us safe. Just like after 9/11 we recognized all of our firefighters, police men and women, emergency responders, etc., we have a new wave of heroes emerging from this situation—AND THEY ARE SO DESERVING OF ALL THE PRAISE, ATTENTION, AND RECOGNITION RIGHT NOW! We truly need to lift these people up and thank them every time that we see them. They are our heroes. They are the ones keeping our cities afloat.

There are plenty of other silver linings to also consider. Like the fact that we are able to spend time with loved ones, time to heal, time to cook, time to rest, time to do whatever the hell we want. And this is not just happening in our country. The entire world is going through this. It’s actually kind of cool to think about. Everyone who is alive right now will know what it felt like to be in this situation together. Our global society will never be the same again and we will all come out the other end more connected because of it. It gives me chills to think about this perspective!

5) When You’re Ready, Start To Build Up Your Mindset Again

Take the time you need to cope, rest, and heal during this situation. Once you are ready, know that it is safe to start building up your mindset again to put yourself on a more mentally productive track. This will come at different paces and timelines for each of us, and that is perfectly fine. Everything always unfolds in perfect timing.

How can you start to build up your mindset again? By doing things that bring you joy, give you peace, make you laugh, comfort you, make you feel strong, or allow you to feel gratitude every single day. The more we do these things, the higher our vibration becomes. The higher our vibration is, the easier it is to build up our mindset again.

I’m going to be posting a free excerpt of my 30-Day Mindset Mastery Challenge every day for the next 30 days on Instagram beginning on April 1st for those of you who would like to follow along. You can also purchase the full eBook challenge right here if you’d like to follow along with the Daily Teachings. Doing this will help you step into a healthier, more productive mindset that will begin to shift your perspective to creating a life that serves you every day. It will also help me out immensely while I’m navigating the “new normal” of the moment while being unemployed because of this global pandemic :)

In addition to the 30-Day Mindset Mastery Challenge, I also have some new YouTube videos coming out this week on Law of Attraction + Manifestation, so please subscribe to my channel in order to be notified of that!

As always, I express my deepest gratitude to each of you who continue stick by me and support me throughout my journey. I’m looking forward to continuing to share it with you. Please feel free to share this message with others who might need to hear it right now.

Please stay safe right now <3

—xx, Ana Rebeca