Managing stress during Covid-19

The spread of the coronavirus has distorted and eliminated our way of life, our daily habits, destroying all forms of social relationships. The fear of being infected, of losing a loved one or a job, is taking our certainties away.

Stress affects us, suffocates us, we are no longer able to control it: if we do not react, if we are unable to manage it or at least to live with it, the risk of jeopardizing our balance and falling into depression is high. We need to run for cover and to put in place self-defence mechanisms.

How can we best face this difficult period of indefinite duration? Claudia Vece, founder of Quantasia and Neuro-emotional Coach explains it.

Each person experiences their personal stress, not everyone is equal. The first strategy, in this particular moment of life, could be to turn off the television in order not to be influenced by the media that tends to amplify fears. For the first time we found ourselves confined at home and some of us had much more time available. Slowing down in life allows us to contemplate and to take care of ourselves, to gather in the inner world, to do what we love, to cultivate hobbies. All this promotes well-being, which has many nuances; one of these is emotional well-being which allows us to stay in balance, adapting ourselves flexibly to the situations we live in. Emotions live in the body and the body is the subconscious mind. We cannot heal a wound with our mind, as we cannot control emotions. The control of emotions is a myth to dispel. They are like muscles and must be trained. Let’s take an example: when we learned how to drive, all our conscious attention was aimed at controlling traffic, mirrors, gearbox and all those elements that had to be anticipated, learned and integrated. By repeating the gestures and training we taught the body to drive for us. Today we sit in the car and think about work, problems, we make a phone call or listen to the radio and, while our attention is elsewhere, our body drives the car. This means that, by repeating precise sequences, the brain learns and the body reproduces for us; the brain is a recorder of past experiences and reflects them for us at any moment, whether we are aware of it or not. Emotions work like this principle. A person who lives in constant anxiety and stress has not acquired and integrated strategies to regulate his internal emotional state, therefore their mood reacts according to external events. In essence, it is the environment that has power over the state of well-being. Neuro-emotional regulation strategies are fundamental, everyone should invest in themselves to acquire and integrate them. Training the ability to transform ill-being into emotional well-being in a short time allows you to use energies in favour of visions, rather than channelling them towards what you fear.