Simone Sobel, LCSW

More empathy, more tolerance...what we need to face the challenges we are all experiencing right now.

This photo, created by talented friend Rachel Bodenstein Linkwald of Shayna Image is instantly iconic. It says everything about our moment. Aren't we, all of us, Corona Woman?

Sometimes, in trauma recovery, it is necessary to let go of even our closest relationships. Because when physical or emotional safety does not exist in a relationship, love becomes irrelevant.

Since quarantine has zapped date night, couples ( especially partners whose love language is Quality Time Together) might be wondering, what now? The Gottman Institute has some great ideas for stay-at-home dates. And while that idea might seem antithetical to the concept of a date which, by definition, means time away together from all of the home responsibilities that can weigh our most important relationship down, we are all having to tap into stores of creativity right n...ow. And that may not be such a bad thing after all. It can be a great way of prioritizing each other’s needs and strengthening bonds in a challenging time. Try one (or all) of these date ideas that you can do at home together, or from a distance. 1. Play a board game. If you’re apart, play a game online using playingcards.io or another online game 2. Try a deck in the Gottman Card Decks App. 3. Learn a new language together using Duolingo. 4. Dress up for date night. 5. Watch each other’s favorite movie. If you’re apart, try hosting a Netflix Party. 6. Get crafty! Make a scrapbook of all your favorite memories together. 7. Host Happy Hour with craft cocktails or mocktails. If you’re apart, cheers over FaceTime or Zoom. 8. Attend a virtual concert together. 9. Bake or cook a new meal together. If you’re apart, try making the same meal and share your taste test over FaceTime or Zoom. 10. Create line drawings of each otherdon’t look at the paper or lift the pen. 11. Dance to your favorite music. If you’re apart, make each other a virtual mixtape to listen to. 12. Choose a song and rewrite the lyrics to it. Perform it for each other if you’re feeling brave. 13. Teach each other something about you 14. Watch an insightful documentary and learn something new! 15. Write each other letters about what you love and admire about each other. 16. Read Eight Dates together. Already read Eight Dates? Revisit a date from your favorite chapter. 17. Listen to each other’s favorite album. 18. Have a cook-off Chopped style with the same ingredients. 19. Build a fort. 20. Karaoke nightstream karaoke videos on YouTube and sing along. 21. Play Pictionary or charades. 22. Go to the spa. Light some candles, put on facials, maybe even give each other a massage.

Did you know that looking at animals increases your levels of dopamine and oxytocin? These are our happy chemicals that create a greater sense of pleasure, well-being and interconnectedness. And who couldn’t use more of that right now? Here is a wonderful new resource a cousin of mine from South Africa shared, for all you wildlife lovers out there. Enjoy and just make sure to get your time zones correct! (South Africa is 6 hours ahead of US EST). During lock down, Kruger Par...k are doing two game drives a day which you can watch live on You Tube for all wild life lovers. Morning drive is 5.30-8.30am and afternoon drive is 3.30-6.30pm. The site is called Wild Earth, here is the link, https://wildearth.tv/safarilive/. Interesting, informative questions pop up and are answered by the game rangers. They’ve discovered a hyena who has three or four day old pups which they check on each drive. See more

Here is a wonderful resource to help with the increased anxiety and stress we are all feeling at the moment. Try it with some headphones whenever you are feeling stress or worry, or before bed, if you are struggling with sleep. The video is simply calming music with alternating tones for bilateral brain stimulation. BLS is something we use in EMDR therapy to stabilize PTSD symptoms and reprocess trauma. There are several theories about how it works. One is that BLS taxes work...ing memory and degrades the vividness of negative stimuli in certain parts of the brain and allows information to be stored in long term memory. Another is that it creates an orienting response, which is when your nervous system is diverted while it orients itself to new stimuli. It then is able to habituate to the original negative stimuli without finding it dangerous or distressing. BLS may also work to reactivate and reconnect neural circuits that go offline when we go into fight or flight/panic mode, and thereby calm and ground us. One other theory is that bilateral stimulation stimulates the vagus nerve, which transmits or mediates sensory information from the body to the brain and can create an autonomic response to calm anxiety in the nervous system. Whatever the brain mechanism, we know it works to: Relax us and lower physical symptoms of anxious hyperarousal (racing heart, sweating etc..) Cause our thinking to become more fluid and flexible (so we can solve problems instead of feeling stuck Make us feel distanced or further away from our problems Lower our worry Try it! Let me know how it worked for you.

Nobody says it like Dan Siegal. Essential viewing for parents home with children right now and feeling stressed about keeping them schooled and entertained and busy. We forget that we don't have to be busy helping them to DO all the time. We just need to attune, to relate to them. This is hard for us Americans, because we are so focused on moving, going, doing, producing, achieving all the time. But being shut in affords us the perfect opportunity to relearn how to truly BE with our kids.

I'm sharing a beautifully written article sent by a dear friend and colleague. Thank you Lauren Foster of Perspectives Center for Holistic Therapy. It's all about how to cope with the deep, fundamental sense of aloneness and isolation and fear of abandonment that coronavirus has engendered in us, and how that might present a meaningful opportunity for refection, self growth and understanding, and ultimately healing of both self and the world.

As I watch our kids adapt to makeshift work spaces and learning schedules at home; as my clients faithfully sign up for video therapy sessions one after the other; as our piano and guitar teachers figure out how to use Zoom to conduct music lessons; as friends share free and helpful family resources and ideas on social media; as my personal trainer gamely posts a quick ab workout with her online, I am in awe. And I am reminded of this:

Freud had a name for the type of panic we are seeing with coronavirus: thanatophobia. Fear of death. Ultimately this is the source of our fears. Existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom categorizes death fear into four categories: 1.) loss of self or someone else 2.) loss of control 3.) fear of the unknown-what will happen after death and 4.) fear of pain and suffering. While we are all taking precautions to avoid becoming infected or infecting others physically, here are some th...ings we can do to manage psychologically during this pandemic: 1. Recognize it’s normal and very human, this fear. We all have it. 2. Talk about your underlying fear with a trusted loved one. 3. If you feel panic overtaking you, slow your breathing and focus only on the sound and feeling of your breath as it flows in and out of your body 4. Manage your self talk and be in control of your thought process. What we think becomes how we feel and react/behave. Don’t catastrophize. It’s a cognitive error that can cause your fear to overtake you. 5. Spend time with your loved ones doing meaningful and enjoyable activities. A lot of death fear is about fear of not having lived a life of meaning. Create meaning mindfully in the moment by taking this time to focus on relationships. 6. Pray, meditate or say the Serenity Prayer, which is all about ceding control to a higher power and feeling ok with that. 7. Recognize that internal control comes first. If we can regulate our thoughts and feelings so they don’t paralyze us, we will be in a much better position to cope with unpredictable and scary external factors that we may have less control over. 8. Use your imagination to take you to a safer place-the beach, a peaceful forest, a dream vacation you’ve always wanted to take. Get your senses involved. Close your eyes and deepen your experience by asking yourself, what am I seeing right now? Feeling? Smelling? Hearing? Tasting?. 9. Self soothe with calming, nurturing activities or by engaging your senses. An anxious mind cannot exist in a calm body.