Joyful ways to lift the veil of fear

Experts share uplifting ways to fight fear with the greatest tools you have: empathy for others and compassion for yourself

Just a few months ago, you were excitedly planning a summer vacation, and the only strategizing required to go grocery shopping was jotting down a list…not donning gloves and a mask. As you’ve been adjusting to the “new normal” triggered by the pandemic, the once-mundane rituals of life now produce extreme anxiety. And questions no one has the answers to— How will we get through this? What will life look like a few months from now?— send your stress levels soaring.

One of the many challenges that makes anxiety surrounding COVID-19 unique is the deluge of worries coming at us all at once, observes psychologist Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D., author of The Worry Cure. While we’ve evolved to focus on one challenge at a time, our brain isn’t equipped to multitask on such a scale, as everything from concern for our loved ones to financial uncertainty causes intrusive fears to hijack our thoughts. Notes Leahy, “This supercharged stress affects the parts of the brain that control abstract thinking, making productive worry, or problemsolving, increasingly difficult.”

But there is good news: “Simply recognizing that we’re all grappling with this fear together can help us fight the tunnel vision that fear causes and direct our focus back to the strengths we have within us,” assures therapist Kathleen Smith, Ph.D., author of Everything Isn’t Terrible. Read on to learn how to overcome anxiety and doubt by unleashing the power of hope and courage.

Though your job seems safe for now, your husband was laid off a few months ago, and you feel almost paralyzed with concern for what’s ahead. “Normal anxiety is adaptive, which means it motivates us to plan, but when our system is flooded with worry, it becomes overwhelming and we freeze,” explains Dr. Dalton-Smith. “It’s like being confronted by a bear in the woods and trying not to frighten it.”