Stay Connected
I think all of us who go into this field share a desire to achieve, to perfect our skills. It's a lot of responsibility and so we scrutinize everything! We spend a lot of time at work and outside of work making sure we have what we need to get it right. With the pandemic, we've had extra worry about our patients, extra shifts, and the omnipresent anxiety about ourselves, families, and friends. A key strategy for helping patients in a disaster is to help the reconnect and stay connected. We are pack animals, and our family and social routines and rituals are an important part of replenishing our spirits. With families spread across the city, the state, or the country -- our contact with loved ones is already diminished. In our generation, we might take this for granted. We have only to look back just a generation or two to see large extended families, neighbors who we saw regularly, communities that might be stable for years. To that already weakened fabric, now add the isolation brought on by quarantine, loss of visits and social events.
This week's suggestion: just as we try to promote (any way we can) patients staying connected to loved ones, we need to do the same. In an era where one can use an app to call around the world for free, reaching out by audio, video or writing is so important. I recently received two old-fashioned written letters from an elderly friend, and it felt like a huge gift and such a treat.
Come on a journey with me. Take a few deep breaths. Inhale slowly. Exhale slowly. Come to the present in your body. Take a moment just to embrace your emotions just as they are. Check in with yourself. Can we be grateful that we have social contact with real humans (sometimes patients, sometimes each other)? What does it feel like to have that connection? Often, we spend more time with our work colleagues than our families. How can find more richness in those interactions? Can we be inspired by each other? Can we recognize in others the perseverance and courage that we often fail to see in ourselves?
Continue to breathe, see if you can let your inhalations and exhalations deepen. How are you feeling about your personal connections? Isolated? Lonely? Hungry for your loved ones and your "peeps"? How can we reach out more frequently and more deeply to them? How do we feel when we see them, even on video? Can we nourish ourselves with more of that? How do we feel settling into the deep rich embrace of a nice long phone call? Listen to what others are saying, but remember these are our personal relationships. We're not clinicians; we're not there to "take care" of them. What is it like to breathe and listen and without caretaking?
Breathe deeply some more. Go on a thought experiment with me. What did we talk about in the old days? Sometimes it seems like every conversation now is about politics and COVID and tragedy. When you embark on these nourishing talks -- remember that a lot of what made our conversations great was that it was about the little stuff. It was shopping and cooking and home life. It was participation in the community. Sometimes it was shooting the breeze over board games or cards (now possible online.) How can we do that today?
Finally, as you talk, can we look for the inspirational or the uplifting? Maybe, we need to sift our news feeds, looking for great stories. Remember that for every tragic story in Illinois today, there are stories of parents loving and protecting their children. There are people reaching out to seniors, feeding the hungry, or extending a hand. How can we use our connections with our loved ones to remember how many good and kind people there are in the world? Everyday there are millions of kindnesses that add up to a huge nourishing force that will defeat this plague. When we help each other remember that enormous good out there and feel it, we are all stronger and more connected. Breathe into the idea that every kindness you do ripples out and inspires more kindness.
Wow, who knew you could do all of that by staying connected?