Excessive Emotions vs. Realistic Measures

Excessive Emotions That We Can Not Control Might Prevent Us From Taking Realistic Measures

In this text, you will find answers to some frequently asked questions about methods of dealing with our anxieties, family communication, approach to children and ways to protect our mental health during the coronavirus epidemic.

In such an epidemic, people’s anxiety also increases. How can we deal with this anxiety?

In this epidemic period, triggering of anxiety in a proper level is actually normal, even a good thing. Because, the lack of anxiety can cause us not to take precautions. Besides, excessive anxiety can stress us and prevent acting right. This is called the stress performance curve in psychology. A reasonable level of stress is required. During this epidemic, many people will have intensity in emotions such as fear, anxiety, doubt and sadness. In fact, it is necessary to recognize and accept these feelings to some extent. Because we can only deal with an emotion, if we notice that. But we should know that extreme emotions that we cannot control can also prevent us from taking realistic precautions. So we should have some standards.

For example, the World Health Organization says that the most basic criterion for dealing with this disease is hand washing and 20 seconds is enough for this. If you increase your hand washing time to minutes, beyond what is recommended, or if you start doing such another extreme things, you can harm your body and paralyze your life.

Anxiety level should be determined by standards. It is necessary to determine the normal, based on the Ministry of Health’s suggestions.

The concerns of the elders’ worry the children. How should we explain this situation to them?

We should definitely talk to our children about coronavirus. If we avoid it, they may get some wrong information from television or their surroundings. It is important to make children feel safe while speaking, like saying “This virus has little or no effect on children. People may look stronger when they grow up, but children are stronger against this virus.” We should give such an information that children will not be affected by this, but they should be protected. Children may feel fear that something will happen to their parents or loved ones. Again, we should emphasize that we can protect ourselves by taking precautions. Also, we need to ensure that children stay away from television. Because many channels give the numbers of those who died from the coronavirus. Addressing this may scare children. Also, children should be allowed to interact with their peers on social media at a reasonable level.

We can get up-to-date news from social media very fast, but a lot of false information is also spreading, which causes panic. How should we use social media in this process?

The reliability of sources of the news is very important in this period. There is a variety of information on the net, because social media enables many people to speak, and some of them are chaotic. Social media is open to manipulation. That is why, we must get the information from health authorities, reliable scientific sources, the World Health Organization or the Ministry of Health.

Many people now work from home, elders in the high-risk group are not recommended to leave home, schools are on vacation. It is a fact that we have forgotten “spending time together at home” with our family for a long time. How should we go through this period at home?

Modern life is very fast, we were all in extreme mobility. Maybe this is the first time that we had to slow down necessarily. In general, slowdowns become on holidays, but they are relatively short-lived. This is a long-period slowdown and requires staying at home for a long time. People needs socialization. But this time we have to socialize at home, with our family. It is important to establish a home life, to create a living order at home. According to the flow theory in psychology, if a person struggles with something enough to forget about time and space, it provides life flow for him and is the source of happiness. This process can also provide an opportunity to reflect on ourselves and our lives. It also provides an opportunity to establish close social relationship with the family. This will be a very interesting and transformative experience for many people. Being able to stay at home will also determine the level of risk for the person.

How should we communicate with children, especially at home, during this process?

There was a disproportion between the time spent at work and the time spent with children for working mothers and fathers. Each crisis also creates a number of opportunities, and this is an opportunity to spend longer time with our children. By nature, the child is more prone to physical activity, playing and being busy. As you can see on the web, there many board games. We can play these games with our children, chat or read books together. In addition, efforts must be made for children to adapt to distance education.

After the quarantine period in China, there were reports that people applied to the courts to divorce. How this can be evaluated?

One of the issues that social psychology states is after major disasters and wars, divorces and having babies increase. Because of the change of order, behavioral problems arise under stress. This may increase the probability of conflict and divorce. On the other hand, family solidarity may also increase. So this process either strengthens marriages or disrupts relationships. Because extraordinary states change normal states.

What about stockpiling of food, medicine and medical supplies?

Common psychologies can be seen in different cultures in pandemics and natural disasters. According to Steven Taylor, author of The Psychology of Pandemics, there exist at least five major psychologies. Firstly, people do shopping because they want to stockpile food for an uncertain future. Secondly, in this period, people incline more to conspiracy theories in terms of their thinking. Because these theories give sharp explanations. Thirdly, a racism develops against the origin region of the epidemic. There has already been an exclusion and pressure against the Chinese all over the world. Fourth, it often causes people to accumulate into hospitals. Fifthly, people can’t stand being alone and social distance, and have difficulties living in a home-based way. It is about the nature of human. We can see this situation more or less in every society. It should be controlled and managed by being aware of emotions and psychology.

Finally, what are recommendations to protect our mental health in these challenging days?

As humanity, we are going through a difficult period. We can overcome these difficult days when we do the right things simultaneously as a society. Think of people rowing a canoe or a boat. They go wherever they want only if they paddle in a synchronized and organized way.

There are three things that can enable us to overcome this difficult period easily: The first is to find a drug or vaccine for this virus, the second is to increase the capacity of hospitals. Both of these are not jobs that will happen in a short term. The third thing is to learn the way the virus spreads, so that people can act in a way that stops the virus. The virus spreads when people did not act considering the nature of this virus. In Italy, people suddenly migrated from north to south and south became infected. People who did not stop socializing, spread the virus elsewhere. At the end, we should know that man is a strong being and will come out of this crisis. We can overcome this situation only by managing our psychology correctly, paying attention to hygiene and social distance, and most importantly, by staying at home, so lowering the spread of the virus.