So, welcome to another bonus episode of Said in Therapy. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting all of us. This virus has brought a whole set of new medical, economic, and political problems. But it has also given us a ton of uncertainty and anxiety, which will begin to have a tremendous negative effect on all of us. But whenever I'm feeling confused or fearful, I always try to remember that looking for answers in evidence-based science is the best thing to do. And this is why I'm recording these episodes. I'm hoping that they can help. So you have heard me mentioning anxiety a couple of times before. And in fact, this is probably the most asked question I get nowadays. How can I manage my stress and feel less fearful? So yeah, everybody is freaking out. And certainly, none of us has lived through a time like this before. Let's explain what anxiety is to get confusion out of the way. Against popular belief, anxiety is actually a good thing. Anxiety is our body's natural response to stress. It's the feeling of fear about what's to come. It is definitely an unpleasant emotion, but it is also very useful. It's actually our natural alarm system that tells you that something is wrong and it anticipates situations that may seem dangerous or risky. So anxiety is essentially designed to help us respond to danger. However, a long-lasting feeling of anxiety can mean an anxiety disorder. That is, however, a different subject, and I will cover it in a different episode. For today, I really want to focus on anxiety in times of coronavirus. Because coronavirus is this invisible enemy, nobody can actually see grasp, and we cannot really hide from it, we create this intense need to gain back control and to do something about it. This is why, for example, people all over the world started panic buying toilet paper or food, bread, flour, you name it. So in that sense, anxiety is counterproductive and actually not very helpful. The invisible enemy we are all anticipating and we all want to fight. Well, we really can't. Another aspect is, of course, the uncertainty of the future. When will the situation end? And what will happen after? There is not much to control, as you can see. And all that lingering anxiety remains and follows us throughout the day. So I want to introduce to you the concept of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is like this facility human beings have which they can use to push their emotions up and down. So on one hand, we want to regulate anxiety down, and on the other hand, we want to amplify positive emotions. I want to highlight though, by using this strategy, you are not turning emotions off, because that can actually be very toxic. More importantly, emotions aren't ever brushed aside easily. They will one way or another manifest into our lives, whether we like it or not. Let's take the coronavirus situation. Turning off anxiety is actually not necessary, because anxiety is the main driver that keeps us at home at the moment. And that is very important to get this situation under control. So we want to maintain some anxious feelings without exploding. So how can we do that? The key words here are rationalizing and stepping back to watch the full picture. Usually, when we feel uneasy, we turn to friends or family members to ask for advice or to talk through our emotions. The difficulty with that right now is that we all go through the same experience. So nobody really has answers or good advice for us. Here is a little trick that I personally use whenever I feel really overwhelmed. I sit down and write with pen and paper about me without using I or me. Instead, I would write about myself using my first name. So I'd write about my situation as though I was telling my friend about someone else. For example, instead of writing I'm really anxious, I write, Iman is really anxious. What that does is that we create some sort of distance that helps us look at the situation through a different lens. I take a step back and distance myself from the sea of emotions that would otherwise overwhelm me. The technique can actually help you to focus on the facts instead of the emotions. And it will help you plan your next moves carefully but without freaking out. So after I was emotionally regulated today, I watched the news regarding Germany. For those who don't know, I was born and raised in Germany and I'm a German national. My family lives there. So I'm always making sure to know what's going on over there. When I watched the news today, they shared numbers. 120,000 people are and were infected with coronavirus. 2,000 plus died, but more than 60,000 already recovered. That little detail about recoveries really helped me to calm my worries about this. It didn't eliminate the threat, but it sure gave me some peace of mind. So that's my tip for today. Stay safe everyone. Talk to you tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode so far. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can find me on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The handle is always @saidintherapy.