My Peloton is in the Quarantine Zone - Now What?
It was hardly the text we wanted to receive from Matt, our college junior who was on spring break visiting friends studying abroad in Spain. Matt had just learned that one of his friends had tested positive for coronavirus in Italy. As if that weren’t upsetting enough, when I glanced at my phone between therapy sessions a few days later, I saw a series of texts revealing that one of Matt’s closest friends had also tested positive. This friend had just spent the week in Spain with my son. Many unknowns, many concerns, many uncertain plans and finally, after a 16 hour drive from Nashville, Matt arrived home at 5 AM and went directly through the garage door into our basement to begin his 14 day quarantine period.
As soon as we realized Matt was coming home, we got busy preparing the basement for his arrival, grateful to have a workable set up for a 21 year old to be isolated for two weeks. We stocked the mini fridge, purchased non-perishable snacks, gathered paper goods and disposable utensils, borrowed a microwave and set up a mattress on the floor. We came up with a plan that would allow him to exit the basement through the garage so he could go outside to play basketball (alone) regularly. We parked our cars in the driveway, avoiding the garage and basement altogether. During the long two weeks of his quarantine, I held my breath and prayed that Matt wouldn’t get sick. I cooked meals, made smoothies, prepared snacks and delivered everything to the ledge outside the garage, texting him to let him know he had food waiting. Really, I was texting to let him know he was loved and cared for. I hope he got that message, too.
During our preparations, we recognized that while Matt would have access to our home gym in the basement, the rest of us would not. For me, that meant the Peloton bike would be off limits for at least two weeks. I acknowledge that this is a “champagne problem” and that I am incredibly fortunate to have such a luxury, as well as a house large enough to separate an exposed individual from the rest of the family. Although I have access to other avenues for physical activity, I knew I was going to miss the familiar whir of the peloton, my favorite teacher’s voice and the upbeat pop music I ride to a few times a week. I am aware that in high stress times, my body craves intense physical movement in a way that I can only find on a spin bike. I felt “Peloton envy” when my friend told me about her daily stress-reducing ride and longed for the day when I, too, will be able to release tension from my body as Cody used his dance moves to inspire and motivate me. But, alas, my Peloton is in the quarantine zone for the time being - what am I supposed to do now?
I think it’s an important time to acknowledge that we all have our addictions, distractions, coping resources and attachments (those things we believe we need in order to be happy) and that most of them have been eliminated from our lives over the past few weeks. Gyms and yoga studios are closed, we can’t go out to eat with our friends, shopping is relegated to on-line experiences and there are no more errands, other than stressful food shopping or toilet paper runs. Even simple daily pleasures like Starbucks have faded away. With our vacations, events and social plans cancelled, we have nothing to plan or look forward to for the foreseeable future. Yikes! What are all of us busy bees supposed to do now?
I don’t know.
Those three words keep coming up over the past two weeks, as we find that the rug has been pulled out from under us and we are floating aimlessly, powerlessly, striving to find some solid ground. Should we sell the stock or leave it in the market? I don’t know. Can my kids see their friends? I don’t know. Will the supermarket have toilet paper? I don’t know. Will I have a job when this is over? I don’t know. Can I see my elderly parents? I don’t know. We just don’t know. This realm of pervasive uncertainty is so unfamiliar to us that we find it absolutely terrifying. We have been so habitually tied to our addictions, distractions, attachments and methods of managing our internal and external environments that we never realized what they were in the first place: strategies for providing us with the illusion that we were able to control the uncontrollable. Now that this illusion is revealing itself fully, we have no choice but to recognize that the strategies we have depended on to distract ourselves from the reality that the future is uncertain have stopped working. We can no longer pretend that life is predictable or controllable and that everything will go well for ourselves and our families. The Peloton is in the quarantine zone, the yoga studios are closed, I can’t walk with my friends, the coping strategies aren’t functioning … what now? I don’t know, I really don’t. What I do know is that we are all suddenly forced to look into the landscape of our internal world, the world of difficult emotions. We seem to collectively be facing our worst fear, that the scary, negative, dark emotions that we’ve been trying so hard to avoid or numb, have suddenly come out of the shadows. Now what?
As I sit with my patients, well, I’m not actually sitting with them, because therapy is now taking place through video or phone calls, but sit and listen to them, I hear the undercurrent of difficult emotions bubbling to the surface at a rapid pace. Individuals who kept it together by being highly productive or active, by constructing excessively planned schedules for themselves and their families, by creating identities that kept them feeling powerful and safe, or by maintaining superficial relationships even with close friends and family members are now facing the reality that they cannot hide from their feelings any longer. The poignant words from Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence come to mind: “Hello darkness, my old friend.” The darker emotions, the ones we have tried desperately to avoid, numb or hide from - powerlessness, fear, anxiety, disappointment, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, grief, despair, vulnerability, loneliness - have all come out in full force to claim their places in our emotional tapestry. Welcome, friends, we can no longer sustain the belief that you are part of someone else’s life and not ours or that we will feel you another time but not today. Whatever feelings you have been afraid of feeling are here, in your life, today. You are not alone. This strange and unexpected virus has affected us all with the same rare symptom: an overwhelming loss of coping resources, leading to the appearance of dreaded shadowy emotions.
While this may sound gloomy and terrifying, I do believe that we are living through a unique opportunity to learn how to sit, stay and make friends with qualities and unpleasant feelings that we have kept hidden and that, in turn, have kept us hidden from ourselves and from others for a long time. Now may be the time to settle in and get to know those parts and emotions that you have been afraid to reveal, even to yourself. I have to believe that something positive will come of this devastation, that we will rise from this, individually and societally, better than we were before. If yoga and life have taught me anything, it is that every experience is here for us, to help us learn, grow and evolve into more humanly alive and spiritually awake beings. Learning to notice our less than wonderful habits, our far from perfect traits and maybe even the mean bones in our bodies without judging ourselves for them will open the door to a precious freedom - the freedom to know ourselves fully and finally, to learn to love ourselves in all of our perfect imperfection. From that place of genuine self love, we will be open to another gift - the beauty of a human relationship in which we can truly see another person in all of their humanness and be seen for all of who we are, in our most vulnerable form. Maybe then, we will know what it feels like to be deeply loved. Maybe then, we won’t need those addictions and distractions any more.
AWARENESS - CHOICES - LIFESTYLE
AWARENESS:
What were the coping strategies that you once relied on that are no longer available?
Which coping strategies are you relying on now? Are they helping to ease your struggle? If so, how? If not, are there alternative strategies that might be more effective?
Notice whether you are resisting the experience you are having (“this sucks!) or allowing it to unfold (“I am curious about how this situation is affecting me.”)
Become aware of how and where you hold tension in your body.
In what ways are you out of your comfort zone right now? How do you feel being out of your comfort zone, physically and emotionally?
What habits, including behaviors, emotional reactions or thought patterns, are being revealed by your current situation?
CHOICES:
Choose to be kind and gentle to yourself when difficult feelings arise, as they will.
Choose to give yourself permission to be human when you are struggling. This isn’t easy for anyone. Giving yourself a hard time for being impatient or frustrated will only make you feel worse than you already feel. Instead, allow yourself to feel what you feel and sit with that feeling. Meditation practices are really helpful for learning how to sit more comfortably with the uncomfortable.
Choose to do one kind thing for yourself each day.
Choose to do one kind thing for another person each day - when we’re hurting, it can lessen our own pain when we make someone else’s day!
Practice self care as much as possible every single day. Tune in to what you need and make sure you give it to yourself. Only you know what you need, so don’t expect anyone else to read your mind or figure it out for you. You will only set yourself up for disappointment if you wait for another person to know what you need without telling them. This is a perfect opportunity to learn how to ask for what you need from other people. While it may not feel comfortable, this is our time to learn how to tolerate emotional discomfort, so you might as well give it a try.
Find a way to experience pleasure every day, even in the most simple way.
Cultivate a daily practice of gratitude by identifying one or more thing in your life that you are thankful for. Take a moment to sit quietly and directly express your gratitude (“I am grateful for ….” or “thank you for ….”)
Cultivate inner resources by practicing positive qualities such as patience, honesty, generosity, gratitude, encouragement and compassion. The more we practice using the internal muscles associated with benevolent qualities such as those mentioned, the stronger the qualities will grow inside us.
LIFESTYLE:
With uncertainty abounding and so much we don’t know, perhaps all we can hope for right now is a lifestyle in which we can all be just a little more loving, slow, intentional, grateful, non-judgmental, aware, awake and open. If we all move in that direction, hopefully, this world will feel safe and welcoming enough that every being will find freedom to be exactly who they are and in doing so, have the experience of feeling truly loved.