Feeling some covid anxiety about getting back to life?

It’s common to feel some degree of anxiety when it comes to reentering post vaccine life. After all, you’ve been living in quarantine for the past year doing your best to stay away from others and those nasty germs. For those who already have a disposition to anxiety, the fear can be heightened.

One idea is to take it slow. You don’t have to go all out in attending every social function and dinner offered to you. When it comes to working with most anxieties, exposure therapy is recommended. This therapy entails exposing yourself to what you fear in manageable steps. You might first start out with a small, outdoor gathering and stay for 30 minutes. The next week you might do another small gathering but staying for 1 hour. Eventually building up to whatever your end goal is. Exposure therapy helps us build tolerance to what we fear.

Using Nature To Ease COVID Anxiety

If you’ve really been isolated, using outdoor spaces is a great reentry point. The fresh air and literal space can be a nice place to begin exposing yourself and working through your fears. There are many local, state, and national parks to roam. In fact, starting local and moving to bigger parks could actually be a great step in exposure as bigger parks often have more people. Or even going super early in the morning could be a great first step as midday and evening foot traffic in hiking spots can increase.

Not sure where to go? Here is a link to both Sonoma County Regional Parks and California National Parks. There is so much beauty where we live. Being in calming environments can be great when it comes to anxiety, helping us to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system.

Stay tuned for more ideas on healthy ways to cope and even live well with covid anxiety and stress!

If you would like some help on how to work through covid anxiety or are curious about using exposure therapy, please feel free to contact me for support and answers.