March 2021, ScientificAmerican.com 51helped others felt less distressed than those who coped in less
healthy ways, such as by repressing their feelings or expressing
hostility indirectly.PAY ATTENTION TO YOURSELF
oNe of the hardest thiNgs about the coronavirus is that it cre-
ates so much uncertainty about the future. “We like to be able
to plan and set goals,” Ramanathan-Elion says. “We like to
go through life in this very organized fashion.” Yet many of us
do not know when we will get access to a COVID vaccine or
whether we can pay next month’s rent or when social isolation
will end. We do not know whether we will get sick with COVID
or what will happen if we do.
Psychologists who work with people who have serious inju-
ries or chronic illnesses note that such people always have to
manage an unknown future, and they often do so best by focus-
ing on the present—paying attention to their sensations and
feelings in the moment rather than
focusing on what cannot be known
with any assurance. The goal is to “just
look at this one day at a time. Be cause
we really don’t know what tomorrow is
going to look like,” Hosey says.
One evidence-based approach that
helps people stay grounded in the pres-
ent is “mindfulness,” and there are vari-
ous ways to do it, including through
short meditations. A 2018 review and an -
al ys is of 18 studies concluded that regu-
lar mind fulness exercises—such as fo -
cused breathing and “body scans,” in
which you pay attention to how the parts
of your body feel and try to relax them—
re duce symptoms of anxiety and depres-
sion even in the absence of any other
treatments. (If you want to try guided
meditations, Ramanathan-Elion recom-
mends the smartphone apps Breathe 2
Relax and Mindfulness Coach.)
If the idea of meditation makes you
uncomfortable, it is possible to be mind-
ful without it. One way is to focus on the
sensations you experience while you do
everyday things such as eating and
brushing your teeth. Nitza says she re -
cently bought several adult coloring
books be cause she has found that color-
ing is what helps her “focus my atten-
tion on the immediate thing.”
However we get to it, mindfulness
makes us feel calmer because “it slows
down our breathing, and it sends that
message to the brain that we’re okay
and there’s no trigger in the environ-
ment; there’s no stressful issue that we
need to be attending to,” Ramanathan-
Elion says.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach
to keeping your mental health intact,
and the approach that is best for you will de pend on your situa-
tion, your access to re sources and your preferences. Psychologists
say to trust your in stincts and to try the available strategies that
you think might help the most. Be willing to try out new things if
the approaches you first choose do not seem to be working.
And keep in mind that the more time we spend in this pan-
demic, the better we will get at muddling our way through—
because humans adapt surprisingly well to challenging situa-
tions. It has been tough, and it could get tougher, no question.
But people are “stronger than they think,” Figley says. “I fre-
quently find that people are unbelievably resilient.”FROM OUR ARCHIVES
The Biggest Psychological Experiment. Lydia Denworth; July 2020.
scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa