Are you feeling strange? Anxious, not sleeping, having palpitations, staying up late, funny butterflies in your stomach, feeling tearful, being argumentative, reaching for cake or chocolate?

You are 100% not alone. We are all feeling scared, and this is a natural response to the extreme situation we are in. This is a crisis response, and group fear is more contagious than covid-19!

Basically our threat centre, specifically the reptilian part of the brain that includes the two small almond shaped organs in either lobe of our brain called Amygdala (referred to in the singular although there are two of them!) has been stimulated.

The threat system, which includes the Amygdala only knows two things;

  1. High chance of an attack by something scary or dangerous that is likely to cause death or serious injury e.g. A hungry tiger! 🐅
  2. or there is no threat and we are safe e.g. No hungry tiger 🐅

With the Amygdala response, there is no grey, only black or white. Tiger vs No tiger. Friend or foe. Danger or no danger.

When our threat systems, which are scanning the environment 4 times a minute, sees danger e.g. ‘A Tiger’, the system sends cortisol and adrenaline around our bodies to prepare us to fight or run away (flight), or to stay completely still, pretending we are not there ‘freeze’ e.g. “Like a rabbit in headlights”.

In this moment, all the blood rushes to our extremities leaving our pre frontal cortex or executive brain with less oxygen. This results in us not being able to think properly and potentially make rash or poor decisions, leaving our ability to problem solve and concentrate diminished, sometimes for many hours after.

During this COVID-19/Coronavirus epidemic, there are metaphorical ‘tigers’ everywhere, with our threat systems (Amygdala) constantly stimulated by our surroundings, our work, friends, family and the media. This is leaving most of us operating in a state of heightened stress and anxiety.

However, most of the causes of this heightened stress and anxiety is coming from things outside of our control. For example, thinking about the numbers of people around the world and close to home becoming infected with the virus, the impact on the economy, people in need who we can’t help, limits on our ability to visit friends and relatives and whether there will be enough food in the shops.

With this in mind, we can help ourselves to feel better by focusing on what we can influence, in other words, focussing on things that we can do something about. For example, the people we can help, offering kindness and compassion to those we speak to, only buying what we need from the shops, washing our hands regularly, staying inside and deciding to focus on the small good things that are happening, such as how calm and beautiful the world is with less pollution.

And it is ok not to be ok, especially in this moment. We all need help sometimes to find a way through when we feel stressed, anxious or afraid. This can be achieved by reaching out to friends and/or family (virtually of course!), but many of them may have the same issues too, especially in relation to the current pandemic. Another way is to reach out to professionals for help, whether that is with professional coaches like us at Beyond or other services such as counsellors, social workers, psychologists or other mental health specialists.

However, even the professionals are now under huge strain due to the number of people needing support. For example there are 1.5+ million employees in the NHS, many of whom are working on the frontline against COVID-19, who would all benefit from one-to-one coaching to help them manage what they are currently experiencing.

And even though we have delivered over 8,200 one-to-one coaching sessions with NHS staff over the past 4 years, including doctors, nurses and other health and care staff, we couldn’t even scratch the surface of providing the level of support needed.

Therefore, to help as many people as possible, we have taken everything we have learnt from coaching NHS staff, many of whom have struggled for a variety or reasons with degrees of stress, anxiety and worries, even when times were ‘normal’, and combined it with our other expertise and neuroscience to develop a range of FREE online tools for all NHS employees and Key workers. We are providing this Resilience Toolkit for free to all NHS staff and Key workers for the next 6-8 weeks to support our amazing colleagues at this most difficult time, so if you know any who you think could benefit, please share this with them.

Sending all our thanks to all NHS staff and Key workers and we hope you all manage to keep safe.