Word-Of-the-Week #819: Coping
April 16, 2020 by Susan Clarke
Coping – dealing with difficulties and acting to overcome them.
How well are you dealing with the difficulties the quarantine has caused? How is your boredom level?
This week features the first half of LA Times Travel Editor Catharine Hamm’s article “Bored at home? How to cope and overcome ‘the nothing to do’ syndrome while travel is postponed.”
“Feeling bored, disoriented and cranky now that you’ve put your travel plans on hold and your suitcase away? You have company — lots of it. For many of us, travel has its own rewards, including its role as a stress reliever.
“Travel relieves stress because you are removed from the monotony of your daily life,” said Dr. Howard Forman, attending psychiatrist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, “and many of the things that lead to stress are taken out of your hands and put into hands of other people,” including those everyday tasks such as fixing dinner, keeping the house clean and, if you have kids, making sure homework is done.
Now what? Most of us are staying closer to home, by design or edict, and the absence of travel’s pleasures can lead to boredom, which, Forman said, is a common complaint. 
Here, then, are some ideas about facing down the tedium.
- Play. “Adults don’t play!” you may say. But why not? Especially when you consider how beneficial it can be.
That doesn’t necessarily mean kickball or hopscotch, unless you want it to.
“Think about the invigorating effect of a date night with your spouse,” Oksana Hagerty, an educational and developmental psychologist, and learning specialist at Beacon College in Leesburg, Fla., said in an email.
“Or a picnic that, for all the mosquitoes, dust and lukewarm Coke, leaves you happy and refreshed? How about a bath with rosewater and candles?”
“Some ideas of play … might be ‘pretending’ to be a healthy eater (by the end of the quarantine you might get used to eating broccoli instead of French fries, but if not — it was play, not a big deal). Or starting ‘a new life’ altogether — some of it might stick, but again, no hard feelings if not.
“As long as we agree that some of what we do can be free, uncertain and governed by the rules that make-believe does not have to be productive, the tedious hours of social isolation won’t be as bad.”
- Reconnect. Try “getting in touch with your body in some way or another,” said Dr. A. Chris Heath, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Dallas. “Walk. Feel the sun and breeze. Try stretching exercises. You don’t have to have a class to do it.”
Maybe resume playing a musical instrument you once dropped, Heath said. “It’s not just a way to make the time pass and not just a way to exercise your mind. It connects your mind with your body again.” When the body and mind interact, “it gets you back in touch with yourself.”
This week’s focus is on coping. Have you come up with any stress relievers? Do you realize all the benefits that come with playing at anything? What are you doing to reconnect with yourself?
I LOVE feedback! Join my Facebook community on my FUN-damentals Fan Page.