I must confess…I’m not thriving.  I’m not baking incredible things, recreating famous paintings with household items, or running marathons around my house.  I’m not sewing masks, arranging parades down the block for a lonely child’s birthday, or spearheading a fundraiser.  I think about it a lot, though.  Every time I see an image of what others are doing, I feel a little guilty.  I should be doing something better.  I should at least be doing something more.  And if I can’t do more, at least I should be able to be more helpful to other people.  I talk to my patients all day and feel I should have answers to their concerns, I should know how to help them.  And with my family I should be able to protect them and keep this pandemic from disrupting their college lives and business so intensely.

The stress of this pandemic is enormous.  But the stress we can add to it by our own expectations of ourselves is a whole other matter.  It’s lovely to celebrate the creativity and feel good stories of other people’s efforts, but it can contribute to the guilt and pain we experience in feeling we’re not doing enough.  A lot of us feel we’re in over our heads.  We’re trying to handle the emotional roller coaster of our personal and family life.  I heard a great metaphor that seems so appropriate: We are all weathering the same storm, but in very different boats.  Each of us has our own situation and vary in our resources, both emotionally and practically.  It’s an unfair practice to compare ourselves with others.  This is not a time to judge ourselves or other people for how we each are keeping ourselves afloat.

An important skill comes to mind in thinking about this overwhelm and “should” expectation frustration.  It’s what psychologists call “radical acceptance”:  accepting everything about yourself, your situation, and your life without blame, question, or judgment.  When a situation is out of our control, fighting against it only leads to more suffering.  By accepting things as they are, not pushing to have things as you want them to be you, you can reduce your added stress and actually increase your coping. It doesn’t mean you agree with what’s happening or even attempt to make the most of it, you merely allow yourself to accept what it is that you cannot change and stop fighting against it.

When I accept that I can’t change what’s happening and accept things as they are, I take the pressure off myself by letting go of my “shoulds”.  With this space, I actually begin to see that there is a lot I actually am doing and can reassure myself that, in this very moment, I am fine.  Radical acceptance takes away the judgement that there is some other way I need to be or some expectation that I must live up to.  Things are as they are.

In fact, once I free myself from the burden of non-acceptance, I tend to feel a sense of calm.  In this calm,  I can shift my focus to the things I can do.  For example, I may not be able to fix things for other people, but I can listen.  I can’t sew masks, but I can show appreciation to the woman who made one.  Little by little I find myself working my way out of the paralyzed state of overburdened should.

In this time of helpless staying at home and waiting for time to pass, perhaps it’s an opportunity to remind ourselves of the value of connection and relationship.  It’s a time to shift our focus from doing to being:  being together, being with ourselves, being apart.  We can listen to our thoughts and deepen our emotional experience with one another and with ourselves. Our regular lives are so focused on performance and activity, perhaps during this unprecedented time we can give ourselves and others permission to just be – where we are, who we are, and as we are.  Now isn’t that radical!