anxiety during lockdown — Blog — Journey's Bridge Counseling

Achieving Big Change in Small Steps - DIY Series

Change is difficult, especially when we think of change in capital letters – Big Change. We think of stepping on the scale and being fifty pounds lighter. We don’t think about lowercase change very often. The idea of steeping on the scale and being one-pound lighter next week is much less inspiring than fifty a year from now. This is why we find ourselves drawn to thinking of change as wholesale, rather than incremental. And this is why motivation can be so difficult. When we see change as something so massive, and so far away, the amount of work and effort it will take to get to the other side seems impossible.

CBT to Combat COVID-19 Anxiety - DIY Series

The concept of reframing describes one process of changing these thoughts. Reframing involves uncovering the thought behind the negative emotion. Once the thought has been uncovered, it can then be analyzed and adjusted. The great thing about reframing is you can start the process at home with nothing more than pen and paper. This makes it an excellent technique for battling anxiety while under lockdown.

We will walk you through each step of the reframing process. Each step will then be followed by an example to help you get an idea of how reframing looks in action. The example we use is geared specifically towards reframing anxiety about Covid-19, but reframing can be used to combat many other kinds of anxiety and negative emotion as well.

7 Ways to Reduce Anxiety During COVID-19

Big change is hard. When our lives experience sudden rapid change, our usual coping mechanisms frequently become disrupted. We tend to go through our lives in a relative homeostatic balance of routine.

When COVID-19 landed in the news and expert epidemiologists convinced leaders around the world to start engaging in restrictive measures to slow its spread, it happened extremely fast. Suddenly, our daily lives were turned upside down. Our normal routines became impossible and great feelings of uncertainty spread quickly like a virus itself.