Elizabeth Gilbert: How to Calm the Strong Emotions of a Pandemic
Please enjoy this tender, intimate, and calming TED interview with author Elizabeth Gilbert, known for her bestselling books Eat, Pray, Love, and Big Magic.
In this conversation, entitled It’s OK to Feel Overwhelmed. Here’s What To Do Next, Gilbert offers heartfelt advice on how to work with strong emotions like anxiety, fear, grief, loneliness and anger that naturally arise during an overwhelming situation like the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are a few of the topics and key points addressed by Gilbert:
It’s normal to feel overwhelmed in a crisis. However, our emotions about our emotions only multiply our suffering. Give yourself a warm dose of mercy and compassion instead of judging your emotions.
Because we have the power of imagination, humans don’t do fear and anxiety well. In fact, we often make things worse for ourselves. At the same time, we’re the most capable, resourceful, and resilient species on the planet.
You can use your intuition in the present moment as a powerful antidote to fear.
You can’t avoid feelings of loneliness that arise in isolation, but you can walk toward them. It can be a life-changing experience. The courage to face your aloneness can give rise to great compassion as well.
Grief is bigger than us. It’s bigger than any attempt to manage it. You can survive grief, but you do so by allowing it.
If you feel anxious, do what you did when you were a 10-year old. Play or create – coloring, Legos, whatever will soothe you. It will keep you out of future-tripping, which only brings anxiety.
When you’re on empathetic overload or in an empathetic meltdown, you can’t help anyone else. You’ve become a patient that needs help yourself. Instead, learn to have the courage to witness another person’s pain without inhabiting it so you can be a helper rather than another victim.
Helping can be a positive self-medication, but you need to pace yourself. There’s more help needed right now than you can offer, so respect your limits. Know this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t over-give now and collapse so you can still be available two months down the road.
What can be done to help those who are less privileged than us?
Anger has its place, especially righteous anger that recognizes a humanitarian violation has taken place. But what are you going to do with the anger? Will you harm the people you’re in isolation with? Will you rant on Twitter? Or can you process the feelings and use them with emotional sobriety?
Gilbert ends with a concrete strategy for working with shame and fear.
I found this hour with Elizabeth Gilbert a nourishing investment. I hope you do. And here’s the link, in case the video doesn’t come through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNBvC25bxQU
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Your Turn
I would love to hear your thoughts on Gilbert’s suggestions for working with emotions in the pandemic. Please leave a comment below.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Living with Ease course or visit my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra
