Photograph by Demetris Christopoulos

How to Save your Nerves During Current Corona Shock

A few tips to avoid nervous breakdown after being exposed to all this daily bombardment of contradicting info about the disease.

First it was China and they all were calm

At the beginning of the disease we all had been looking at China, since everything started there. Pictures showing a Chinese woman eating a bat were popular and that was a first explanation for the transmission of the virus to humans. Of course the famous Wuhan laboratory was early been reported and its proximity to the “wet market”, where wild animals are being sold every day. Spontaneous videos with death people across city streets could be found in social media, but nobody could decide if that was a dangerous new infectious disease or just another popular conspiracy theory about the exotic East Asian countries.

World Health Organization (WHO) gave on Jan-23 a rather reassuring statement about the virus, actually they told us that it cannot be transmitted from one human to another one, “At this time, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China”, so it was an internal affair for that country while the rest of the World had not to take any special care. But Wuhan International Airport did not close and passengers traveled with direct flights to many cities inside and outside China.

The danger had been underestimated and that was the narrative given in many countries by local authorities. For example on Jan-22 in Greece the highest official about diseases had declared: “This is a new corona virus, which has low contagious ability and reduced mortality compared to SARS and MERS”

49 days later WHO declared a pandemic status. Observe a first attack to your nerves: officials could not agree on the severity of the forthcoming storm for one and half month. Uncertainty is always a source for malfunction.

Then came Italy and the terror spread around

Milan is the financial capitol of Italy and has extended trade exchanges with China, thus it was one of the first cities infected worldwide. After a critical time period of non taking proper measures the country got under lockdown in March 8, but damage had been done: the virus had already been spread in Northern Italy. We all remember the Bergamo’s tragedy which was a first shock about the level of mortality for the new disease.

Italy played the role of the “example to avoid” and forced other countries to proceed in lockdown earlier than it. Finally all countries adopted a version of closing financial activity, ranging from the total close (Greece) until a less restrictive one (Sweden) while there existed countries that could not decide about (United Kingdom) but they also closed at the end.

Italy gave us the second attack: “act now either you will have the faith of that country”. But the creation of shocks continued to exist.

After they said us to stay at home and become unemployed

An endless debate about the need to close economy started and it has not yet finished. It was difficult to agree on closing everything just because the news from Italy was terrifying. It is the law of inertia which is also applicable in mass psychology and simply states that we cannot change our daily program drastically without serious nerve consequences. On the other side, when you are not a public servant and your income depends on the opened or closed services, then you cannot accept that you will become unemployed from one day to the other, just because the “specialists” claimed so.

Every one’s life is unique and has been organized under a certain set of given facts: the existence of an income source and the cover of basic human needs like the minimum amount of external activities per day. You cannot stay at home for ever, even if you earn a lot of money there, you always need to go somewhere. That was a double and stronger nerve shock: a) now you are unemployed and b) now you stay at home. How can we handle such a case?

Now it’s time to save your nerves at home

So what should we do if we want to keep our nerves safe without taking drugs for keeping our calmness? As you may already have learned in your life, there exist not magic solutions and the best strategy is to find and avoid been exposed to the main nerves attack causes, while you will prefer a more relaxing way of life.

Prefer manual activities

There exist always home issues that we have postponed because we are busy but now we can get involved and fix them.

• Repair whatever you are able to repair at home: it is a manual work that will act as a kind of psychotherapy because it will empty your mind from thoughts and it will finally leave a clear improvement to your daily life.

If you are lucky enough to live close to a natural environment then you should take advantage of it and either walk around or do a kind of external activity there. Ask yourself about what will give you more pleasure and overall mind relaxation and simply follow it.

Be careful with TV programs

But when you want to stay really inside your home, then you you must think about journalists and TV presenters as working in a highly competitive field:

• How all those professionals of news and entertainment will be able to cover the time needed for a hourly TV show?
• How are they going to attract your attention in order to prefer their channel and not the competitive one?
• Will they soberly present the facts or will they focus on the extreme cases only?

It is easy to answer the above questions by your own experience, however next thoughts tend to be objective:

• Every professional in news/show industry has a daily stress for attracting the attention of the audience and that leads to the presentation of extreme news-issues
• That daily routine is good for the professional and bad for your nerves: they are not built for being stressed so much.

So a general rule for keeping your nerves healthy is:

Please stop watching news or talk shows on TV

You will find a significant improvement in both your daily relax mood and in the quality of your sleep. Remember also that:

Whatever thrash you see on TV before sleep, you get it at your bed after

A better sleep quality is a guarantee that your nervous system is operating well during the next day, so do not underestimate what you tend to watch before sleeping. After all, experiment by yourself: one night watch something relaxing and another night watch a movie with serial killings. Which night will you sleep better? That is a general rule about what we should see on TV late at nights, however during current crisis we must strictly avoid the news and talk shows before sleep: it is almost certain that they will provide us with a variety of nightmares.

Filter your internet activity

But if you abandon TV news & talk shows how are you going to be informed every day during these strange times? We are all lucky enough for the existence of so many internet resources, however we have to apply the same rules as for TV case there. After all the freedom to publish on internet has the disadvantage of not reviewing the presented content, so you must care twice about what you read or watch there - as you can see you cannot find a free lunch.

How much vanity do you need to consume per day?

Declare it or not we are all victims of our self vanity:

Whenever you get a like, recommendation, clap or even a share or a comment at one of your social network accounts, then you feel better

International companies like Facebook have extensively studied that and earn billions by giving us the small doses of serotonin which is secreted after the above reactions to our post. That has forced us to need more dose, like a common drug-addicted, so we expand our activity more and more and again until the end of the day.

That is good for the profits of Facebook, Instagram or whatever, but it is bad for your nervous health because it acts like a doping essence and guides your whole life towards a system of virtual happiness: you don’t care about the caress of your partner but you get satisfaction from likes. So what? So you can get no satisfaction as Rolling Stones had sung a few decades before now.

If you want to keep nervous health, then you have to set a control on your daily needs for vanity consumption

Do you click on shocking title web content?

Many websites in order to get the reader’s attention use extreme provocative phrases as promotional tags for an action invitation, usually to click on a link. Well it will not harm you but if you read only those kind of pages, then you have a great probability to be trapped inside a series of “shocking news”: the creator of such a website will subsequently use that rule and it is guaranteed that you will continue to get shocked even for hours. Thus:

Try not to follow the socking web titles

A clear example of such another strategy is YouTube: it uses algorithms that lead you to videos with extreme activity and its primary task is to keep you online inside the streaming environment. That is only good for Alphabet Inc. because it earns a lot of money from advertisements but your nervous health will not continue to stay in a normal level if you insist at that practice, so:

Avoid watching videos suggested by YouTube algorithms

Try to keep a measure

Take your time and then answer honestly next questions about the frequency and the intensity of your daily concern for the virus:

1. Do you start your day with a conversation about corona?
2. If you work, do you often mention the disease with your colleagues?
3. Do you dedicate the most of your internet activity on news about it?
4. Is it the first topic at every lunch discussion?
5. Do you accompany your evening coffee with latest news about it?
6. Do you watch TV programs about the disease?
7. Do you discuss for the virus after having a pleasant sexual experience?

If you answer positively in most of the questions, then you are probably “COVID-addicted” and that has already disturbed your nervous health, even if the symptoms have not yet been shown to you.

There exists an Ancient Greek motto applicable here:

All in good measure

That means that we must keep a measure for all activities in our life and never get involved 100% in one issue only. For the current disease, after four months and more now, there is not something really new either to know or to discuss about, despite the efforts that professionals of news and show industry are making for attracting our attention, view or click.

Let scientists disagree, they do it all time

Frankly during the major crises of last decades we cannot find a simple time period when all scientists had a clear consensus about either the causes or the remedies for the given crisis. Remember the financial one of 2010 and the grate debates that there had been done between Economists. They could not agree almost for nothing and their advises were 180 degrees opposite: one scientist argued about the need for increasing social expenditures (Keynesian view) and another opted for strict austerity measures.

Same status is evident for COVID-19 crisis now, since virologists, epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists disagree for at least next issues:

• the origin of the virus: is it natural or lab created?
• the ways it can be transmitted: do children carry more viral load or not?
• the most vulnerable “target group”: is it after 40, 50, 60 years old or what?
• what are the early symptoms?
• what’s the remedy: cheap and existing or new and expensive drugs?
• should we use a face mask or not and if yes where specifically?
• should we wear hand gloves?
• the need to lock down a country and in which level
• the importance of massive tests on population
• which strategy to be followed: “flattening the curve” or “herd immunity”?

If you get involved on that 24/7 eternal debate between scientists it is almost sure that you will not get smarter after, since you may not be able to scientifically judge on the arguments of each part, unless you believe that you are an omniscient. Do not forget:

Your nerves have not been created to act like a hook

They can handle a specific amount of “oscillations”, based on your specific body strengths, however if you cross your personal limit then they will become dysfunctional and either you will be forced to use a medical prescription or you will just feel awful. So if you don’t want taking pills for ever you must care twice when you participate in a public debate driven by specialists-scientists.

We have not all studied for everything during our small lifetime, so we do not have a robust background in order to personally criticize a scientific position or its opponent one.

Instead of such a possibility, the most probable outcome will be to simply get charmed either from the body appearance or the personal shine of the person speaking and that is not a good advisor for decision making. Five years ago in Greece many of us had been charmed by the Minister of Finance who had a very absolute way of talking, he was sure about what he was saying and it was easy to been convinced from his youth-like body appearance. However he destroyed the whole Greek Bank sector and we are still paying our that bad choice. So, as a rule of thumb:

Do not trust the star-scientists, they care more about their personal vanity than for public good

Everything pass, especially the difficult times

If we take a picture of our life today, then it will certainly seem pessimistic: overloaded hospitals, patients and deaths around, unemployment and bills that cannot be paid, a kind of mass hysteria day and night “for its excellence”, the virus, nothing prominent to make us optimists.

Is it that so sad? Not at all. If you do not belong to a vulnerable group, then you will continue your life and you do not have to worry so much. OK situation is difficult now, but that was also the rule for other human generations before us. Remember the global wars of last century and compare them with current war: are you sure that you’d prefer to live then? At least now you have the choice to act smart and avoid many terrible consequences, at those times bombs simply were falling on neighborhoods and you did not have any choice if you lived there.

Everything is going through, both good and bad times. The objective is to stay healthy and that is primarily related to your mental and nervous health. After all, it is very likely that you will get nervous sick instead of anything else.

Specialists of any kind will see current crisis as a chance to further develop their personal career by giving more interviews, writing more articles and earning more money. You are the “silent supporter” of them, but with a high personal cost in health, if you are not careful about the time and intensity that you devote to their talks.

The above view has been written after many observations of our global society during current corona crisis and is not the outcome of a specialist’s work. It has been successfully tested and that was the main reason for writing it:

To share the good news with you!