Photo by Clyde Gravenberch on Unsplash
Note: I wrote this post in 2022, but am only publishing it now.
I recently flew to Boston to visit my best friends from childhood, and it was a major fail. The five of us hadn’t all gotten together in 12 years, much to do with kids, jobs, international moves, and a global pandemic. I couldn’t wait to meet my friends’ pandemic babies, frolic together at Walden Pond, share meals, and lounge on a couch happily doing nothing together.
The morning after our arrival, my daughter tested positive for Covid, the first time for anyone in our family. I quarantined with my son in an attic for two nights, only for him to test positive two days later. Instead of my visions of baby cradling and friend frolicking, I spent the week in Boston packed in close quarters with my family during a heatwave.
What transpired during the week surprised me. Basically, I had a mental freakout. I was hypervigilant and neurotic, worried sick that we may have infected my friend’s whole family the night of our arrival. I suffered from insomnia, unable to fall asleep until past midnight, and waking up at 4am every morning with racing thoughts. In these wee morning hours, my mind began reeling with the uncertainty of who might test positive next, and how long we would be trapped.
With the possible domino effect of each of us turning into public safety hazards several days apart, I struggled with not knowing. When could we board a flight? When could my children get back to school? When could I return to work, where people were counting on me? On top of everything, my dad was unexpectedly hospitalized in Hong Kong this same week, and the helplessness of being so far away from him gnawed at me. And through it all, I was crushed by the loss of this long-awaited reunion, and pandemic grief came tumbling out. I didn’t realize until it all slipped through my fingers how tightly I was clinging to the promise of happily gathering with loved ones again.
I learned some things about myself during this anxiety episode: I learned about my overblown fear of disapproval and judgment, and my difficulties with uncertainty and disappointment. I saw how rusty I was at traveling since the pandemic, how unmooring it was to be anxious while away from home. I experienced the desperate, compounding effects of sleep deprivation on mood and anxiety. And I built increased empathy for how hard it is to access grounding habits when you’re in the throes of an anxiety episode. I cursed the fact that I’m a psychologist: I know the freaking things I should be doing to center myself (including more self-compassion and less self-cursing), but I can’t seem to connect with them right now.
The main grounding framework I deployed during this anxiety episode was an acronym I made up called FERNS. “Nothing is going right for you right now, Jocelyn, and your mind has plunged into a dark and anxious place. Go back to the basics. FERNS.”
Feed your FERNS
FERNS stands for Food, Exercise, Rest, Nature, and Social Connection. From my ongoing involvement in mood and anxiety research and my experience as a therapist (and as a human who has experienced anxiety), these are the big five to invest in if you want to be a friend to your mental health.
Quarantining with a family of four in a tiny space 3,000 miles away from home made it harder to connect to my FERNS. But I also knew that throwing all of these things out the window right now would only make things worse. I didn’t have the wherewithal to connect to all five of these things. So I just started with Food. After weeks of travel and eating french fries at most meals, I needed to go grocery shopping (still covid negative, and masked!) and make a real meal. My body wanted a veggie stir fry with bok choy and sugar snap peas, and it was a mental health win when I accomplished that.
The other thing I practiced with a little intentionality was Rest. My brain on anxiety kept trying to convince me that there were things I needed to do, flights to reschedule, searches to Google, apologetic texts to write, and screens to scroll. I absolutely did all of those things, but I also managed to surrender into Rest, in moments. For me, this looked like putting down my phone and lying on the ground for five minutes, simply feeling the weight of my body and the supportive ground beneath me, noticing the fatigue and tension and letting everything be exactly as it was.
How about you?
When you’re plunged into an anxious or dysregulated place and it’s hard to access the things that help, what can you still access? Can you pick one or two letters from FERNS and just start there, as simply as possible? If you’d like, try it out right now.
For at least one category below, write down a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Relevant, and Time-stamped) to practice this week. Often you can kill two birds with one stone (for example, going on a walk in a park with a friend counts for E, N, and S!). Notice and celebrate your mental health wins, no matter how small.
Extra credit: from this small step, over the next month, see if you can build a routine out of one of these things. Consistent daily rhythms (such as savoring a cup of tea every morning) are immensely grounding for the nervous system.
Food (e.g., By 11am every day, I will eat something nourishing…a piece of fruit, oatmeal, soup, anything. I will set a daily alarm to help me remember.)
SMART Goal:
Exercise (e.g., I will stretch outside my comfort zone and sign up for an outdoor dance class and go weekly for a month.)
SMART Goal:
Rest (e.g., This evening, I will keep my phone in a different room, on silent, while I lie down on the floor for 5 minutes.)
SMART Goal:
Nature (e.g., I will get outside every morning this week for at least 5 minutes.)
SMART Goal:
Social connection (e.g., Today I will reach out to one friend and ask for help.)
SMART Goal: