Stepping away

In a specially extended mental health column this month, west Norfolk based psychotherapist and counsellor Amanda Jane offers her insight into the anxieties many people are feeling at present and her advice for dealing with them.

- Amanda Jane

We are all being asked to step away from each other for the forseeable future. The main implication being social isolation. We are social creatures and we need human interaction. So this is going to be hard.

When I was thinking about what to write this month, I considered that we have been saturated with news and social media outrage on the impact of the coronavirus.

So I wanted to just step back a bit and think about how this makes us react. One of the ways I have been able to get different perspective is to observe how I react.

You know when you look at a great masterpiece in a gallery? If you stand too close to it you can see a splodge of red there, a flick of green there, but it isn’t until you stand right back and look from the other side of the room that the big picture emerges.

To be frank, I have been shocked at the range of emotions I have experienced and witnessed in others, as we scared human beings are placed under great and sudden pressure the likes of which we have never experienced before.

So, I have been scared: scared of dying, and scared of losing someone I love; scared of being out of control of my future; feeling helpless and at the mercy of the seemingly heartless, vile, relentless virus which is racing through the world threatening to destroy us all. I have been scared of losing my business, my house, and our way of life.