The COVID-19 pandemic has turned life as we know it upside down. Everything we take for granted on a daily basis has changed. Students are doing virtual school. Parents are working from home. Businesses are closed. Healthcare workers are risking their lives caring for the sick. And no one can say with any certainty when things will return to normal — or what “normal” will even look like.
While all the unknowns are creating stress and anxiety, it’s easy to feel like you’re losing your patience and ability to be compassionate. But as difficult as a crisis like this is, it’s an opportunity to build resilience.
“Resilience can be defined as the power to return to a position of empathy, strength, and hope after the daily witnessing of the challenges families face in our community and the realities of the workplace,” says Sue McKenzie Dicks, vice president of healthy culture at Rogers Behavioral Health. “It’s the ability to be optimistic in an imperfect world,” she adds.
Dicks teamed up with colleagues for a six-part video series called, “Staying Resilient During COVID-19.”
“After three years of work with people in education, healthcare, youth work, and many sectors, we have found the concepts included in the compassion resilience toolkits to be crucial to creating the environment in which we want to work and live,” says Dicks. “They help people find a level of control over how to respond to the challenges this pandemic presents.”
Shifting your focus and practicing gratitude is just one of positive ways we can respond in the pandemic. Topics covered include:
- How to combat compassion fatigue while practicing self-care
- How to set healthy expectations for yourself and others
- How we can turn compassion into action
- How practicing mindfulness can help us experience more peace
- How to set boundaries to support our priorities
- How to manage and reduce stress
Dicks says the goal is for people to be able to act from their best selves in the midst of the challenges of COVID-19.
You can watch the entire video series at here.
