Mental Health During Covid-19 04/05/21

<p>Mental health during Covid 19 is a thing. And it's going to be an issue for a while.</p> <p>We're all struggling with ongoing Covid-19 trauma. No matter how well we're doing, we're all feeling it.</p> <p>In this episode, Melanie shares research data and coping suggestions from Dr. Diane E. Meier, the longtime director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Meier is also a 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship.</p> <p class="p1">About the Covid pandemic, Dr. Meier says, <em>“The fear and anxiety is completely different. It’s not that getting a diagnosis of dementia or cancer or kidney failure is not frightening. It is, but it’s somewhat normalized. You know people it’s happened to. Whereas the Covid pandemic — there was so much interesting coverage marking the <a href= "https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/22/world/covid-19-coronavirus"> <span class="s1">500,000th death</span></a> about how invisible all the grieving is and how the whole country is in a state of numbness and denial because it is all too much to take in. It is too much to process." </em><a href= "https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/22/magazine/diane-e-meier-interview.html">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/22/magazine/diane-e-meier-interview.html</a></p> <p class="p1">As a result, Dr. Meier says, <em>"people are trying desperately to make room for one's inner life."</em></p> <p class="p1">We’ve got two feet in the Before Times. And one foot in the not-yet-here world. We’re betwixt and between. It’s a liminal time.</p> <p class="p1">And that can make us feel unmoored, ungrounded.</p> <p class="p1">The good news is that there is an almost infinite number of ways to make room for our inner lives. Natalie Goldberg, the writer, recently did two shows with Melanie in which she talks of <em>haiku</em> as a way, a path, a spiritual discipline.</p> <p class="p1">Techniques for exploring beyond the bounds of performative “work” are as varied as there are people.</p> <p