Plans as a coping mechanism
New plans free the brain from anxiety. For our mental health, it’s important to be able, especially in these strange days, after many others of pandemonium, to be able to focus on the most important things in our lives.
Planning activities that do something other than sustain panic can help counteract stress before it occurs. So, we want proactive coping, i.e., forward thinking, anticipation of plans needed to deal with potential hardships or simply positive plans (trips, holidays, manicure or beauty appointments, positive happenings and actions).
Thoughts to be directed towards making plans. Scheduling events to happen is, in itself, an acknowledgement that there will be an essentially good future. Actually, writing a future plan in the diary is a powerful statement with a positive essence that brings worthwhile mental and emotional benefits, even if the plans themselves do not have an exact date of occurrence. Acknowledging the things or activities you intend to experience is anticipation with a powerful calming effect on inner turmoil. In crisis situations where panic may occur, the above also serve to create emotional connection. I constantly encourage people not to look at things linearly, one-way, but to put them in circuit and through their self, not only through mind and reason.
So, it’s not enough to just rationally explain what’s happening to us, but we need, as human beings, to also CONSUME states with intense emotions. In panic, the state of imminence and acute fear that something bad/serious might happen to us is very intense and overwhelming.
For this reason, the more connected we are to each other, the more real we perceive the feeling of safety, not fear.