Like many of you, I am working remotely, managing shifting personal and family responsibilities, and trying to adapt to the COVID-19 health crisis as we all grieve the loss of the familiar and “normal”.
As therapists, we are incredibly grateful to support the influx of patients who have sought teletherapy with us. Keeping us engaged and busy is more helpful to us than you know! Learning how to adapt, calibrate and “ground down” into our new reality is our focus - for ourselves and our patients.
Grounding vs. Ambition-ing:
At best, we are all experiencing lowered emotional resources as our collective adrenaline spike ebbs and we attempt to set up normal routines in our lives. One concept we are cultivating in our practice is the importance of “grounding vs. ambition-ing” during this extended crisis.
This crisis will require endurance because of its uncertain duration, and none of us can afford to waste any of our cognitive, emotional, or pragmatic resources. During normal times, when we experience the luxury of our full resources, we can propel ourselves ambitiously towards goals by scaffolding one goal after another. I call this process “ambition-ing”.
Don’t get me wrong - as a practice, we love ambition! Our patients tend to be goal-oriented, high functioning women and we derive great satisfaction from supporting our patients as they reach their goals. But “ambition-ing” is not necessarily appropriate to our current circumstances. Grounding ourselves is more appropriate, as we need to stabilize and preserve our resources.
How can we tell the difference between ambition-ing and grounding? Ambition-ing requires new resources, and grounding takes few, if any, new resources. Ambition-ing generally requires a strong future orientation, grounding is more present-focused. Ambition-ing may encourage setting larger goals, grounding will encourage bite-size goals. Ambition-ing may subtly stress us with its offer of future reward and current significant labor; grounding should ease us as it does not overtax us with labor yet provides a structure for progress. In perfect long term goal-setting, ambition-ing and grounding work in tandem to maintain our endurance.
An example of ambition-ing would be “I need to figure out a new career for myself!”. An example of grounding would be “Let me observe what is happening with my job this month and identify the pros and cons of my job in this remote work environment.” Only observation is required in grounding. Many decisions (and accessing tons of information!) are required in ambition-ing.
At this time, we encourage you to ground when you can. To ease yourselves when you can. We encourage you to assume you are at 50% capacity, and to nurture and support yourselves when you can, and however you can. If you could use more support, reach out, learn more, and let us help. We are wishing you all health and wellness during this time.