Staying Sane in Time of Disaster

These five tips can help you feel like you are doing something proactive and stay useful for the good of all.

1) Stop Over Thinking What May Happen to You

Letting your mind take you through a house of horrors about if the radiation will reach you or how this might happen to you next only keeps you frozen in fear and sometimes spreads that fear to your children, friends and co-workers. The best way to sort out too many thoughts is to separate what is fact from fiction. FACT is that they need our prayers, money and positive thoughts now. FICTION is that you will get sick or have a disaster happen to you next.

2) Scan your Body. 


Detect and release tension in your body from head to toe especially while watching the news and talking and thinking about it endlessly. Many people are getting sick from worrying and sitting by the news all day plus wondering what to buy like Iodine tablets. Instantly calm your anxiety and gain focus through conscious breathing and loosening a tight jaw, clenched fists or raised shoulders, especially when watching, reading or talking about it.

3) Exercise and Move.

Staying frozen in front of the TV will add to obsessive mental activity and built up tension, instead of releasing anxiety. Get out and walk or do some stretching.

4) Communicate What You Are Feeling.

Get your concerns and grief off your chest and ask for support from friends, family or a professional coach or counselor. Holding your fears and grief inside builds anxiety to proportions that can make you sick, depressed, paranoid or immobilized.

5) Stay Proactive.

Stopping your life, your relationships and work helps no one. Too often we can unconsciously use disasters as a way to ignore and divert what is needed in our home and work life. I know I have doen that before.

Another option is to make money and donate. Volunteer for the Red Cross or a fund raising event. Discuss this with your children and check in with their emotional state instead of having them see you depressed all day. Spend time each day in prayer, visualization and creative thought to see how you can help the situation versus shutting life down or putting important personal or professional issues on hold.