3 Steps for Reframing Your Language around Coronavirus
/Today's video and blog post is about reframing your language mindfully around coronavirus.
Now I've noticed that a lot of people have a sense of aversion to the word "coronavirus" and some of the other related words. We're talking today about three specific ways you can reframe, especially with words like social distancing and isolation, and the word coronavirus or COVID-19 itself.
So first of all let's start with "social distancing". Even the World Health Organization is telling us that rather than using the term "social distancing" to start using the "physical distancing" because socializing is really important. A few years ago, if this has happened to us, we wouldn't have the technology available to communicate with friends and family all over the world. But fortunately we do have that technology now, so we can relate to people with ease and convenience.
What Professor Paul Gilbert, who's one of the world experts in compassion, told us last week in our Managing Anxiety Summit, is rather than talking about social distancing he calls it "safe relating". Relationships and relating to people are really important and using the word safety can be soothing for people. So whenever you hear the words "social distancing" think "actually now I'm not social distancing, I'm practicing safe relating, I'm going to continue to relate to others and myself in a safe way". And this is my first tip - let's use the word safe relating.
My second tip is for people using the word "isolation" and this concept of isolation again means a sense of closing down, of being away from people physically. Isolation hasa lot of negative connotations linked to it too. So what about if you reframed it in a different way? Think about what words you could use - you could call it ‘me time’ or ‘connecting with myself’.
And I like what one of my teachers Ajahn Brahm said in the past: you are never actually alone because you are always with yourself! And you can communicate to yourself and talk to yourself and say "hey, how are you doing? Yeah, I'm fine." that kind of connection. So there's some relationship going on even when you're with yourself. So turning isolation into me-time or something similar could be a good idea to try.
The third one's a bit more unusual and it's around the word "coronavirus" or the words "COVID-19". Now, if I as soon as I say those words, you may notice some emotional reaction coming up from you - some fears and anxieties. And I'm going to share with you quite a clever tip to help you step back from that. If you have a negative reaction to a word, which is ultimately just a sound, what we tend to do is we avoid it. We try to avoid looking at that word, we start to try to avoid thinking about it. But that very avoidance means that you're actually giving it attention and then a greater fear grows around it.
What studies in Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) have found is, to actually relate to the word in a different way. There are different techniques for it but one funny one that you could do for coronavirus is to actually just repeat it. If you repeat it very quickly, let's say 30 times for around 30 seconds very fast - the word and its meaning get disconnected from each other. When you hear the word it doesn't have that difficult emotional impact it would have, initially. So we can just try a little one right now. If the word is coronavirus you can try it with me and or you could just watch me doing it but if you try it this, it just takes 30 seconds and it's like a little experiment:
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And now if I think of the word growing a virus it sounds like ‘crevase’ and doesn't have so much of an emotional tone. If you didn't try it right now, try it later and just think about when you hear that word, or COVID-19, or virus - all those kinds of words. Notice if it has a strong emotional impact initially. And then do this 30 second exercise. Experiments found it worked with many other words too because we create these connections between sounds and pictures in our head and emotional reactions and this is one way of ‘defusing’ from the feeling.
So the three tips in summary are:
- changing your use of the words social distancing to "safe relating",
- changing "isolation" to "Me Time" - I'm more connecting with myself or connecting with others perhaps as well.
- and using defusion techniques from ACT training. A way of disconnecting the meaning and feelings from the thought itself.
I hope you find these tips helpful! If so, do share with your loved ones. Thanks.
Check out our next course on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which will include this and many other metaphors - it's an interactive video course. You can chat and get to know the other participants, you create a sense of community. We try and make it in a creative way too, so you learn different techniques and it's also evolving all the time. I think you'll enjoy it so come along and join us!
