I’d like to start this post out by acknowledging the privilege of my quarantine. I have no dependents aside from myself, I’m a white, able-bodied, cisgender person in a financial, emotional, physical and mental position that allows me to have what I imagine is quite an uncommon experience of this time. 

Holy moly. What a moment in time we are all experiencing, huh? In some ways it feels like time reset when the quarantine began, and it feels both like the world before social distancing was just a moment ago and also a lifetime. My experience of the quarantine has been so many things. More than anything else, though, it has been a petri dish of opportunity for me to practice all of the tools I have been learning in life and in therapy school, over the last (nearly) twenty-nine years.

At the beginning of quarantine the company I’ve worked for over the last four plus years was forced to shut down. Vantigo has been my home and my family for such a long time at this point, and has helped me grow into myself in such unexpected ways, that this sudden loss felt much like the death of a beloved person for me. My gratitude for Vantigo extended even into its sudden departure of my life. Historically I would have reacted to the news that the company and my job were over (at least for now) by dissociating from my feelings and binge eating. In this moment, however, I called upon my mindfulness practice and the baby therapist part of me that has been developing over the last two years to make a different choice. As I felt the sadness welling up inside of me I heard part of me say, “this is an opportunity, let it come.” So I went with it. I put on the Jeff Buckley cover of Hallelujah,  got in the shower, and cried it out hard. As I surfed the waves of grief, I allowed myself to fully feel them. And hot damn, did they hurt. I felt a kind of primal grief rise up in me as I wailed, while at the same time another part of me comforted myself. “There, there, just like that, this is exactly what you need right now,” I crooned, like a mother to a child. I called my old boss, who started Vantigo, and cried with him too. That evening I wrote about my experience for about twenty minutes, giving my brain an opportunity to begin integrating what had happened. By the morning, I felt light and free. By fully embracing the grieving process, I avoided what could have been weeks of anxious and overwhelming feelings hiding beneath avoidant binge eating. I was able to realize through this experience that I’ve been avoiding processing my parent’s mortality- something that seemed to be coming up a lot for my peer group at the beginning of all of this. Channelling this initial grief allowed me to access the realization that by confronting their mortality now, I can more fully embrace the time I do still have with them, instead of taking it for granted.

Holy moly batman, personal growth is so cool.

This experience also set the stage for how I’ve worked with my parts and processed my feelings throughout quarantine. Earlier this year I attended an Internal Family Systems workshop, where I learned technical descriptions for carrying out the self-loving parts work that has become a fundamental part of my personal growth in the last six years. Sometimes what this looks like for me is getting underneath my weighted blanket with a few pillows under my knees and saying to myself, “okay, who needs to be heard?” Sometimes I cry, sometimes I laugh. Sometimes it is easier to ask myself this prompt and then type my responses into my journal instead of trying to keep track of them in my head. I often feel much lighter once I’ve done this, and more often than not any urges to binge eat are released.

I’ve noticed that if I try to do parts work with the intention of feeling my feelings so that the hard ones will go away, it doesn’t work. Our parts are smarter than us, and they need to be allowed to express what they are feeling in their own time, with no agenda. Doing this parts work has helped me to see and understand what I needed to do for self-care in this time, and ultimately come to understand what I will need to do to truly care for myself throughout my career as a therapist (which I’m sure will continue to evolve).

The predominant theme of my self-care practices have been, how can I best take care of my inner child, so that she can stay vulnerable and access the play that she needs to thrive and experience joy?

My self-care activities have included:

• Starting my mornings by turning on classical music and drinking water before getting out of bed, making coffee and meditating
• Dancing and singing in my room
• Nesting in my apartment
• Channelling my creative energy into crafting
• Zoom calls with friends where we do Soul Collage (an expressive arts therapy type activity)
• Giving myself permission to do nothing
• Giving myself self-compassion when I’ve turned to ice cream or chocolate for self-soothing
• Watching the sunset from the 16th street steps while social distancing with Franny
• Caring for my body and mind through yoga, running, and other kinds of exercise
• Cooking creative meals
• Talking to my parents, grandparents, friends and siblings (shout out to my dad saying, “call me on the television phone,” in reference to facetime)
• Allowing hard feelings to flow
• Being gentle with myself when it has been incredibly difficult to focus or get homework done
• Allowing myself to be present, take things one day at a time, and embrace uncertainty in a beautiful way for the first time (possibly ever)
• Journalling
• Reading and listening to audiobooks while knitting
• Accessing gratitude
• Bonding with my new & old housemates
• Playing games
• Watching movies
• Riding my bicycle
• Sharing silly childhood photos and music on instagram stories with my friends
• Volunteering at the food bank and delivering burritos to folks in need through the burrito project with Anthony
• Allowing myself the opportunity to craft during my graduate school Zoom classes (which has done wonder for my ADHD)
• Being vulnerable
• Putting trader joe’s everything bagel seasoning on greek yogurt 🙂

In some ways this time has brought me back to childhood. The feeling I used to get at the beginning of summer vacation, like this endless expanse of time that I can fill with whatever my heart pleases. A few other elements have added an element of summer camp vibes to my quarantine, particularly spending three days a week volunteering at the food bank. Finding a new community of friends who come together to laugh, dance, and sing as we package boxes of food for seniors, build cardboard castles out of boxes meant for apples, and support one another throughout this time has been such an unexpected joy and gift.

I don’t quite know where or how to include this, but the other most protective factor for me during this time has been my friend Anthony. We met through volunteering a few weeks before quarantine started. Given that my three housemates were going to be gone for the first month of quarantine, I made a personal decision for my mental health to social distance with Anthony. I’ve joked to him that when I write the novella about us after all this is over it’ll be called, “A Friend at the End of the World.” This quarantine would have been entirely different without him, and my inner child couldn’t be more delighted to have found the childhood best friend I never knew existed. Throughout the time I’ve spent with Anthony, I’ve had the opportunity to observe patterns in myself, practice boundaries, and keep growing through some of my biggest personal challenges. Needless to say, grateful is putting it lightly.

When I look back on this moment of my life, I hope the thing that shines the most brightly is the realization that I was benefitting from having a new kind of partnership with myself. One that I have been working on since I started going to therapy at age 23 with the expressed goal of learning how to take care of myself. Falling in love with me is possibly the most amazing experience I’ve ever had, and I can deeply sense just how different the rest of my life is going to be because of that.