Coping with COVID-19
ISOLATION, STRESS AND FEAR. IN THE NEW NORMAL, THESE WORDS NO LONGER APPLY JUST TO WAR CORRESPONDENTS. A TEAM OF EXPERTS HELP NAHJ BRING MENTAL CARE AND SELF-CARE ADVICE TO JOURNALISTS FACING TRAUMA ON THE PANDEMIC BEAT.
We had started planning this narrative a month ago, with a different format in mind. But we underestimated how much covering a pandemic would change our ideas about journalism and mental and self care. Therefore, we chose to structure this article as a running blog, or field notes, narrating our experiences and lessons we’ve learned from working alongside reporters facing the pandemic and changes in our professional environment.
Editor’s Note --
If you want to know more about the status of the pandemic in locations where the people who participated in this article, use this map. (Choose the city or country, and select the date of our report from the location). The TrackCorona project has been developed by students from Stanford, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech.
By Dr. Luisa Ortiz Pérez
March 20, 2020, Washington D.C.
Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, managing editor for palabra. approached us in mid-March with a proposal: Let’s write an article on the best analysis, advice and good practices that promote sound mental health for journalists covering the current public health crisis. Our non-profit organization, Vita-Activa.org, supports journalists and civil rights activists as they face violence, aggression or crisis in the course of their professional work. We saw Sandoval’s request as timely. Even as we took his call, we had already started working with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists on a series of webinars covering these topics, in English and Spanish.
The task already at hand gave us the ideal environment to reflect, and summarize what the webinars were all about.
The first of the 5 stages of grief and loss processing is the guiding thread of this text.
Denial
March 20, 2020 Montclair NJ
We replied to palabra. that same week. We would offer our observations on crisis management along with strategies reporters could use to avoid falling into burnout or chronic fatigue; we’d interview mental health and panic specialists; and allow those who participated in the NAHJ webinars to share their own stories of stress and coping.
We quickly found ourselves responding to palabra.’s request under the influence of adrenaline* -- the activation hormone that stimulates our sympathetic brains with flight scenarios, the need for movement, for innovation, to search for solutions ... and even to escape.
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*Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine by its International Nonproprietary Name (INN), is a hormone and a neurotransmitter. It increases heart-beat frequency, constricts blood vessels, dilates airways, and triggers the familiar fight or flight reaction of the body’s sympathetic nervous system.
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What we did not calculate was the effect the coronavirus outbreak, and the response of strict isolation measures, would have on how we would have to carry out our work.
Luz Mely Reyes
Credit: Vitoria Regia Da Silva, photographer
So much activity
March 23, 2020, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
For Luz Mely Reyes, co-founder and executive director of Efecto Cocuyo, moments of crisis are the best. This is when she can make use of her cold-blooded, analytical mindset and leadership that springs into action in emergencies. As she describes herself in her bio, she remains “calm and stoic in the face of critical situations, such as uprisings, coups, political instability and economic crises.”
The remedy is slowing down your thoughts. That gives you time, Luz Mely Reyes says, to analyze all options and then prioritize, so you don’t lose the sense of importance.
“Years ago, during the presidential coup in Venezuela, I remember well how adrenaline hit me and the lessons learned on how to deal with it: I put together an emergency coverage team and we quickly started generating stories,” Reyes said. Try to maintain constant physical activity and respect your sleep hours, she added, because after adrenaline normalizes the tiredness, you pay the price. So you have to think about the good times, the things that are beautiful in life. Those are the defense mechanisms against sadness and recurring fears.
March 24, 2020, Planet Zoom
We start the webinars for the NAHJ -- Vita Activa Mental Health Taskforce with an empathetic and energetic theme: Expect to engage journalists trying to understand what was to happen in the coming weeks. Our goal is transmitting, in Spanish and English, some tranquility and calm in these webinars, especially now in the face of the uncertainties that would begin to mark the pandemic.
The first session was based on a simple question: Can panic be constructive?
The answer is OF COURSE!
By knowing ourselves, we can direct our minds and bodies to less violent internal responses to crisis; To reduce the velocity of your actions as response to external stimuli. This helps us act more effectively and efficiently over the long term.
March 25, 2020, Lisbon, Portugal
Conversing with Dr. Mena Santos Galvao, specialist in trauma and panic disorders, we went a little deeper to understand the different ways fear manifests itself in the body. In panic mode, like the one set off amid a pandemic, fear rises harder and closer.
Santos Galvao summarizes volumes of specialized literature on the subject into three major reactions:
Flight or Escape
Flight is the reaction that requires movement and whose objective is escape from the source of our panic.
When a person is not still, she looks everywhere, as if looking for an exit. In this mode, breathing is shaky and the arms or legs tremble uncontrollably. This is a person on the run. The best we can do, recommends Santos Galvao, is help that person think about what’s causing the panic, and then look for alternatives to achieve relaxation, like humor, a change of atmosphere.
Fight
This is caused by the same feeling of panic, it manifests in the opposite direction, as a response to intimidation.
The fighter wants to demonstrate that they do not have a fear of fear. The fighter’s movement is rough, the voice shrill. She screams, she stares, tightens the neck and appears impatient. It is vital not to enter into a fight with this person or make fun of the situation. That will only embarrass her and make things much worse. Wait it out, let the energy run down a bit and talk about alternatives that can help change the response to panic.
Immobility or Freezing up
This reaction corresponds to the need some people feel to find protection amid panic, to not be seen, to just disappear.
This person looks at the ground, covers her mouth with her hands; shoulders down and jaw pointed downward.
In this case the attitude of submission and silence must be reciprocated. To reach her, you need to get down to her level, sit down with her and, if possible offer a hand on a shoulder for support. With a serene and calm voice, it is vital to talk about small steps that can be taken to move out of the panic situation: analyze how the crisis was evolving.
Over time, we’ve thought a lot about how these characterizations fit many of the people we’ve had contact with.
Zoombombing Screenshot
Credit: Vita-Activa.org
Negotiation
March 26, 2020, Planet Zoom
During this week's Spanish-language version of the NAHJ webinar, I noticed that the shared screen from the computer from which we operated the Zoom session began to change color, and the audio was different. Within seconds, a dozen people entered the webinar, waving and with their microphones open. I tried to mute the microphones, but it was too late, they were asking us to show our “boobs.” They told us we were “hot” What followed was a complete takeover of the screen and control of the doodle function. A very insulting, racist and aggressive word appeared, punctuating this rude Zoom bombing.
We cut the session. We are afraid.
Carol Bono and her adored Cream
Credit: Carol Bono
Depression
April 3, 2020, Durham, North Carolina
Carol Bono, Visuals and Interactives Editor for EducationNC, attended the first webinar sessions as a member of NAHJ.
The pandemic has certainly changed the way she works as a reporter and how she covers the education beat. In this webinar she reflected on the well-being and emotional state of the people she interviews and the impact her work has had on her own emotions. The idea of connecting her emotions to the stories she works on is difficult. It can generate internal conflict. Bono has always derived great professional value from her temperament and productivity. But in this time of crisis, she finds it increasingly difficult to separate it all and continue operating as she did before. What she’s taking away from the seminars is working on “my ability to open up to the world, towards others and towards what I feel: an enormous solidarity for the community that I work with.”
Yunuen Bonaparte in her work at home studio
Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte
April 7, 2020, Brooklyn NY
Yunuen Bonaparte, freelance photographer, photo editor for Narratively and an NAHJ team member, went into self-imposed quarantine a week before the rest of us. At the time we spoke to her, she had already been working from home for a month. “Each person, in her career, confronts her emotions,” she said. “Creating spaces that allow us to feel accompanied and supported is something I really appreciate.”
The external emotions she has experienced in this time include anger and exhaustion, as well as stomach aches, unusual impatience and “bad moods.” This is how her body expresses stress. Today, Yunuen is working on being more patient with herself, accepting things she can’t control, and realizing that trying to change some of those things doesn’t have to mean making yourself feel bad.
April 10, 20202 at Planet Zoom
We started webinars designed for students who are NAHJ members. This is something we’re accustomed to, as the Vita-Activa.org team regularly works with young people who are facing complex challenges. This time of crisis is no exception. The anxiety of not knowing what comes next, of not being clear about your professional future, of living isolated from your colleagues and peers, is all difficult to manage. A highlight was the immense nostalgia we felt toward the end of the session, when participants from Puerto Rico took us on tours of their homes and opened their microphones. We heard the familiar, relaxing song of the coquí frogs.
April 10-15, 2020, Montclair NJ
The following days we were unable to work on this diary.
We were busy launching a new project, using our help line to respond to the number of people who needed emotional support and accompaniment in these times of crisis and
extreme tension. We started a crisis-management series called Weaving Strength, support circles via WhatsApp, designed for people and communities that need to connect and require emotional support and community. Through this model, we share self-care ideas and ways to find daily support, and we provide sources of human contact and fellowship, as well as space to complain, talk about pain and hope and ideas for the future.
Acceptance
April 17, 2020, Durham North Carolina
Before finishing these entries -- these notes from the field -- we once again spoke with Carol Bono about her experience with the NAHJ webinars on mental health and building communities of resilient journalists.
She is now very clear: "I won’t refuse mental and emotional care, because now I consider it necessary.” She said the community she found among the people who participated in the webinars, who braved showing their vulnerability and sharing more of their lives openly, is an incentive to continue moving, identifying and understanding what works and why.
The evolution of this crisis requires us to adjust the way we approach mental health, coping now with new threats from isolation, social distancing, and other measures of contingency against the public health crisis.
Our human experiences, what we’re living through individually or together with our colleagues, have already become new and invaluable lessons.
The mental health crisis has not yet reached its peak, the extent of resultant economic recession and political conflict remain to be seen.
Today, and for now, we have to wait, flow, breathe.
César Montesano and Lu Ortiz while teaching a Webinar for NAHJ
Credit: Vita-Activa.org
Learned lessons
After our seminars, we came away with eight essential tips for managing stress and anxiety.
Apply them liberally, whenever you find it necessary:
Listen to your body and give it what it needs when it asks for it: food, sleep, movement, rest, work.
Evaluate the effect that the pandemic will have and the measures you must take, like isolation, to do your work. But do take the time to think.
Move your body, move your body, just move.
Slow your thoughts to analyze all the work and life options before you, so you don’t lose the sense of things.
Look at the way the crisis has evolved and consider the way people who we work with are also coping. Learn from them.
Think about the well-being and emotional state of the people you interview, and your co-workers, and connect them to your own emotions. You’ll find there’s a connection, that's clear.
Be more gentle and patient with yourself. Accept that things are not necessarily your fault, and that changing things should not generate more pain.
Make your breath a dependable source of calm...Remember that breathing is what keeps us alive.
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If you want to know more about our work, visit Hacks de Vida and examine the research that supports the work that VitaActivaOrg does.
If you are experiencing stress, trauma, crisis, chronic fatigue, or gender violence, contact us at apoyo@vita-activa.org | #VitaActiva | + 52155-8171-1117 (Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp)
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Dr. Luisa Ortiz Pérez is the Executive Director of Vita-Activa.org, a helpline to support journalists, activists and defenders of human, environmental and women's rights and who face gender-based violence online. As a journalist, she has contributed to NPR, WNYC, Yahoo! Hispanic Americas, Televisa Interactive Media and the BBC. He has recently led teams that provide psychological first aid for journalists and media professionals covering natural disasters and human tragedies. @luortiz
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Thank you to the entire NAHJ team for including mental health within the vital initiatives they provide to members of the organization: To Alberto Mendoza, BA Snyder, Yaneth Guillen-Diaz, Leslie-Anne Frank, infinite thanks. A special recognition to Yunuen Bonaparte’s leadership, professionalism and commitment, and to César Montesano, our co-pilot in this whole adventure.