
Ask HN: How to Handle Coronavirus Stress? - cvirusstress
I feel like there is new, terrible news almost hourly.<p>I usually do research online to look for a ray of hope. But everywhere I look just makes me feel even more hopeless.  No vaccine in sight, poor government responses, exponential spreading, horrible stories of suffering.<p>How is everyone coping?
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RoboTeddy
My strat so far:

\- Limiting myself to news on the topic 1x/day, which is plenty to stay
abreast

\- Keeping an eye on my thoughts. Is my thinking on the topic productive
(e.g., helping me come up with new useful things to do, like helping friends
prepare?) or merely repetitive (i.e., a waste of attention?)

\- If repetitive, I practice mindfulness by gently noting to myself (not in a
self-flagellating way) whenever I'm having thoughts or feelings about
coronavirus, and then just refocusing on the thing I intend to be doing.

Also, it's normal to have a period of difficulty when coming to terms with
something bad. It can help you be emotionally prepared for what's coming,
rather than having to confront it during the crisis.

In case it helps, one thing that Marc Lipsitch
([https://twitter.com/mlipsitch](https://twitter.com/mlipsitch)) points out is
that this pandemic is not an existential threat. It is bad, and it will affect
people you know and perhaps you in a bad way, but the world will go on.

------
sigmaprimus
Maybe it's a good time to get into a good time consuming game like
civilization or WoW.

If your not the gaming type you might want to try focusing on US politics,
though that may be worse.

My personal solution has been to focus on planning my garden, nothing makes me
feel better than when I have my hands in the dirt. I have been spending my
free time reading about different plants and browsing seed web sites.

The virus is comming there are steps you can take to prepare but other than
that it's best to take a stoic point of view, what is going to happen will
happen wether you stress out about it or not, so just don't bother.

------
salty_biscuits
This too shall pass.

