Tips to Avoid the Groundhog Day Effect
NYMC/Touro Expert Offers Ways to Avoid Obsessive Thinking and Feelings of Helplessness
In the weeks since sheltering at home began, we seem to be living in an eternal present. Because our most recent memories of anything different – or “out of the new ordinary” – are weeks old, there are no experiential memories to track time mentally. Each day feels the same as the previous one to the point where it is difficult to remember if a new day has even begun or not.
This is a dangerous mindset to maintain, since we not only experience stress and anxiety, but it can cause us to fall into obsessive thinking and feelings of helplessness. It can shrink our perceived range of possibilities as well as our ability to connect with others.
But! There is a way to stop the repetitiveness from getting you down.
Rabbi Dr. Ira Bedzow, Director of Biomedical Ethics & Humanities Program and UNESCO Chair of Bioethics at New York Medical College, says it’s important to hold onto the bigger picture one has for oneself and not lose sight of it due to the overload of the everyday.
Here are top reflection practice tips from Dr. Bedzow:
1. Schedule time to think about something different.
Don’t just take this time haphazardly; if you do, you will never actually do it. Establish a moment or two every day that is set aside without distractions. Many of us are living with spouses and children, so this may seem impossible, but it is not. Bedzow says his time is early in the morning before everyone in the house wakes up. He also takes a shorter scheduled break after the workday as a reward for finishing the day, where he resets his priorities and mood before having dinner and spending time with his family.
2. During this time, don’t focus on “to-do” tasks.
We all have heard about taking a “mental health day” which is specifically meant to relieve stress and prevent burnout. Mental health days are not simply days off. They are meant to help clear and heal a person’s mind so that he or she can return to work more relaxed and productive. But to do that, you can’t simply stop working but keep mentally engaged in the stresses of the workplace. In order to use a day to reset your perspective, you need to change what you do, how you talk, and even what you think about that day. Apply the same idea to your daily scheduled time.
3. Ask yourself “big picture” questions about your life goals and what they mean right now.
Whatever questions you ask yourself, the important thing is to expand the ever-narrowing worldview we risk acquiring when our movements and options become limited. The bigger you make the life around you, the less the pandemic’s social and psychological consequences will bear on you. In this time, Dr. Bedzow says he asks himself the following questions:
- Do I still want to become the person I thought I did before the pandemic?
- Do my actions (both small and large) in this moment demonstrate that desire?
- Have my values changed, and, if not, am I still acting on them?
- Am I making room in my life for the people and beliefs that I cherish or am I closing myself off by allowing new – and bad habits – to form?
- What small thing can I do today to make my life, and the lives of those around me, a bit different?
- Can I add some fun into the day?
These questions will allow you to look forward to positive, transformative change. They also empower you to see that change is possible (even if those changes are small) in a time when you are stuck at home. It is not always the size of the change that makes a difference, but the willingness to turn new actions into new habits is oftentimes what makes change stick. The feeling that we have some control over what we do every day goes a long way to stop stress, anxiety, and feelings of helplessness from creeping in.
