Lately, it’s been a struggle for everyone to stay sane and stay calm. The panic surrounding pandemics is often as infectious as the virus itself, if not more so. Being somewhat prone to anxiety, I knew I had to figure out a way to take care of my mental health as well as my physical health.

Shortly before this whole pandemic thing kicked off, my anxiety would manifest in one of two ways. If I was having a particularly stressful time with school or with life in general, I’d either have a bout of hypochondriasis, convincing myself I had anything from breast cancer to lung disease. If I didn’t convince myself I was on my deathbed, I would definitely convince myself that my surroundings were dirty and germ-ridden and that the filth was slowly closing in on me. So when the world plunged into an apocalyptic hellscape highly conducive to feeling like you’re going to die and everything around you is literally the plague – I thought I was surely on my way to an anxiety meltdown.

Although it’s been challenging to stay calm throughout all this, I think I’ve managed a way to minimize my panic. Even if you don’t usually suffer from contamination anxiety or hypochondriasis, this is a time where many of us are experiencing new kinds of anxiety and need to come up with a new way to bring ourselves back down.

Here are a few things I’ve been doing to try to prevent panic during COVID-19:

Stop overconsuming the news

The best thing I’ve done since lockdown began is DELETE Facebook and Twitter off my phone. For better or for worse, those two apps were how I consumed most of my news and they were rife with misinformation and people just sounding off.

Having them on my phone made it all to easy to scroll through reams of panic-inducing content multiple times a day. So, I deleted them which prompted me to stop checking them altogether, and my mental health has thanked me.

I really don’t feel the need to check the news every day. It’s all terrible, we get it. My heart goes out to all the people hurt, disadvantaged, and lost due to the virus but there’s not any good that comes from me turning on the TV every day and hearing about death.

I keep up to date with the latest restrictions, but other than that I don’t keep up with updates. I’d urge everyone to ease back on their news and social media consumption if they’re starting to feel overwhelmed.

Prioritize the stuff that grounds you

Yoga, meditation, reading – do more that makes you feel right here right now and brings you down from a state of panic. Or just go on a walk! We’re lucky enough to have access to a beautiful beach right now, so watch my YouTube video if you need an example of how calming beach walks can be. A  lot of us have more time than ever to commit to grounding practices, so why not pick up an activity that you feel like you’ve been missing.

For me, that’s been reading – especially fiction. With all the reading I do for college, reading for pleasure often falls by the wayside. But reading academic papers and studies doesn’t fulfill me in the same way that reading novels does.

I averaged almost a book a day for the first week of quarantine because it kept my mind off of the lingering panic and gave me something enjoyable to focus on. I’ve also been getting back into meditation – I know this can be a tricky one if you have anxiety because the prospect of sitting in silence with your thoughts can be horrifying. However, I’ve adopted a really flexible style of meditation that works for me and I’ve also discovered a Binaural Beats playlist on Spotify that is honestly the best playlist to meditate to. Whenever I listen to binaural beats I have so much more visualization which really helps transform meditation from a daunting echo-chamber of my own brain to a colorful session of self-exploration.

Whatever works best to bring you back into your body and the present moment, make sure you’re prioritizing it. We can mourn the freedom of the past and fear the uncertainty of the future, but the most important thing we can do is value the quiet and joy of the present moment.

Recognize the things that are out of your control

I know no one wants to hear this, but there’s really very little you can do to control whether you get COVID or not. Sure, you can wash your hands and practice good respiratory hygiene, but you can’t manipulate your habits and environment to ensure you and your loved ones don’t get it, it’s just not possible.

Once you come to peace with the reality of it, things become a lot more manageable. We often spend so much time stressing about things that are ultimately out of our control, so once we focus on the things we actually have power over it’s a lot easier to delegate our energy.

Here’s what you can control today – engage your mind in a meaningful way, move your body, nourish your body and your brain, practice social distancing and abide by your country’s restrictions, make time for stuff you enjoy (especially if it’s stuff you’re usually too busy for). Those are all the immediate things you can exert your control over, don’t waste your time trying to exercise your control on things that are impossible to wrangle.

It’s totally normal to be experiencing anxiety right now, but it’s important to be treating your mental health so you don’t succumb to the panic. Let me know what you’ve been doing to stay calm below. Don’t forget to watch my YouTube video if you need something chill to watch and want to listen to some crashing waves.