We are in lockdown and there is a lot of concern in the environment, between the wave of information we are receiving and the dark messages that spread from whatsapp. How do we cope with this anxiety?

The intensity is key in these cases: if I am all day collecting and receiving information about the coronavirus it is not to say what we can do to take it better, but it is very difficult not to feel nervous or drowned. We decide when we will be informed and what sources of information we will use. With whatsapp the same.

What we do before and after receiving this information is very important. Especially ahead of us, because the more oxygenated the brain, the more easily we will overcome the hardest information. If I give all day with fear and suddenly hear the news, I will have fewer psychological and emotional resources to face it from my own point of view. If I have a free brain in those past hours, in the things that don't have to do with coronavirus, my subsequent response will be better.

In this sense, in our internal dialogue with ourselves it is important to see to what extent we are feeding the obsessive thoughts that generate fear or impotence, and to what extent we feed the thoughts that help us to relax. It is not a question of taking the situation quickly and saying “nothing happens”, but of thinking: What can I do today? Day by day, for us to be able to do something, building from our creativity, for us to have control of ourselves in this situation of great uncertainty, if we don't feel puppet. And then the routine is very useful: to establish guidelines for ourselves, with hygiene, with food, with physical exercise…

It does not help if the situation is unknown and the uncertainty it creates.

Indeed, it has already been a week and everyone knows what of the things he did last week have brought him some benefit and what is the opposite, so let us take advantage of it.

Most of us have started very fast lockdown; let's slow down. We've approached all of this in a very cognitive plane, thinking, "What to do, what to do," and maybe what we need is to do less. After all, we are among four walls and it is necessary to adapt the body and the head to this new rhythm.

Beyond confinement, the situation of many workers who have to go out every day to work is harsh, many people are emotionally overcome.

Yes, and to have one or another psychological influence, it is often important that we see or not positive consequences for what we are doing. People who work in the health field, for example, are feeling a high degree of stress and frustration because they are also working with scarce resources, but at the same time they are seeing that the work they do has enormous value and is the basis of this process. This gives at least one point of satisfaction, one motivation, although many moments they have to manage are emotionally difficult.

Another type of worker is the one who sees that although at the moment his work is not so necessary and the experts tell him to stay at home, they force him to go to work and take an unnecessary risk, as he can get infected and then has to go home to his child, his partner or whoever he is. The emotional shock, indignation and anger that occurs here is great.

Lockdown is also hard for children. How far and how do you explain this special situation?

We must respond to what they ask us, to the extent that they can understand, but without becoming saturated with information and without transmitting the anxieties and concerns that adults have. What is important to say, but what children internalize is how we tell them: we will transmit the same content to them in a nervous or quiet way, of one thing or the other. And the same when we're not with them: what we talk to adults, what we talk to others over the phone… they're also internalizing children, even if we don't do it directly with them; they quickly absorb the home environment.

There are many other people who live alone and many of them are older people. They don't have an easy situation.

In addition, the biggest ones are the ones that have the most risks and will be identified with the toughest news that you hear and see in the media. Many will not have with whom to share their concerns and fears, so we have to assume the responsibility of caring for the elderly in our environment through video calls or otherwise.

Humor has a therapeutic value.

Laughter has excellent therapeutic consequences, you know. But they don't make us laugh at the same things, we have to see what works for you to laugh at yourself. I mean, maybe one person is at a very delicate moment and a particular joke does nothing good to him; we have to take advantage of these situations to listen to the other, to know how he is and what he needs.

We're hearing that it's time to take care of ourselves and others. What is the best way to do this?

To take care of this, we must first take care of ourselves, and for that we have to be a little primitive: we have to cover the basic needs, feed what the body and the mind need, and from there continue to build, but I think we've started the other way, we've started the house on the roof.

Do we have to anticipate that such an uncommon situation will have psychological and emotional consequences in the future?

The casuistry is very wide and it will not be the same that passes the confinement as a vital experience, that will suffer a great economic hole, that will be assigned to nearby deaths… Recognizing that all these factors will condition a lot, then we will face with better means to whoever comes, because the way to take this path is one or the other, we will arrive weaker or stronger at the end of this process. As I said at the beginning, self-control is fundamental to it.