Hey, Dr. Lisa here doing a swan dive into your podcast feed because I was thinking about you this morning.

It is the morning of November the, oh my gosh, what day is it?

23rd and I am hard at work putting together a new podcast episode for you that will come out later

today.

But as I was doing so,

I was thinking about you and how I've been talking to so many people in my practice here at

growing self about this big resurgence of COVID anxiety related to spiking infection rates

and so much. And so I am actually going to be reposting

an episode that I created for you March 13th of 2020, which seems like a lifetime ago.

But it's all about how to manage the anxiety specifically around coronavirus. And I would also just like to remind

everyone within the sound of my voice that fear is not the same thing as anxiety. Anxiety is sort of

non-helpful rumination about things that could possibly happen in the future that are not

happening right now. And that is something that needs to be managed for our mental and emotional

health and wellness. Fear, on the other hand, is a realistic assessment of possible threats

that is healthy and helps us take positive action to protect

ourselves and people that we love. So we need to listen to and honor fear and learn how to differentiate

healthy fear from unhelpful anxiety because they're not the same. And then lastly, an incredibly important

anxiety management strategy is to not to try to make feelings go away or make threats go away,

but is really to cultivate a sense of competence to manage the challenges that you're facing. So coming back into

reality-based strategies to stay in the present moment and develop action plans that help you

actually feel safer and effectively manage the threats is always the best way to calm yourself down and develop an

internal support system of strength to deal with the very real challenges that you're facing right now.

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