In light of everyone's daily life changing from Covid-19, Jamie talks to Dr Craig Garrett, our assoc VP of Student affairs, who is also an assoc professor of counseling here at NOBTS and Leavell College. They talk about some practical ways to handle the stress and anxiety of this new 'normal.'
Jamie Dew: Hey, everybody, this is Jamie Dew. Welcome back to The Towel & Basin Podcast. Today, it's just me in here. I don't have Joe with me on the microphone today. He's actually behind the little switchboard, but I do have somebody in here with me today, Dr. Craig Garrett, who is our dean of students here at NOBTS and Leavell College and also one of our counseling profs, and thanks for being here.
Craig Garrett: Hey. Thank you. I'm really glad to have the opportunity.
Jamie: Yeah, it's a lot of fun to be able to just do something like this, but I think today is especially important. Today, what we're going to talk about in the podcast, I brought him in because he does, in addition to his administrative responsibilities with us, Dr. Garrett also teaches counseling here and deals especially with things like anxiety, depression and things of those natures, and the context of our... so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how to deal with anxiety and depression especially in traumatic situations.
Jamie: The context of our discussion today is, it's Friday, March 20th, 2020, we are knee-deep, smack dab in the middle of a national and global crisis with COVID-19. As we speak today, our city and our state are pretty close to lockdown. It's not quite there yet. They're not using that language, but it's down to essential personnel everywhere we go. It's a serious situation not just here in Louisiana and New Orleans specifically, but throughout the country and throughout the world, and so this is a moment where there's a lot of anxiety.
Jamie: That's the context of it. This discussion, obviously, man, this applies to so many other moments though, so we are doing a broader podcast here, but-
Craig: It certainly does. I mean this, if anything, is just the situation that brings it to the surface and lets us see it maybe more plainly than we normally get to do.
Jamie: That's right, and, in moments like this, so, today in this context, but, again, for anybody else who goes through other types of traumatic moments, you find in moments like this a couple things. Number one, for those who have never really dealt a lot with anxiety or depression or things of that nature, they find themselves in this moment dealing with it maybe for the first time and they don't know what to do about that and they... That freaks them out a little bit, the fact that they're dealing with it, and then, second of all, for people that, yeah, they are prone to deal with this type of stuff, boy, it just amplifies in this moment.
Craig: No doubt, and I think both are true, and you make an excellent point that this is the kind of situation that anxiety is made for, and that seems like a strange way to say that, but there's a sense in which, as God has created us, as people in our wholeness, we experience a broad range of emotions, and anxiety serves a purpose.
Jamie: Yeah, I was explaining something like that to my kids, one of the movies. Kids' movies, they have all sorts of funny things in them and good things in them and crazy things in them, but, occasionally, some pretty significant insights, and one of my favorite movies to watch with our kids is the movie Inside Out? Are you familiar with this?
Craig: Absolutely, oh, yeah.
Jamie: You've got every little character in the mind of the child, and each represents an emotion.
Craig: They all have a place. Yeah.
Jamie: That's right, but you start off the movie thinking, at the beginning, the perspective of the movie is that some of these emotions are just always bad and unwelcome and we should do everything we can to just suppress them and keep them in place, but, as it turns out, as the story progresses, and I think this is quite right, is that, as the story progresses, there is an actual place where every emotion is needed, and each serves its role at the right time, and it does seem to me... I mean, so, anxiety, for example, man, there's... There actually is a time to freak out a little bit.
Craig: Absolutely.
Jamie: Right?
Craig: I mean, that's what this reaction is for, and, if you think about anxiety, you don't just think it in your mind. You feel it in your body, don't you? If you have that rush of the chemical processes in your body that puts you on heightened awareness or you find yourself with a little uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach or your neck muscles get tight or something like that, it's just a sign that you're on alert, and that serves a great purpose. If something dangerous is coming, it puts you at the ready to protect yourself.
Jamie: That's right. You need to be alert...
Craig: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Jamie: ... and we wouldn't be without anxiety, so, that a person feels this in this moment, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong per se with them or-
Craig: No, not at all, not at all, and I think, if we took stock of ourselves, if we were just to look back over the past month even before this current crisis started, we would find times that we felt more and less anxious, and I think that ebbs and flows according to the situation around us, so, if I could do one thing for people, it would just be to normalize the fact that we're all feeling this way to some degree.
Craig: Our personalities are a little different, so it feels a little different to different people. It's magnified a little more in some people. Some people don't experience it quite as much outwardly, but everybody's experiencing it, and, when it's in the normal range of anxiety, relatively healthy ranges, it serves a purpose, so it's okay. Don't beat yourself up if you're feeling a little anxious right now.
Jamie: There's a sense in which we take some of the pressure off simply by cutting ourselves a little slack by the fact that, yes, you're going to be anxious in this moment. You're supposed to.
Craig: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jamie: Now, having said that though, we do have to deal with it and we do have to keep moving forward, so let me ask this question. What can people do in response to now a hefty dose of anxiety in these moments? Let's start with the spiritual side of things. How do prayer, scripture reading, those things play into this?
Craig: Absolutely. When you think about it, our spiritual lives have been interrupted in a way. I mean, even those of us in our tradition that doesn't focus so much on a very detailed liturgy, we have a liturgy anyway. We go to worship together on Sundays. We serve or we learn on other... at other times of the week. There are things that we normally do. We usually do those things together, and all of that's been taken away from us. We may be finding ourselves doing worship corporately on the Internet, which just doesn't feel the same.
Jamie: It doesn't, and I think we have to admit the fact that it doesn't feel normal because it's not normal, but I noticed... and so, last week, again, the context of this conversations we're having pretty much throughout the nation, we're one week removed from our first Sunday where churches started doing this, and there was... Some churches did it. Some other churches didn't. This coming Sunday, I suspect the majority will do it, and, for weeks to come, probably the majority are going to do it.
Jamie: I would just want to say to everybody out there, when we first have to go there, the tendency will be to put the theological hat on for a second and ask questions like, "Are we abandoning what the scriptures tell us to do?" Look, it's hard to say that in a moment of emergency when we have to do something for a stretch of a couple of weeks or a couple months that we've abandoned our theological foundations.
Craig: Agreed.
Jamie: These are the moments that we're in, and so I would encourage people. It is outside the normal liturgy of our life, so to speak, but, man, embrace it for what it is, and let's at least get the very most out of what we can get.
Craig: Absolutely. This, ironically, I think can turn out to be an opportunity to grow in ways that we wouldn't have grown if we hadn't been presented with this challenge. Just the way that stress keeps bones healthy and exercise keeps muscles healthy, there is a sense in which, when we tackle something like this, when we do that as a family, when we do that as a community, there are ways that we can grow, and we can be strong in ways we wouldn't have if we hadn't been presented with this particular challenge, not to discount the fact that anxiety is real, and it feels bad. It's no fun.
Jamie: It's terrible.
Craig: Yeah, but there can be some good that comes of it, sure.
Jamie: Yeah, now, what about... so praying and scripture and, specifically, praying scripture when it comes to that?
Craig: Absolutely. I was talking with one of my colleagues the other day, a wise, wise woman and friend, Dr. Kathy Steele, who was recommending just praying the Psalms. Open the Psalms and read them. Most of us are familiar with them. They're easily read privately. They're easily read aloud. Return those as a prayer to the Lord. You will find more than likely that, as you read the experiences of David, the authors of these beautiful, beautiful piece... parts of scripture, that you're going to resonate with some of the things that they were feeling at the time. It helps us realize that the experience of humanity hasn't changed all that much. It gives us some structure that we can use to pray back to the Lord.
Craig: If something doesn't apply to you, I say I don't want to sound flippant about the way we approach the word, but move onto the next one. You're probably going to find something in the revelation of God's word to us that you find to be meaningful and you can turn around and share with your kids, you can share with your spouse, you can share with those around you or, most importantly, share with somebody who doesn't have the hope of Christ.
Jamie: Yeah. One thing I love to say and point out about scripture is that it is not a sterile book. It is not a sterile collection of writings in the sense that it's not like it's just factual dissemination. The writers of the Psalms in particular, the gospel writers, they ush and gush with existential reality, meaning, the Psalmist, when they wrote these cries to God, they were exactly that. They were deep existential groanings before God, of anguish or stress or despair, and so, often, they... it's... You read these people and these writings, and you clearly have a sense that they know exactly what it is like. It's so real, and so, in that sense, it helps because there's something that we resonate with, that resonates deeply within us, but then the pattern is always up front. There's this real super duper honest anguish before God that's being expressed and then, inevitably, there's a turn in the Psalms where the Psalmist will now look up back to God...
Craig: Yeah, and I will praise him.
Jamie: ... and find his footing before God and the strength of the Lord and locate his or her hope there in those places, and so beautiful passages.
Craig: No doubt, no doubt, and I think that's so true. As we make changes to the normal ways that we go about our spiritual walk especially if we have families, as parents, we're really concerned about the ways that our kids are fed spiritually. I would say there to give yourself a little bit of a break. Try not to have too rigid a recipe for exactly what it has to look like. Do something, and do it to the best of your ability and do it according to the wisdom that the Holy Spirit provides to you, those that are around you might recommend to you, that your pastor, your leaders might suggest, but realize that, yeah, it may not go off exactly like you intend, and everyone in your household is feeling the stress, feeling the strain. Kids may act up a little bit. They may be a little more sullen. They may be who knows what, and everybody's approaching this from their own perspective.
Jamie: Right. Right, so those are very helpful insights to... scripturally and prayerfully to... for folks dealing with anxiety. All right, are there maybe some other more practical things that they can do through these moments? What are some things they can do there?
Craig: I think, sometimes, we focus on the list of things we can't do. We pull up, in our case, nola.com or something, and we see the list of stuff that we should not go out and do, and those are very real, and we need to follow things as carefully as we can.
Craig: There are a lot of things we can do. We are still gifted with nature that's around us. We're part of that creation. We are members in a sense of that creation. We steward it. We shepherd it, but we draw from it as well. Get outside. Breathe the air. Look at the sky and the birds and listen for things that you might not normally listen to if we're inside listening to a 24/7 news channel or have our face on our phones reading Twitter or whatever the case is. Take advantage of that.
Craig: It's hard to undersell it, honestly, and the research is certainly there. The people that research things like anxiety will show pretty clearly that getting outside, things like hiking, walking, camping, taking walks with people you love, playing a little family game of soccer, something like that, yeah, just be careful to wipe down the soccer ball, no, no [crosstalk 00:12:58], but-
Jamie: I'm thinking knees and hips and-
Craig: That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You do this to the extent that your body is able to do it, but what we shouldn't fail to take advantage of that, and, as I walk around campus and drive around campus, I see people out and about. They're maintaining their social distancing. They're being responsible for the people around them, but they're out and they're walking and they're talking, and I think it's an important thing we can do definitely.
Craig: We have to look at the community around us that we've got. There's still a lot of ways to maintain community. I've probably called my older relatives more since this started than I would have in another situation, and that blesses them and blesses me, so it's a way for us to receive, but also to give back and to sow into others. That's something we can definitely do.
Jamie: Yeah. Good. I appreciate you joining me today. Hey, just so everybody knows, about 10 minutes before I walked in here to do this, I said, "Hey, Craig, I need you to come in here with me and do this podcast." The good news is he's part of a great team around here that teaches counseling, and they talk about these things and think about them every single day, so I knew he was up for it, but I appreciate your, very, very short notice, responding in real time to the needs of our students and to our family right now. I'm grateful for you.
Craig: I'm happy to do it. It's a blessing and a privilege every single day, and I'm just pleased that we're working through this as proactively and as positively as we can. Every member of this community is so important to us.
Jamie: Yeah, and they've been fantastic...
Craig: Absolutely, it's been neat to see.
Jamie: ... stressed, but very clearly honoring Christ and loving people, and it's been... It's just been beautiful to be a part of.
Craig: It has.
Jamie: Grateful to God for all of you folks. I hope that you have a wonderful day, weekend, month, whatever is before you. Again, our context here is in the middle of a crazy moment, but we remember and we recall that our God has us and that we're going to be fine, so, whatever... Whenever you listen to this, under whatever circumstances you listen to this, turn your heart and turn your mind to the Lord, and he will give you help. Love you. God bless you. We'll see you next time.
Jamie: PS, one thing we did forget to mention in this we just want to hit real quick, what if that anxiety is getting overbearing and a place where danger [crosstalk 00:15:21], things of that nature?
Craig: That's right, so, when we look at emotions like anxiety and depression, we realize that, yes, there's a sense in which they're common to all of us. They're part of our creation. It's a natural thing to feel. Sometimes, it goes beyond that, so, as a counselor, what we would be looking at is things like duration. How long has this lasted? How many symptoms does a person have altogether at once? How severe are those symptoms? Sometimes, that can be a little difficult for people to know themselves, and so, sometimes, they just want to chat with somebody. That doesn't have to be terribly formal. It doesn't have to be ongoing, but we've got resources for that, so, if you are a person who knows that you've had some issues with anxiety, that it's risen to the point of needing clinical attention in the past, then this may be a time when that's increased, and, if that's the case, again, follow the same advice that we've given you before.
Craig: Call the dean of students office. Stop in. We are at least for the time being here, so, as long as the office is open, you're always welcome to do that, or email us at dos@nobts.edu. Tell us what you're feeling. Let us reach out to you and see if there's some way that we can resource you. We've got options for that. We have counselors on campus. We have people who would be happy just to give you a little extra care and help make sure that you're okay.
Jamie: Good. All right, so, for all of our students, anxiety for all of us is normal, but if it's acute, if it's reaching serious points, reach out to us. Let us know how we can help.
Craig: Certainly, if you're having thoughts of harming yourself, if you're having thoughts that are very negative about yourself, if the shame just seems to be ramping up, those sorts of things, call and talk with somebody. We can help you out.