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How to Regulate Your Stir-Crazy Emotions
Findings and recommendations from a survey of people on lockdown
Co-authored with Diana Divecha
During the week of March 23, days after U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams urged Americans to stay at home to slow the spread of Covid-19, the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Collaborative for Academic and Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) conducted a survey of more than 5,000 people worldwide.
We asked participants to describe how they were feeling, in their own words. More than 95% of the words reflected unpleasant feelings; the top five were anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed, and sad. Only about 6% of the sample mentioned positive feelings like hopeful and grateful. The causes people gave for their suffering were related to finances, lack of access to groceries and cleaning supplies, balancing work and family life, feeling cooped up, or fear that they or someone they love would contract the coronavirus.
When we asked people about the strategies they used to manage their feelings, a few well-known ones came up, like mindfulness and meditation. But most of the strategies were worrisome: screaming and losing their temper, drinking and/or eating more than usual, obsessively cleaning, overthinking, consuming too much media, avoidance, and…
