“Good Enough” Can Be the New Norm
As of now, the United States is the country with more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other nation in the world. I am pondering how we are coping as a nation, as a city--and even as a town, locally. If you have been talking to people via Zoom for the last 20 or more days, you have realized you are not alone in this new era of adjusting to the pandemic, aka Covid-19.
Some of us are scheduled for around 6 hours of Zoom meetings each day, and some of us are moving on to teletherapy to continue our work in the mental health field. Many people are balancing work with homeschooling their children. While we continue to seek productivity in this pandemic and continue to push for remote work conditions, it is timely that we ask ourselves, "how doable can this be?"
I find myself looking for standards to adjust to, and then bars to meet while I’m adjusting. The scheduled Zoom meetings for my preschooler occur twice a day. While attending to my usual deadline at work, the never-ending “mom’s guilt” continues to activate me emotionally. “Is it too much screen time already? Gosh I’m two days behind in following that curriculum for my child?” “Did he exercise enough today, or did I allow enough play time for him, and did I engage him enough both socially and emotionally?” The “never good-enough” feeling quickly builds up because that’s how isolation can feel and that’s how isolation can make you think.
There’s a current lack of understanding, on some level, of just how these adjustments have impacted our work-life balance, our mood and our overall mental health. Learn to accept your new level of productivity, whatever that is. Being a good enough worker, a good enough mom, good enough faculty, good enough therapist, good enough teacher, good enough cleaner, good enough whatever you are is enough. Yes—it’s time to embrace the good-enough within ourselves and to support our mental health needs. Because productivity doesn’t come easy with a pandemic, or any crisis for that matter. As we continue to look around and seek support and compassion from one another, let’s not forget to nudge each other (even virtually) and remind each other and ourselves that we are, in fact, good enough!
About Two Roads Wellness Clinic
At Two Roads Wellness Clinic, we want to help you find the path that makes a difference in your life. We’re an integrative health clinic offering a vast array of services including, mental health treatments such as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), expressive arts therapy, family therapy, medication management, primary care, integrative nutritional support including genetic nutritional counseling, life coaching, massage therapy, physical therapy, infrared sauna services, community education and outreach, and more.
The Two Roads Wellness Clinic team of therapists, medical and nutrition staff, massage therapists, life coaches, physical therapists, and emotional support animals are ready to help you find an integrated approach to your wellness. To schedule an appointment, visit our contact page, to get started at one of our convenient locations in Champaign, Danville, or Mahomet.