Maintaining Mental Wellness During the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Danyelle] Hello everybody. Welcome to Comets Discuss where we give you mini episodes on big trending topics. For this series, we are talking about COVID-19. With nearly every aspect of life now affected by this global pandemic, we are interviewing UTD experts while social distancing to provide you various perspectives during this evolving situation.

I’m Danyelle. Today we are talking about mental health with Dr. Kim Burdine. Dr. Burdine is a psychologist and the assistant director at the Student Counseling Center at UT Dallas. She is also the training director there.

Hi Dr. Burdine. Welcome to the show.

[Dr. Burdine] Thank you for having me. I’m excited for this.

[Danyelle] Great, its nice to have you here. Thank you so much for taking time away from all the really important work that you are doing to join us today. Can you tell us a little bit about how the counseling center has had to adapt to this pandemic?

[Dr. Burdine] For the most obvious way, we are all working remotely. One of the things that is important about counseling is creating a safe and warm environment. And so, that is one of the things that we have been working on and kind of updating policy and procedure, as is the case with most health providers. There is laws and regulations and those sorts of things that we have had to kind of adjust to but we are excited to still be offering services. So, we are running 100% remotely. So, one thing that I thought about that would be helpful to just kind of normalize, though we are offering our services remotely, not all students can create the kind of safety and security that they need in order to do therapy via tele-health. So that is one consideration and one thing that I wanted to normalize. As much as we are making this accessible to some, many people may still not be able to access this resource, even if they wanted to. So, its being creative, and created a YouTube page where we are posting different webinars that we hope will be helpful for people so we are posting a couple of those a week. I also think that connection is also a big part of the healing and change process and so not being able to connect in-person is certainly something that we are continually adjust to, but we obviously are happy to provide some support because of course some support is better than none.

[Danyelle] What type of technology are you guys using to connect with students and still adhere to all of the policy and legal regulation?

[Dr. Burdine] We are currently using Microsoft Teams for our sessions. It is one of the ways that are going to be most accessible to students, and then also we you know consulted with legal and all of those sorts of things. So, fortunately though, globally and kind of nationwide there has been a lot of lists on restrictions related to engaging in tele-health, especially because of the crisis-orientated nature of what is happening with all of us. We’ve been given you know kind of like the green light to use different platforms for tele-health.

[Danyelle] What are some of the issues that you guys are seeing students facing right now?

[Dr. Burdine] : People who are already experience or kind of navigating anxiety, stress and trauma. Certainly, when things are as unknown as they are right now. Uncertain and then these kinds of shifts and adjustments are difficult for anyone and if you have those kinds of concerns preexisting, then right now I definitely think it is a heightened sense of those. We are also seeing health disparity broadly. I think is a little bit more pronounced and even widened. So, access to physical and emotional security often times unfortunately is dependent on kind of a certain amount of privilege and access. And so, this has always been an impact in terms of academic performance and success, but I think even more so now. Some of those disparities create different kinds of concerns for folks in navigating their academic world. Fortunately, the university has been responsive to that and creating an emergency fund, and making access to you know laptops and computers for students, and some of the adjustments we’ve even made to you know grades. And so, students can opt into a pass/fail, and offices are creating new programming to help continue to reach out to folks. And so, all of those student services that we usually provide to make a more full academic experience, but then also to support students, we’re making those shifts and making them more accessible. I think that the university has responded well to those and hopefully has limited or mitigated some of the disparity we might see for students. I also think that just general isolation, loneliness are things that are coming up for people. Some of the ways that people engage in caring for themselves has to do with them interacting with other people and interacting with other people in person. And so, folks are having to be a little more intentional and thoughtful about how they connect to people.

[Danyelle] On that note, another psychologist in your office recently mentioned in a media interview that some students were actually experiencing feelings of grief due to some of these missed opportunities and these new changes that are having to take place. Can you explain a little bit more about why that grief might be happening? I know you mentioned the feelings of loneliness and isolation. Can we talk a little bit about the grief?

[Dr. Burdine] I think that often times when we are thinking about grief and loss, we are thinking about death and dying or you know those shifts and so. I think that if we start to tap into the ways that really any major change or shift in adjustment can be viewed through kind of a lens of grief and loss, probably can foster a little bit more self-compassion, right? Because if we think about the amount of things that are changing for us right now, definitely a sense of grief and loss can be there. I think that some of the symptoms can be connected to grief and loss that stand out the most to me when I think about conceptualizing the grief and loss that people might be encountering right now is with grief and loss a symptom of that can be that people start to question their sense of purpose in life, they can start to question spiritual beliefs and kind of really be like “What is happening?,” kind of the world view shift. Feelings of detachment, right? So, detachment from life, because it is just difficult when you’ve experienced loss to kind of keep life going as usual. And then definitely, sense of isolation that you might experience from your friends and family, because grief and loss and the way that we experience that can be kind of unique of individualized. Those are some of the thing that stand out to me the most when I think grief and loss and how this could maybe mirror that. It is grief and loss because of all of the shifts that we are experiencing.

[Danyelle] What are some tips you have for dealing with or lessening anxiety and stress during all of the uncertainty?

[Dr. Burdine] With anxiety, one of the things that I always tell people who are experiencing anxiety and trying to manage it is that, how we lessen our anxiety and mange our anxiety is bringing our attention as most to the present as possible. And through that, when we bring our attention to the present, what we then start to do is that we start to focus more on what is in our control. Whenever we are thinking about and really anxious, typically we are thinking about things that have happened in the past or things that are going to happen, and really, we have as you get further and further out, we have less ad less control over that. And so, bring our attention to the present can be really helpful. Focusing on managing what you can control as opposed to a lot of anxiety is connected to things that are outside of our control. Thinking about things that we can do less with. For example, if one of the things that is stressful or anxiety-producing right now is thinking about the graduation ceremonies at the university are cancelled or postponed. Figuring out like okay what can you that might be a little more creative or might give you an opportunity to honor and celebrate this accomplishment in your life that might not look like kind of the traditional or what you would envision. One of the things that I think in inherent in that is managing our expectations for ourselves and other people right now. I think one of the things that we could do that would create a lot of anxiety and probably does create a lot of anxiety for stress, and would be very to our detriment is to carry the same expectations of ourselves as we would before this, right? And so, shifting our expectations and celebrating what could be viewed as small wins right now, but are actually huge. So, celebrating if today I took a shower, like “Woo hoo!” That’s really important or today I didn’t take a shower and we can celebrate that too, right? Depends on who you are and what would be kind of helpful to you, but you know or like today, just now, I just figured out a whole new software on my phone through this, right? Or a lot of us are navigating new approaches to teaching and to learning, and those are all really important things that are worth celebrating, but I don’t think that in our before this, they probably wouldn’t have been things that we would have celebrated. We would have just taken it for granted. So, I think those are the two things that stand out to me. Kind of managing, kind of putting our focus on the present and on what we can control and then managing our expectations for ourselves and other people.

[Danyelle] There is a lot of talk about self-care at the moment and it can seem like taking bubble baths and treating oneself are the main focus. What do you consider good self-care to look like, with specific regard to mental health?

[Dr. Burdine] This is a good question and one that would be big and so like we could do a whole podcast on this. But I think that it has always been this way, but more than ever, I think that self-care and mental health should really be individualized and really unique for every person. And so, for some of us we may want to stay in and this might actually feel good for us, right? Be able to be in our like home environment, particularly if they feel safe and nurtured. And then others might want to go out and sit on the patio and do some of their lessons or whatever or have some of their meetings. So, I do think that you know self-care right now its always been this way but more than ever probably individualized because what I want to do or what feels good to me, other people might be like “No, I want to get out. I want to walk around, I want to…” you know, or if people have access to that. So, more than anything right now, if I had a message related to self-care would really be around, what is for me, the concept of grace. Other people might see it as like compassion or like extending and giving ourselves permission to be imperfect right now and to just kind of let go of some of the perfectionism and some of the things that can maybe, especially right now, make us feel pretty bad, because we aren’t able to you know kind of do things that we normally would be able to maybe to. So, I think extending grace towards ourselves and self-compassion, and compassion for other people, but especially for ourselves. Its just kind of giving ourselves permission to be human in all of this and I worry sometimes that we forget that. That we are human beings, that none of us are necessarily prepared for this.

[Danyelle] So, as students and other folks are adjusting to the, hopefully, temporary normal, how can we better validate other people’s feelings?

[Dr. Burdine] : I do really hope that we can celebrate the creativity that this has inspired in all of us and maybe in some of the ways that before maybe we would have been scared to do something or you know when things are outside of our comfort zone, sometimes we shy away from that, and I really believe that we’ve all leaned into uncertainty and creativity and expanding our scope or what we do or what we can do. And so, I feel really inspired by that and I hope that people, hope that we can validate one another in what we are doing in that. I hope in one of the ways, I hope that we can maintain, I hope we maintain the creativity that is being inspired right now. I hope that we maintain the commitment to accessibility. Its always been that we’ve needed to, you know, be able to, for people to work from home or for people to be able to do more online instruction or be able to have virtual office hours with their instructors. Like we’ve always needed that, and so now because of this, its prompted us to give the kinds of access that we’ve always needed, and I think that there is more that we can do related to accessibility. So, I feel inspired by those things and I hope that can feel validating for people. And then, I kind of eluded to this in my last response, but I really think that we cou– should be, I try not to use should as a mental health professional, but this I think that we should definitely do, is normalize that none of us, apart from the folks who study pandemics, none of us were prepared and its okay to not be okay right now and to not have everything figured out. And especially, I think a lot of our students and faculty and staff, we hold ourselves to very high expectations. I think that that is a challenge for us right now to be like “Oh wait, I don’t have this all figured out. People usually look to me to have the answers and I don’t right now.” And that’s okay, and its also okay to not be cool with all these changes and shifts and to be “Whoa, can I catch a break?” and kind of pause. So, as much as we can validate, especially when people, as we are struggling through this or when we take the time and you know kind of pause and we’re like “Oh, today I’m grieving a little bit more than I did yesterday. Yesterday was good and I felt encouraged and motivated. Today I’m just like, I can’t do this and like this is too much.” And so, I think just normalizing the variety, the wide range of emotional reactions and experiences that we have right now, I think is really important.

[Danyelle] Thank you so much for talking with us today Dr. Burdine. It has been such a treat and I’m sure we will all be feeling better after tapping into some of your resources.

[Dr. Burdine] Awesome, thank you so much for having me and for creating a platform, an opportunity for people, hopefully, to pause you know for the 15-20 minutes that they are engaging in listening to this podcast. So, thank you for all that you all are doing as a media team to keep us connected.

[Danyelle] We wanted to plug some of the programming the Student Counseling Center is offering at this time. The center is posting webinars on YouTube a couple times a week. There are videos on loneliness and isolation, navigating stress and identity-based resources. You can find those by searching for UT Dallas Student Counseling Center on YouTube. You can also find updates on Instagram @UTDcounseling. We will provide links from these and more from today in our show notes. Dr. Burdine also wanted to shout out some programming from other groups across campus that are working to keep comets connected and continuing to provide resources. We will include links to their social media channels in the show notes as well.

Thanks for joining us! Comets Discuss is brought to you by UT Dallas Office of Communication. A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to check out our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. For the most up to date news at UT Dallas, visit the university’s official COVID-19 information webpage. Take care and stay healthy. [whispering] Whoosh!