Practical thinking
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the world to enforce public health protocols that affect day to day schedule, for instance, cessation, quarantine, and movement restriction to specific countries to stop spreading the contagious disease. It is due to such factors that produce a wide range of psychological effects, including depression, post-traumatic stress, confusion, feelings, fear, and anger.
During the COVID-19, I have not been in a perfect mental state. I have been experiencing overwhelming feelings of loneliness, boredom, frustration, and isolation. It is because there is a restriction on physical contact, which affects communication. Sharing one’s senses to friends and loved once is the primary way to reduce stress and solve personal problems. Therefore, most of the time, tension builds up, resulting in a poor mental state like frustration, anger, and depression. The stigma towards the pandemic has also added the poor mental state I am right now.
In this critical situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, my emotions have not been working correctly. My feelings have been tampering with the functions of the brain. For instance, I feel angry and afraid; when this happens, my lungs start breathing faster, and I even hear the heartbeat. The emotional state is not stable, that I think my muscles are moving automatically without triggering them. Sometimes I frown even without my concert or knowledge. In addition to that, the emotions are in bad condition in that it has affected my thinking and reasoning. Most of the time, I find myself thinking about sad memories instead of happy memories they were I used to before.
I use parallel thinking to keenly focus my thinking on a specific situation, for instance, stress. It gives me the reality of the situation because I believe in the same direction or according to the situation. Parallel thinking mostly helps me accept what I can control about the situation and leave what I cannot control because even if I worry about what I cannot control, it cannot change the outcome of the case. It has given me a clear picture that I can control my thoughts, and if so, I can control my emotions, feelings, and behavior.