“Don’t Just Tolerate Me, Love Me.” Love Languages in the time of COVID-19

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We are more than four months into the pandemic and relationships are feeling stretched, like a too-small shirt across our shoulders, threatening to bust at the seams.  Perhaps you are separated from your loved ones, making the miles, restricted travel, and lack of contact feel unbearable. Maybe you or your loved one is an essential worker, choosing the difficult decision to distance from family and friends in order to reduce the risk of exposure. Or perhaps you’ve been following stay-at-home and safer-at-home orders with your partner or spouse, finding your relationship put to the test.

Some love languages are benefitting from the changes whereas others are being placed on the back burner. Folks with love languages of physical touch and quality time may be the lucky ones to benefit from unexpected, increased time together. Gary Chapman, Author of The Five Love Languages lists them as:

·      Physical Touch

·      Quality Time

·      Words of Affirmation (positive words)

·      Acts of Service

·      Gifts

So how have the love languages been stretched in the time of COVID-19? Quality time may be challenged because even though we are at home or in the same space working, it doesn’t mean it’s quality connection to one another. For physical touch, are we feeling the absence of platonic or comforting touch of others in having to self-isolate at home? Gifts may be limited, acts of service amplified, and words of affirmation may not come easily as we experience the brain fog and exhaustion of the pandemic. In fact, although couples are adapting to the changes, there are several challenges romantic relationships are facing under the strain of COVID-19.

·      Increased fighting

·      Too much togetherness

·      Feeling overstimulated

·      Feeling numb

·      Experiencing low libido

·      Increased stress and anxiety 

·      Difficulty separating work from home

·      Increased irritability

·      Feeling on edge or restless

·      Experiencing financial strain

These stressors don’t necessarily make or break a relationship by themselves, it could be that the accumulation of several factors like these would put a relationship at risk. Therefore it is important to attempt to adjust or adapt in an effort to keep the relationship healthy. Here are some ideas to try when your romantic connection is feeling itchy and uncomfortable.

·      Creative Quality Time: How creative can you get with quality time at home? A movie marathon in the living room full of pillows and blankets? Cooking a meal together? Taking a walk or a bike ride?

·      Rituals to Transition: What rituals are in place to help you both transition from work? Do you have a designated space to work? Can you change your clothes or walk up and down the hall to feel like you are moving from one role to another? Is it a matter of powering down your computer, closing the office door, or putting your laptop away?

·      Choose to Check-in: When do you like to check in on how things are going? Can you choose to check in during a meal or before the day takes off? Is there eye contact to support active listening? 

·      Communicate: It’s going to take additional effort to increase communication when you are already feeling stressed or overwhelmed. Share how you feel. Advocate for your needs. Ask for help. Partners can’t read our minds so it remains important to speak up.

·      The Art of Apart: Time apart can be good for the relationship if you feel like you are right up under one another. Is there a way to engage in hobbies or outdoor activity that gives you permission to miss one another? They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps this is possible with a little time apart.

Relationships can grow leaps and bounds through hard times like these. The gratitude you can feel for being in this together is a powerful tool. Embrace new ideas to strengthen your relationship, knowing that blips along the way are expected and normal. The hope is with a little TLC and creativity, your relationship can move from surviving to thriving during COVID-19! 

Strategies for Self-Care: Scheduling Intention

Self-care is a word we hear a lot in our industry, not just for clients but for professionals as well. How does one define self-care? Is it true that we need to implement self- care in order to prevent burnout? To better understand fatigue, burnout, and the concept of self-care, let’s take a closer look at each of these elements and how they contribute to wellness.

Symptoms requiring Self-Care

For many professionals, self-care becomes something to explore when functioning declines. Our clients come to us because their lives are being disrupted and self-care may be needed to recover balance. We are our own worst clients in the idea that we can talk about the importance of self-care to others, but don’t always put it into regular practice for ourselves.  The result of limited or absent self-care is burnout, and burnout can be long lasting or pervasive as it spreads beyond our careers into our personal lives and beyond. In order to explore the impact of burnout for ourselves and our clients, we may find the following list helpful (adapted from Vital Hearts).

• I don’t know how to relax.
• I feel irritable more than I’d like.
• I feel disconnected from my emotions.
• I’ve isolated from my family.
• Nothing makes me laugh anymore.
• I take comfort in sweets.
• I have no energy to listen to my family when I get home.
• I escape by sleeping more.
• I have no empathy at the end of my work day.
• I’m ignoring my relationships.
• I can’t seem to disconnect from work.
• I am experiencing more anxiety.
• I just want to get away sometimes.
• I’m angry at my clients for asking so much of me.
• I feel underappreciated.
• I can’t read or watch the news anymore.
• I don’t share my work with my friends, they just don’t get it.
• I don’t socialize with friends much anymore.
• I feel restless but don’t want to do anything.
• I have lost confidence in myself.
• I feel pessimistic as the result of my job.
• I feel sadness.
• I feel drained, I have no energy.
• I feel angry.
• My health has declined.
• I feel like nothing I do makes things better.
• I can’t concentrate.
• I cry much easier than I used to.
• My road rage has gotten worse.

For some, the list above starts the conversation about how much and to what degree life has been impacted by factors of our work as helping professionals.  Burnout untreated can lead to long lasting decline in quality of life and connection to others. Burnout can take away the passion of why you do this work. As we struggle to practice what we recommend to others, how do we change our patterns to support reduction of the negative impact of burnout? Below are some action steps.

Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP)

Several organizations in Colorado see the importance of self-care, including the Colorado Mental Wellness Network. Selected by the Colorado Mental Wellness Network and endorsed by SAMHSA, the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) is being utilized with various populations to support health and well-being. Colorado Mental Wellness Network supports change through peer to peer connection and wellness education. Through these efforts, they continue to implement WRAP plans within various communities, including those experiencing homelessness and within Department of Human Services caseworkers. What they found was that empowering individuals to notice wellness as well as health decline could support putting self-care into action. Below is an example of a wellness plan that can be used for both professionals and clients to best support their process of identifying and implementing self-care.

Building in Boundaries

In addition to exploring and customizing self-care for meaningful change, boundaries may need to be re-evaluated to prevent burnout. For many helping professionals, long hours, after-hours texts, emails, or calls, client crisis, and urges to help, prevent successful disconnection from work. Technology makes it easy to check work emails 24 hours a day and calls may come in from various parties regarding client care. If there is flexibility to re-evaluate the schedule of work versus home life, it is encouraged. However, the schedule assigned may not be in your control. If this is the case, other means of implementing boundaries may be needed and can include the following:

• Put an out of office message on email and voicemail to notify others of when you will respond.
• Separate work and home phones to leave the work phone off during days off.
• Identify a crisis coverage person to give to clients during vacations or other scheduled absences.
• Schedule time off in your calendar(s) to support appropriate boundaries.
• Schedule windows of self-care, even if just for 20 minutes, during your work week.
• Be concrete with hours for yourself and your clients as to when and how they can reach you.
• Find self-care you can commit to and put it in the calendar monthly or weekly.

It is with hope that we can create momentum from the talk of self-care into action steps as we continue in our roles as helping professionals. Modeling self-care is both in the benefit of our clients and ourselves as we navigate the busy world of demands in hope of positive change. May we all begin to develop quality self-care in order to find wellness in the path of hard work!