Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host superintendent, Anthony Godfrey. Today we are joined by a local clinical psychologist who has some advice for families feeling stressed as they are cooped up at home because of COVID-19 find out if it's actually okay to feel sadness and experienced anxiety during this time. And we want to talk with her today about the impact of the current circumstance. We find ourselves in on families and on children and maybe some things we can do to help make our way through Dr. Ludwig. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Dr. Ludwig:
Sure. Happy to be here. It's very interesting doing interviews, always using social distancing and my iPad has had more use than ever before, but it's very nice to see you. I hope to one day meet you in person.

Anthony Godfrey:
I this, like I said, a very unique time. Obviously it's something none of us has experienced before. What are some of the impacts that you're seeing on families and our children?

Dr. Ludwig:
I agree. I do think it's a really unprecedented time and I think what's so interesting about it, when you think about the implications for mental health, one of the things that we know about anxiety is that it's a normal, and it's an adaptive emotion. It's an important emotion that we have that essentially prepares us to respond to valid threats. The current situation that we're in does consist of a valid threat. Coronavirus is a valid threat to all of us. The most important thing to start off with is just that it is all valid, that it is normal to be anxious. It's normal, it's valid to be stressed. It's valid to feel sad. I think about the seniors in high school this year that just, as an example, are missing out on a lot of things that they have planned for and expected for a long time.

So I think that there's the developed threat. And then there's also all the things in our world that have changed. And I think part of the challenge and the opportunity is to practice and learn how to tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty. What probably is the most important place to put our attention is into our families. And rather than being pulled in lots of different directions, I think being really thoughtful and mindful of what we are exposing ourselves and our families to. In regards to media, we do need information, but I think we also need to be thoughtful of putting limits on that for our own anxiety, for our own mental health, as well as modeling that and helping to limit that for our children. Information's important, but we also want to make sure that we're not overwhelming ourselves with the desire to try to create certainty or to just continue to feel like we need to get more information.

Anthony Godfrey:
Interesting phrase, trying to create certainty. And I can absolutely see that happening where we are just checking in with the news constantly. We're looking for updates and things are changing rapidly. It feels like every day, there's a change in what we're hearing. And we may start to think that the more information we consume, the more we can get a taste for some certainty, and we can see a path forward.

And yet I think that we have to really be mindful of that because the information we get may not be creating that certainty that we're striving for. Another piece that I think is really important that a lot of families are probably already well into doing this, as we're five weeks into this. But I do think having s