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Step 7 How Not to Take COVID-19 Personally: A Lesson in Humility Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID-19

Step 7: Learned to embrace our uniqueness and connectedness to others in the spirit of love and humility.
The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

Humility is such a strange concept, one we don’t hear about very often and probably think about even less. During this time of polarized politics and rapidly changing expectations of what life will hold for each of us, it may even feel unsafe to think about humility. But humility can be the foundation of the changes that are required of all of us as we face what to do next in this world health crisis, because like it or not, we are all in this together.

If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know who you are.
Mother Teresa

Humility is the acceptance of reality. We demonstrate humility not just when we win an individual award and acknowledge the effort of the team behind us, but also when life slaps us upside the head and we realize It’s not just about me.

Humility can help us put our lives in perspective. Such simple adjustments in how we look at life around us can take the pressure off. When we accept that we can’t have that elective surgery we were hoping for, we can understand that the needs of others are greater than our own and that we can survive. We can realize we are not alone in being fearful of riding public transportation. Humility is also the feeling of empathy when we look at our refrigerator trying to figure out dinner as we wish that our favorite restaurant hadn’t closed, and then remember our favorite waiter who is now out of a job, and our heart aches for him.

Humility is not humiliation. Humility is not the belittling that we may have experienced as a child. This process doesn’t involve shaming (Step 6). Humility does not focus us on what we are not, our defects, our vulnerabilities. It is the opposite. Humility can focus us on what and who we are, accepting our strengths, skills, and insights, traits we began to articulate in Step 4. Humility is seeing ourselves within the context of our lives. Humility frees us to be ourselves.

Humility helps us to not take things personally. “It’s nothing personal” is a common phrase, but here the it is COVID-19, which is impacting you personally. So what can you do? This is where humility comes in. Humility helps you focus on something truly important: how connected you are to others who are also struggling. You are not alone. There’s comfort in this. Take it—you need comfort and deserve to be soothed during this time of stress. Feeling supported by fellow sufferers is part of this.

Humility provides a window into our place in this life. By offering an acceptance of ourselves and our needs, and by anchoring ourselves from within instead of fueling the railing against our fate by screaming and gnashing our teeth, humility can help change our focus. Humility offers us a perspective of genuine gratitude for what we do have, for what we have done. We can begin by seeing the heroism in many of the small gestures we and others have displayed during this pandemic.

Your Hero Within: Humility in Action

Above all, be the heroine in your own life …
Nora Ephron

“I never thought I would be a hero, I just wanted to help others.” Statements like this are being heard around the world as those in the front lines are being asked to push themselves to their physical, emotional, and even spiritual limits to help contain the coronavirus. Nurses, ER physicians, cleaning staff, dietary staff; the staff handing out sanitized carts where I buy groceries; the farmer at our new Farmers Park-It Market who delivers groceries to my car, are all finding creative ways to offer more as they see the suffering around them.

I found a powerful example of this locally. The local drug and alcohol rehab where I consult gave all salaried employees a $100 thank-you check to acknowledge their work with the neediest, those affected by the opioid epidemic during this coronavirus pandemic. A dietary worker I know received this thank-you check and took her $100, bought fabric, and organized women she knew to make masks for resident, and staff at the facility where she worked. When the CEO thanked her, she thanked him for recognizing her role in their system of care, inspiring her to be part of a larger solution. “I just wanted to give back.”

Understanding What YOU Give

As you are still quarantined? Or are you beginning to phase back to your place of work? As you do this, be cognizant of what you are doing to support yourself and to support those around you. No, this isn’t about being grandiose; it’s about being honest about your impact on others during this time of intense worldwide stress.

Are you feeling freer to give a smile, or just chat with your roommate or spouse? Is the time you are spending with your children helping you to see them in a new light as you wonder at their gifts and curiosity? Are you more connected to those you care about who you can’t see in person but can speak to through some type of technology?

Are you more connected to yourself? Humility is also about appreciating yourself and the growth you have made during this time of very real struggle.

Within the AA framework, Step 7 is about committing to a new way of approaching and living your life. COVID-19 is demanding that we make changes just to survive. Ask yourself if you are using this crisis to positively enhance your sense of yourself. More about this in our next step, Step 8.

Exercise for Today

On a piece of paper or in your journal, record your answers to the following questions.

How are you not taking COVID-19 personally?
How has this crisis put into perspective what is important to you?
How has acceptance of the changes COVID-19 brought helped you make decisions that are helping you?
- What you are doing to keep those you love safe?
- Notice what you are doing to keep yourself safe. Are you following distance guidelines, wearing a mask, and gloves when needed? Have you decided not to visit a loved one?
- Are you more aware of what you need?
- What would be important for you to do even if no one noticed or thanked you?
Ask yourself where you are being heroic today. What have you given to yourself? To others? What are the small gestures you do that make a big difference in your life and in the life of others?

Make a note in your journal about how this works for you, and feel free to share it on my new Facebook Group, Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID, which I invite you to join by clicking on the link. There you can post your struggles and solutions as we create community. I invite you to share the blogs and posts you find on the Facebook Group by tagging those you know and care about, whether they are in recovery or just loved by you.

This is the seventh of a twelve-part series based on The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting. More tips will be available in my new ebook (to be published later this summer), and are available on my blog, The Powerful Woman.net, and in my books: Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children, and The Resilient Woman. Learn more Learn more about my work as a consulting psychologist and speaker at www.patriciaogorman.com.

Step 4: Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID-19 Accepting How We Learned to Protect Ourselves and Build on This

Patricia A O’Gorman, PhD

Step 4: Made an honest assessment of our strengths and weaknesses

and accepted the impact our childhood has had on us as adults.

—The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

Survivorship is important to consider during times of crisis, particularly a crisis like the one in which we find ourselves today, which is fraught with challenges on so many levels. This type of crisis not only stirs up past wounds but also intensifies unresolved childhood and adult issues.

Protecting Ourselves

Overcoming the feeling of powerlessness, encouraging ourselves to reach out, and challenging our belief that we must do this alone are all part of this process of self-parenting. Today your task is to use this crisis to make peace with the old ways you have used to protect yourself and to move on—to learn new ways to care for yourself, and by example share them with those who surround you. I invite you to expand your understanding of your self-care by considering with compassion your strengths and weakness—not only for the person you are today, but also for the child you were.

Our need to protect ourselves is normal. We all need to defend ourselves against what we see as threats. As you think back over your life, I’m sure you realize that not all the ways you protected yourself worked equally well. When you were a child, you made sense of the world as a child does. As you have grown, some of those familiar ways of protecting yourself have developed, and some haven’t aged particularly well. In contrast, other ways of taking care of yourself are sources of light and joy you can still feel even in this somber time. These you’ll want to consider building upon.

Dark Side and Light Side Defenses

To help you reflect on this, consider calling these two types of defenses dark side and light side.

Our dark side defenses keep us stuck in the pain of the past. These are thoughts and behaviors that are familiar because they define our best past efforts to keep ourselves safe, even if they were not particularly effective. They’re frequently expensive—emotionally, physically, and financially—because they use our resources in less than efficient ways, consuming and misdirecting our energies. We may be tempted to use them when we anticipate an old pain of childhood about to rear its wounding head, or when we’re facing uncertainty with its accompanying terror. We may even invite them in to create a familiar type of perceived attack because we know how to fight this battle, and we do these things in an effort to keep us safe from confronting something new.

One example is that many couples are having familiar arguments about one party taking advantage of another by not doing routine household tasks, or avoiding a discussion of how to prepare their finances in the event that one of them becomes very ill and dies. We know these are dark side defenses because after using them we feel depleted, alone, and more frightened.

Our light side defenses help us grow, explore possibilities in the midst of chaos, and to be curious, open. We recognize these behaviors as positive because we feel good and positive after we deploy them. One example is our healthcare workers who push themselves to go to work, trying not to pay attention to their fear and their long hours, missing their children and focusing instead on how they are fulfilling their life’s purpose. Another may be a parent sitting down with their child on Zoom, laughing together as they try to figure out how it works so their child can participate in school. By enjoying the challenge together instead of feeling pulled to vacuum or finish a work report, they avoid becoming angry with their child who needs help.

Exercise for Today

On a piece of paper or in your journal, create three columns and label them

My Defense,
How It Protects Me, and
What It Costs Me

Fill each column using an example of your dark side defense and one of your light side defense. Your page will look something like this:

Dark Side Defense	How It Protects Me	What It Costs Me
Blaming myself for being alone because I’m fat	Gives me the illusion of control	It costs me my power and motivation by overwhelming me, making me feel responsible for things beyond my control like the safety precautions for COVID-19
Light Side Defense	How It Protects Me	What It Costs Me
Telling myself I’m worth the trouble to keep physically separate as I figure out how to stay socially connected	Keeps me safe from COVID-19	A little loneliness, but I know I’m safe; I’m not taking everything personally

Make a daily commitment to list a dark side and a light side defense in your journal. Use this time of major disruption in your life to consider the messages you are sending yourself that you can change.

Welcoming the Real You

Challenge yourself to crack the door open to your light side defenses to reveal the real you—a combination of your past challenges and what they have taught you, your current beliefs, struggles, and solutions, and your future hopes and plans. Your real self is not static. Be curious about what you are doing right—your light side defense; add the ways you keep yourself safe to your gratitude list. Be prepared to have a fuller inner life even with all of the restrictions COVID-19 is creating.

This is the fourth of a twelve-part series based on The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting. More tips are available on my blog, The Powerful Woman.net, and in my books: Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children, and The Resilient Woman. Learn more about my work as a consulting psychologist and speaker at www.patriciaogorman.com.

Step 3: Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID-19 We Can Learn to Reach Out

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Step 3: Learned to let go of compulsive self-reliance by reaching out to our higher parent.

—The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

For some of us, the messages of the COVID-19 precautions are reinforcing a painful message from our childhood that you must do it all by yourself. Compulsive self-reliance—feeling that you must be self-sufficient no matter the cost, and trusting only yourself—may be rearing its head, again in this time of world crisis.

Compulsive Self-Reliance

As you hear the directives to socially distance, wear a mask, not leave your home, part of you may be saying, I’m good, I’ve prepared my whole life for this. I can handle this. There’s truth in this. You may know well how to function in a crisis—how to shut down your emotions, stop needing, become a group of only one, focus on enduring, and achieve some measure of safety. This is a skill you have, one that you can’t—and shouldn’t—deny. You know you are a survivor. Good.

But self-reliance tells only part of who you are. You are also a human and a member of a species that yearns for connection. And as skilled as you may be in handling a crisis, sustaining yourself alone in a crisis is another issue. So who can you turn to now that you are isolated? You can begin by reconnecting to your higher parent.

Reaching Out to Your Higher Parent

Your higher parent is that force beyond you that can give you comfort. Think of your higher parent as your personal spiritual first responder. This may be nature, as in Mother Nature, or perhaps you follow an organized religion and a belief in Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed. Perhaps your higher parent is the energy you feel in your recovery group. Connecting with your higher parent can help you not just get through this period, but also find ways of being okay with the circumstances in which you find yourself.

Giving Your Suffering Meaning

I remember being a young girl growing up in New York City, surprised by the random dandelions I would find growing in cement cracks in dark alleyways. They may have grown crooked, but they reached for the light, and they grew as yellow and perky as those that grew in the parks. Just like those dandelions, you can grow and thrive despite your own challenging circumstances. You don’t have to just endure.

By not just gritting through this and facing it alone, but by reflecting on the positive meaning this can have for you, you can grow now, just as you have done in the past during other very difficult periods.

One way to do this is to open yourself to learning the spiritual lessons contained in this, yet another painful experience in your life; and by doing so you give your suffering meaning. What can you learn from the isolation, the break in routine, the loneliness, from being cut off from what was productive and meaningful in your life? How can you give meaning to this pain that is real, and to which you may not see an end?

Hard Pain, Soft Pain

There are two types of pain:

Hard pain, the pain of resistance, the pain we feel when we fight our truth. This is the pain of fear. Hard pain builds a wall around us, making us bitter. We express hard pain through anger.

Soft pain is the pain of healing. This is the pain of mourning and acceptance. Soft pain frees us from the sorrow of our past so we can move forward to face the challenges of today. Soft pain releases our energy and our love. Some Native American groups feel that the highest form of prayer is to shed tears, which we do in accepting and expressing our soft pain.

Exercise for Today:

You are in pain. Decide how you want to handle it. Do you want to soften your pain? What can you begin now to do this? Would reaching out to your higher parent help?
Give your suffering meaning. What positive takeaways from your pain can you make now?

Add this practice to your gratitude list.

Make a note in your journal about what works for you, and feel free to share it on my new Facebook Group, Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID, which I invite you to join by clicking on the link. There you can post your struggles and solutions as we create community. I invite you to share the blogs and posts you find on the Facebook Group by tagging those you know and care about, whether they are in recovery or just loved by you.

This is the third of a twelve-part series based on The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting. I invite you to subscribe to receive updates to this blog—look for future series where I apply my existing work to dealing with the specifics of COVID-19 for those involved in or interested in aspects of recovery—a parenting series based on The Lowdown on Families Who Get High, then one for those dealing with trauma based on Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, followed by (of course) more on resiliency and girly thoughts.

More tips are available on my blog, The Powerful Woman.net, and in my books: Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children, and The Resilient Woman. Learn more about my work as a consulting psychologist and speaker at www.patriciaogorman.com.

Step 2: Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID-19 We Are Never Really Alone

Step 2: Found hope in the belief that recovery is possible through faith and an acceptance of the fact that we are never really alone.

—The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

Spring, the season celebrated in early religions as a time of renewal and fertility has arrived. More recently, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is viewed as a time of spiritual connection. We have entered what is the holiest of times for the Judeo-Christian religions, a time for reflection on past struggles and for looking ahead to the challenges that await us. On this, the eve of both Passover (when we celebrate the liberation of the Jews from slavery) and Holy Thursday (celebrating the last time Jesus was with his disciples), we commemorate the importance of unity and fellowship in times of hardship.

As we collectively struggle with COVID-19, it is important to remember that you are not alone. Whether you are living by yourself in a studio apartment in Manhattan or feeling isolated and alienated living with your partner and children in Kansas, or living in a sober house in Florida, there is community available to you with others in recovery and with others in your faith practice. There is also connection through you to the divine, however you understand and celebrate this concept, through what we have named in The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children as your higher parent.

The second step in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) makes the importance of a connection to your spiritual side clear: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Here, AA is stating clearly the need for the cultivation of a spiritual belief as key to mental health. During the COVID-19 crisis, reminding ourselves of our human need for a spiritual connection is important not only to survive this stress but also to find a way of thriving in the face of the challenges our fear poses.

Sometimes people are confused by the idea that there is just one face to the divine. As we look around this world, we see that the divine actually has many faces. As we look, we see not just Jesus, Yahweh, and Mohammed, but also the faces of the many Hindu gods, from Kali to Ganesh, the numerous aspects of the Buddha, and in the beliefs of the Navajo people in the Changing Woman, the Holy Being.

Others feel the divine through their connection to nature: feeling surrounded by the air, being immersed in water or snow, witnessing the life force through seeing trees budding and the tender shoots of flowers emerging through the snow, hearing bird songs, seeing evidence of bears leaving their dens. Whatever your belief system is, it is important to cultivate this part of yourself so you feel supported, particularly in this time of struggle. So you know you are not alone.

Exercise for Today:

Make a commitment to participate in at least one spiritual practice a day. This can take just a few moments or can be something more engrossing. What is important is that you not forget to nurture this part of who you are that reinforces your connectedness to something beyond your mortal being.

Whether you choose to

say a prayer,
talk to your higher parent,
read a religious text,
go for a walk and be in nature, or
meditate,

know that you are not alone in your struggle to confront and grow through the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Add this practice to your gratitude list.

This is the second of a twelve-part series based on The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting. I invite you to subscribe to receive updates to this blog—look for future series where I apply my existing work to dealing with the specifics of COVID-19 for those involved in or interested in aspects of recovery—a parenting series based on The Lowdown on Families Who Get High, then one for those dealing with trauma based on Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, followed by (of course) more on resiliency and girly thoughts.

May the force be with you!

More tips are available on my blog, The Powerful Woman.net, and in my books: Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children, and The Resilient Woman. Learn more Learn more about my work as a consulting psychologist and speaker at www.patriciaogorman.com.

Step 1: Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID-19 Admitted Our Powerlessness to Change Our Past

Step 1: Admitted our powerlessness to change our past—that our lives had become unmanageable and became willing to surrender to our love and not to our fear.

—The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

Like many of you, I keep pondering the question How did we get here? While this is a question best settled by elections, it does little to guide how I need to care for my family and myself day-to-day.

To try to settle myself, I took my rescue dog of two weeks, a female of indeterminate breed and age, for a solitary walk. We ambled through the mist, up and down hills that surround a nearby lake in this rural community in which I live, a place of few people and few resources that is usually quiet. Now it is full of the tension felt in many rural communities: so many businesses owned by those I know are shuttered; neighbors are terrified about the health of those they love who live in other areas already being hard hit by the virus; we all watch the virus creep toward us, ready to leap. As I listened to the birds calling, feeling the coolness of the air and smiling at my dog’s lurching at chipmunks, I was again searching within myself for how to manage this crisis of COVID-19.

My mind was elsewhere. Not in the present, but in the past. It was then I realized an essential truth: I cannot change my past, decisions I’ve made in my own life, what I wish my country had done—is doing—differently, but I can take some control of my present. But how?

The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting for Adult Children

I recalled my book on self–parenting, which Publishers Weekly judged as one of the ten best books about recovery, written thirty-two years ago and is still in print. I thought, I will begin using it today, for myself. It may seem strange to you that I walk around conscious of a process I created that governs how I live. But, like you, I am only present to some parts of who I am at any one time. For me, today, this is a time to begin be present to all of the various parts within myself, to self-parent each of them in earnest. I wish to encourage you to do the same.

Those of us in recovery are blessed to have a program that works to give our suffering meaning: The 12 Steps. My first book on self-parenting uses these steps to help heal the part of you that is wounded in times of crisis—your inner child, your vulnerable, young self.

It was inspired by the then burgeoning children of alcoholics movements. As a nation, we were just beginning to confront how we deal with the impact of addiction. Today we are facing another crisis with COVID-19 and how we deal with its impact. It occurred to me that it may be the same process.

Let Go

The message in the first step is to let go. As I reflected on this step on Palm Sunday, which is usually a time of joy, as I looked forward to the eve of Passover, a celebration of redemption, I realized that I need to create joy in my life. And I could do this by letting go of the past and focusing on the present by being grateful for the gifts in the present, yes, just as Jesus did on Palm Sunday, even though he knew what was coming. Joy was possible for him. Why not then for us as well?

How can you help your inner child today? Try helping him or her focus on what is wonderful that is right in front of you. Use the adult voice within you to become curious about what is working. Access the voice of your higher parent, that part of each of us that is connected to the divine, to reassure you that you are not alone.

Exercise for Today:

Come into the present. Instead of worrying, instead of berating yourself by shoulding on yourself for what you wish you had done, think about what is working, however small. Do this by creating a daily gratitude list. Look for what is going well in your life, however routine or insignificant those things might seem.

A friend of mine shared that she was grateful she had an old, rarely used dishwasher that uses too much energy, but which she realized could help disinfect her dishes.

I am grateful that I rescued a dog who is now my constant companion as I do telepsych and who encourages me to get out and walk early in the morning.

And I am grateful for my husband and his team who are continuing to provide inpatient and outpatient services to those still suffering due to the opioid epidemic. https://www.stjoestreatment.org

Join Us, Please

So, what about you? Make a list of things you are grateful for. Journal this—on your phone, computer, in a random notebook—but memorialize it.

And if you’d like, please share it on my new Facebook Group, Self-Parenting in the Age of COVID, which I invite you to join by clicking on the link. There you can post your struggles and solutions as we create community. I invite you to share the blogs and posts you find on the Facebook Group by tagging those you know and care about, whether they are in recovery or just loved by you.

This is the first of a twelve-part series based on The 12 Steps to Self-Parenting. I invite you to subscribe to receive updates to this blog—look for future series where I apply my existing work to dealing with the specifics of COVID-19 for those involved in or interested in aspects of recovery—a parenting series based on The Lowdown on Families Who Get High, then one for those dealing with trauma based on Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting, followed by (of course) more on resiliency and girly thoughts.

Learn more about my work as a consulting psychologist and speaker at www.patriciaogorman.com