Quarantine Journal #1

While there has been a lot of feedback on the negative impact this quarantine has had on people all over the world, there happens to be a lot of positive feedback as well.

I get that it sounds impossible to stay at home literally all the time, when normally your short day includes driving to work, heading to the gym, stopping by the grocery store, maybe taking your car for a wash, and plenty of other outdoor activities.

I, too, was awfully affected by the whole situation; as previously mentioned in my first post of spring, I was nothing but a bundle of negative emotions at the start. However, I knew this was definitely not who I want to be, especially that no one knows how long we will have to stay in quarantine. It would drive me mad.

What I realized was that this whole social distancing necessity has given me the chance to finally work on my mental health and my overall well-being; I refused to let myself give in to the negativity that was slowly eating me up, and therefore decided to start focusing on myself.

I started working out every other day, watching out for what I’m eating (as I have been munching on a lot of biscuits ever since we started secluding ourselves). Sometimes I lose focus and get carried away, but that’s okay. I began motivating myself to develop a healthy and worthwhile prayer habit. And most importantly, I am paying strong attention not to send destructive messages to my mind and body.

I’ve talked about this plenty of times, and I’ll continue discussing this particular phenomenon as frequently as I can because it is something that a lot of people seem to be unaware of.  When you send antagonistic thoughts to your body, you are automatically shutting down, or at least decreasing, its ability to provide you with a positive response. I have compared those hostile thoughts a priori to an autoimmune disease; the same way your body’s genetic program carries a mutation that causes it to attack itself, for example, your “thought program” slowly attacks your body if it happens to carry a lot of abusive data.

In physiology, we study what is known as the “Fight-or-Flight Response” i.e. the acute stress response that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying – mentally or physically. The response is triggered by the release of hormones that prepare your body to either stay and deal with a threat or to run away to safety [1].  Put simply, during a Fight-or-Flight Response, the body secretes two important hormones – Adrenaline and Noradrenaline – which in their turn increase heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. [2]

What’s important about this specific reaction is that it can be triggered in response to an actual threat just as much as it can be activated in response to an imaginary one. A book I’ve been referencing a lot lately, The Healing Code, states that our Fight-or-Flight response can sometimes be activated when it’s not supposed to because we are unconsciously putting our body into “stress mode”. The longer you put your body into stress mode, the more you are preventing the proper functioning of your body’s systems, and the more toxic chemicals your body’s secreting.

“Tonic thoughts produce tonic chemicals; toxic thoughts produce toxic chemicals.” – Michael Beckwith

Wow, okay. I can talk about this for hours! Some of you might be thinking why I always use the same quotes and references… well, because they changed my life!

Anyway, with all of this in mind, I was convinced that I really had to stop attacking my body and self in general.

The good thing is that the weather got a lot better these past few days, so I decided to go out into the garden two days ago and sit in the sun by myself.

Boy, you won’t believe how good it felt! I experienced a strange calmness and peace, and shortly after began with a monologue. I told myself that I’m a kind person who has a lot of things to offer the world, who will shine at her own time, who is thankful for being alive, who is surrounded by wonderful people. I told myself that I’m almost fully at peace with my past and the attacks against my body that I’ve thrown. I took in a deep breath and thanked God for everything.

So why hadn’t I done this before?

I guess when you’re too caught up in the stress of the daily routine, it’s a lot harder to think straight or positively. It’s much easier to hold in the anger and the worry until you eventually explode, if you know what I mean. University and all the in-betweens were emotionally and physically draining me (even though I kind of miss everything and everyone right now), so there was always something to obstruct my positive thinking. Yes, now there’s the coronavirus to think about, but that is long done. I’m changing slowly.

So to end Quarantine Journal #1, I want to wish you a good quarantine. I hope that during this time when you’re supposedly stuck between four walls with nothing to do, you find the will to have this monologue and send positive affirmations to your brain – positive affirmations about how beautifully made you are, about how much potential you have, and about how deserving you are of happiness.

And one last thing. Don’t forget to smile! 🙂

Stay safe!

– Maria