As someone who has been treated for mental illness, I feel I have a head start on staying sane and grounded during this period.

There are no precedents in my life for handling the coronavirus other than that I know something about how to deal with my craziness.

And I have learned some things about how to see through fear to the other side, something valuable right now.

I want to say that as a journalist, I learned that responsible politicians and public health officials always warn of a worst-case scenario, because they know that’s the only thing that will get the attention of most people.

They scare us into acting in a responsible way.

I believe this was and is a sound, life-saving strategy. What is happening is plenty bad enough, but it could have been a lot worse had people like Dr. Fauci not scared the hell out of us. He is a hero to me, and I believe he will get the recognition for what he has done.

There are plenty of hard weeks ahead of all of us, especially for the sick and the elderly, but in a month or so, life will begin the process of returning to normal.

I believe that for all our mental health, the idea is to be vigilant and take their warnings seriously, but also to start looking through this nightmare and out the other side.

Fear is, after all, geography, a space to cross. Smart and great leaders know that and use it.

I reported on an awful lot of worst-case scenarios, and almost all were necessary and justifiable, but not a one turned out to be the worst case. As bad as this is, I don’t see it being different, they are figuring out how to slow it down and get ahead of it, and when it returns, they will be ready. It won’t be like this again.

There are a lot of people who will soon stop whining and bitching that this all was a plot or a bureaucratic scare, that is part of the process too. People who think for themselves will know better. I am grateful to people like Dr. Fauci, he may well have saved my life and spared me from an awful death.

Concern and attention are entirely appropriate; fear is neither necessary or useful, not for those of us who are paying attention and willing to take care of our souls. The good thing about being crazy is that I get to recover every day. I can’t say that about this awful virus.

When it comes to my mental health, I found many of the same tools I learned to use before still work now. And I have some new ones.

The big difference from being mentally ill then and now is that everyone is that we are all sharing the tension and fear and uncertainty.

And we have a poisonous corporate media making billions of dollars off of our fear. Their profits and ratings depend on it; they are not honest brokers of truthful information. Neither are many politicians seeking re-election.

So here is what is working for me in terms of peace of mind. Take what you wish from it and leave the rest. I’m not telling you what to do, just what I am have learned to do and what works for me.

. Routine is essential when dealing with anxiety, at least for me. I get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. I do some streaming before bed-time and am careful to watch programs at night after 7 p.m. that are not bloody or involve dismemberments and violence.

I can get that watching political news.

. Maria and I feed the animals together, always before we eat. We do the farm chores together, run the dogs, feed them, and then go to work.

.In my therapy, I was taught to visualize when the fear came. I thought of people or things I feared as a red soccer ball and kicked them over a hill. To my amazement, this worked and still works. Last week, I thought of the virus as a big red balloon and popped with my switchblade (in my mind.)

Dogs never prove their worth to us more than when we are in crisis. Almost everything about a good dog or cat is calming, soothing, and grounding. I pay attention to them, train them, walk them, talk to them, as much as possible. It is as good as valium, and I’ve had both. Donkeys are profoundly spiritual animals, and we commune with them, sit with them, exchange feelings with them. It helps a lot.

I want to say that I am not a therapist or amateur healer of any kind. I am not trained for it and don’t pretend to know how to do it.

If your fear is overwhelming and refuses relief or any kind of self-treatment, please get help from a professional. They help. Beware of amateur psychologists, they are a social scandal that can block real help and promote distrust and confusion. If your friends try to heal you, they may not know it, but they are not your friends.

The best help I have ever given my friends is to sometimes say “you need to get help.”

.I check the news twice a day, once in the morning when I wake, once just after dinner and hours before I go to sleep. I watch news organizations that have editors. I have learned to be very careful about what I watch and for how long.

Talking shows with bloviators have no appeal for me. News that makes me angry is unhealthy and usually untrue.

News that makes me frightened is inappropriate and unprofessional, and of no use to me.

Videos of death and suffering repeated in loops hour after hour day after day are a mental health hazard and an addiction nearly as destructive as opioids. Some people watch these images scores of times each day.

Test this out for yourself: these people are, to a one, frightened or angry. They are damaging their own psyches.

Responsible media will tell us what is happening without scaring us to death. If you watch polarizing or hysterical or politicized news, left or right, you are inviting fear into your head and your life when you need it the least.

I choose what I observe.

I hope you do as well. You might be shocked at how this can manage fear at a time like this.

It is unhealthy to be angry or fearful, it is healthy to be united and connected, not divided, and enraged.

I chose who to listen to during this particular crisis: in my case, my governor, Andrew Cuomo, who is calm, honest,  empathetic and reassuring all at once.

I also follow the statements of Dr. Anthony Fauci from the CDC, who is both direct and highly qualified. I find the Washington Post and the New York Times to be valuable sources of foreign and political news when I want to read about one or the other. They also take science seriously and report on the science of this disease and Pandemics; I find that useful and not exploitive.

.I do not argue politics with anyone, online or off, ever. My politics are personal, they are my business.

.I meditate every morning. I take Chinese herbs to strengthen my immune system, something I will continue doing after the crisis is over. Maria often joins me. I take care to eat small portions of healthy food, as I always do. Eating healthy is essential to mental health. I drink some hard cider once a day, no more and nothing else.

I meditate for 1- to 20 minutes.

.Maria and I take our meals together, but we separate for much of the day. She works in her studio; I work in my study. She walks in the woods with Fate; I walk in different woods with Zinnia. We need closeness, but we also need some separation.

.I believe solitude, which I worship, is essential to my psychological health. In isolation, we see deeply into ourselves, confront our fear, and work our way to the other side.  We face the worst parts of us and our best.

.My mornings are strictly devoted to Army Of Good projects, answering e-mail, negotiating for masks and lunches for the Mansion, food for the refugees, etc. I don’t make or take calls, watch any kind of news, turn on any devices other than my computer, which I need.

.And I should add that doing good – for neighbors, family, friends, the poor, and the needy – is a fear killer. It feels good and connects us to the best parts of ourselves.

An elderly couple is living down the road. Their neighbors – our friends – go to their house every morning and pick a list left on their porch listing food and medicine that they need.

Every day, they complete the list, find their payment outside for what they buy in an envelope on the porch, and repeat the process the next day. They are saving the lives of these people, and it makes them feel valuable and engaged rather than helpless and frightened.

There is no shortage of people to help right now.

They say this has obliterated almost all of the fear other people are feeling. It makes them feel grateful for a life of meaning while the lives of so many people feel lost or empty.

Another friend is running an online storytelling library, free to any child in town who is stuck at home. She reads to them. Their parents are immensely grateful.

She says she rarely feels fear.

Because we are careful to have our own space, Maria and I are always glad to see one another, and only occasionally get on each other’s nerves.  This helps. I do most of the cooking; now, she does the shopping and the heavy barn chores. I am mostly confined to the farmhouse and the farm during this period.

.After lunch, I stop working for several hours. I will tend to phone calls, seek help for our work, make personal calls, and negotiate for Army Of Good.  I understand that I do not have the responsibility of having children at home, so many things are easier for me. It is a completely different world than mine.

.My Precious Quiet Time. After the afternoon for 60 to 90 minutes, I sit, think, sometimes pray, listen to music (Van Morrison today), sometimes nap, sometimes read. It is a quiet time, a precious time, a grounding time,  just me and a dog or two. It is a calming time, all mine, no one else is invited to share in it.

I look inward, take stock of myself, breathe deeply, close my eyes, sometimes I even sing along to songs I love. My dogs understand this hour, they gather around me and sleep. They stay silent.

On cold days, I sit near the fire, cover myself with a blanket. Sometimes I have the deepest and most restful sleep. I never feel fear in that chair; it is my time for me to find peace and empathy. It is there that I find my truth beneath the fear.

.At night I make and plan dinner, I write, I read and then go to sleep. I bring a book upstairs to read. I might watch a  British mystery; I love British mysteries on TV. Maria will usually come upstairs with me, and we get a final chance to talk, hold each other, ground each other with love and understanding.

Once in a while, I let the fear and sadness of what I see and hear flow through me, it is both cleansing and liberating. I don’t need to pretend everything is all right, I just need to know this is not the permanent reality of my life:

Thomas Merton always comforts me in hard times: “The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Sometimes I just have to respect the fear and let it do its own work. It has a short attention span, as do I.

That’s how I deal with fear. I see through it to the other side. When it comes, I  let it pass through me, as it always does.  Since it is soft and porous and emotional, it can only trouble me; it cannot hurt me, and it hasn’t killed me.

Fear, like the coronavirus itself, is invisible. It will also pass through us, leaving sadness and change in its wake, and we will walk out into the light again, all the way to the other side.

I have learned that we are stronger than fear. We are real, and it is not.