As a psychiatrist, I recognize how valuable everyday interactions are for mental health. We are deeply social creatures who need others as much as we need air to breathe. Studies show that frequent positive interactions with others is at the heart of our wellbeing. People who experience “felt love”—brief moments of connection in everyday life—are happier and healthier compared to those with lower felt love scores.

Of course, these moments are best experienced in person. Chocolate tastes better when shared. A hill feels less steep when walking beside another. Pain is less painful when holding a loved one’s hand. Making chitchat with someone you don’t know can brighten your day. This is why I talk to patients about making the most of face-to-face interactions with loved ones and strangers. Presence, I tell them, is everything.

But not now.

Today, I implore you to take your distance. If you’re under 50 and in good health, COVID-19 is unlikely to kill you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions to protect those who are most vulnerable. Minimizing your physical contact with the outside world might save someone else’s life.

Please don’t get on a plane unless you have to.

Please don’t visit your parents.

Please skip playdates and dinner parties.

Work from home if you can.

Social distancing might be inconvenient but someone else’s life may depend on it.

If you think I’m being too dramatic, listen to Yale professor Nicholas Christakis who studies how humans spread everything from ideas, to behavior, to germs:

“If we limit social contact, we can “flatten” the coronavirus epidemic by spreading out the same number of cases across a longer time horizon. That way, we will have fewer sick people at any given point, allowing health-care systems and supply chains to provide precious resources such as ventilators, beds for intensive-care units and, of course, medical staff.”

So hunker down. Stay put. Do your part to curb the spread of this virus in the community.

It’s strange endorsing social distancing when so much of our wellbeing depends on social connection. Seeing inventive ways people are staying connected while physically distanced gives me hope. A video of quarantined neighbors in Siena singing a popular Italian song from their balconies and waving at one another reminds us that we are not alone.

Reach out to friends, especially those you know are home alone. Pick up the phone and call your aunt. Send a text to your old roommate who lives in Tennessee. A group chat with NYC friends is helping me feel connected. A friend holed up in Connecticut sends me daily gallows humor memes.

Here is what I recommend:

1. Maintain an other-orientation. Self-interest will only make you feel worse and stress you out.

2. Be a beacon. Instead of forwarding or retweeting anxiety-inducing headlines, share goodness and actionable insights to lift people’s spirits. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma started a “songs of comfort” series, Lizzo is leading meditations, Josh Gad is reading bedtime stories, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson created a “Quarantunes” playlist.

3. Consider the people quarantined with you. Set ground rules with family members/roommates/partners. Don’t walk around with your phone in your hand constantly sharing breaking news. Your constant updates will amplify the anxiety in the house, especially if there are kids around.

4. Encourage other-oriented discussions during meals. Sample topics:

• If you could be any historical figure, who would it be and why?
• Describe a quality you admire in your best friend.
• What lesson have you learned that you would like to share with people younger than you?

5. Recreate water cooler moments. Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford observes:

“When we share physical space, we don’t confine our conversations to urgent matters. We dawdle, kibbitz and goof off. Those in-between moments are urgent — to our sense of place and community. We must keep them around in whatever format we can.”

6. Call friends and family members. Make a pact to talk about something other than COVID-19.

7. Donate to a charitable organization like Citymeals-on-wheels that delivers meals to elderly New Yorkers. Citymeals has already delivered 45K meals emergency meals and will deliver 100K more in the next few days.

8. Schedule a FaceTime lunch with a friend, set up a virtual book club, watch the History Channel’s Washington documentary “together,” or plan a Skype happy hour.

9. Get creative with gratitude—send a message to someone you are grateful to but never properly thanked– teacher, a doctor, a mentor, a colleague. I was inspired by these people in Madrid thanking healthcare workers.

10. If you can, continue to pay hourly workers like your dog walker or housekeeper even if they aren’t working.

11. Reach out to an old friend you haven’t spoken to in a while.

12. If you have to go to the store, send a message to an elderly neighbor asking if they need anything and leave it at their door.

Becky Wass, a lecturer in Cornwall created a #viralkindness campaign, putting postcards on doorsteps with the message:

“Hello, if you are self-isolating, I can help. If just one person feels less lonely or isolated when faced with this pandemic, then I’ll feel better about it. Coronavirus is scary. Let’s make kindness go viral.”

There are many ways to stay close while keeping your distance. My friend Jessica Seinfeld sent me this from a rabbi:

“For every hand that we don’t shake must become a phone call that we place. Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression of warmth and concern. Every inch and every foot that we physically place between ourselves and another, must become a thought as to how we might be of help to that other.”

Coronavirus isn’t about any one of us. It’s about all of us.

Not being able to predict how something will turn out—a job, a relationship, a health concern, or even a pandemic—is stressful and can be paralyzing. As a patient of mine explained, “It’s the not knowing that makes me miserable and keeps me up at night.”

Learning to let go of the things that are beyond your personal control is easier said than done. Telling someone to “stop worrying so much” is useless advice.

Here is a tool that can help—the Responsibility Transfer. Taken from The Charisma Myth, it is the best strategy I know to alleviate the discomfort of uncertainty.

1. Sit down or lie down in a quiet place and close your eyes.

2. Take three deep breaths. As you inhale, imagine drawing clean air toward the top of your head. As you exhale, let the air whoosh through you, washing away all worries and concerns.

3. Pick an entity—Fate, the Universe, God, whatever best suits your beliefs–that you imagine to be benevolent.

4. Imagine lifting the weight of everything you are worried about—that meeting tomorrow, the interaction with your boss this morning, a health concern—off your shoulders and placing it on the entity you have chosen. Now, the entity is in charge.

5. Visually lift everything off your shoulders and feel the difference as you are now no longer responsible for the outcome of any of these things. Everything is taken care of.

The unproductive worry that accompanies uncertainty can leave many of us feeling like Atlas buckling under the weight of the world on our shoulders. This exercise will help you clear your mind and help manage your day to day.

Why are we so afraid of COVID-19? It’s “the mix of miscalibrated emotion and limited knowledge” explains psychologist David DeSteno. Fear thrives on uncertainty and, at this point, there is so much we don’t know.

How deadly is it? Estimates range from 0.5% to 4% (the seasonal flu is .1%) and the only way to narrow this down is to count the number of fatalities and divide it by how many have COVID-19. Without widespread testing, it is impossible to know the denominator of this equation.

Other questions we don’t have answers to:

Will the virus peter out during the summer months?

How soon will we have a vaccine?

How many people are asymptomatic?

Why are children less affected?

Unanswerable questions coupled with conflicting information, especially from government officials and experts, further fuels fear. One moment, you’re told it’s no big deal and the next, schools are shutting down. Mixed messages are confusing and amplify uncertainty. It’s no wonder people are panicking.

Here is what we do know. There are actions you can take to help you feel more in control even when the world feels like it is spinning out of control.

1. Check Your Screentime

Are you compulsively checking the CDC website for updates? Did you double your Twitter screen time in the past week? If the answer is yes, it’s highly likely that this behavior is stoking your fears and making you feel even more vulnerable. Think of your attention as a flashlight. What do you want to shine it on?

2. Skip Contagion

This is not the moment to watch movies like Outbreak or Contagion. Choose a movie or a series that will be a catalyst for calm or at least a distraction from the current state of affairs. Better yet, get lost in a book. I just downloaded The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larsen, one of my favorite authors. Early reviews describe it as captivating and an engrossing page-turner, an ideal remedy for the relentless negative news.

3. Do You Really Need That Lipstick?

When germs abound, vanity kicks in. A study found that when people worry about catching a disease, they tend to focus more on how they look and spend more money on their physical appearance. It’s the “behavioral immune system” signaling to others, “Hey, I’m healthy.”

4. Talk About Something Else

You might think that the best way to solve a problem is to think it through but when information is lacking and fear is driving emotion, this can backfire. There is no benefit to ruminating about the spread of coronavirus. Nor is it helpful to make it a topic of every conversation you have with others. Discovering your friend bought a year’s supply of toilet paper at Costco might prompt you to do the same but it won’t give you peace of mind.

5. Don’t Eat Your Feelings

People tend to eat more and mindlessly when they’re stressed. Don’t let anxiety dictate your diet. Actively decide to make healthy choices that fortify you during this vulnerable period. Research from Yale University suggests that a protein-based diet might help fight the seasonal flu. Rats who were fed the keto diet (high in fat and protein, low in carbs) were better equipped to combat and overcome the influenza virus than rats who were fed the equivalent of Wonder bread and spaghetti.

6. Get Some Fresh Air

Consider skipping the gym and exercising outdoors instead. Hop off the subway before your stop to minimize potential exposure and to put a spring in your step. Spending time outdoors is good for your immunity and your mood. People who report more positive emotions are less likely to catch a cold. Even when they do catch a cold, they don’t feel as bad as the “Debbie Downers.”

7. Snooze

This is not the time to stay up late binge-watching Netflix. People who don’t sleep enough are more likely to get sick after being exposed to an infection. During sleep, the immune system releases proteins called cytokines which protect us against bacteria and viruses. You’ll also feel less stressed when you’re well-rested.

8. The Basics To Keep Yourself and Others Healthy:

• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing; going to the bathroom; before eating or preparing food; upon arrival anywhere.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Stay home when you are sick.
• Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.

I appreciated Dr. Abdu Sharkawy’s take on how to navigate this challenge:

I implore you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience and uncertainty with education. We have an opportunity to learn a great deal about health hygiene and limiting the spread of innumerable transmissible diseases in our society. Let’s meet this challenge together in the best spirit of compassion for others, patience, and above all, an unfailing effort to seek truth, facts and knowledge as opposed to conjecture, speculation and catastrophizing. Facts not fear. Clean hands. Open hearts. Our children will thank us for it.

People who refer to themselves in the third person are often considered weirdos. If I were to say aloud, “Go Samantha. You can do it!” before lifting a large weight at the gym, fellow gym-goers may justifiably cringe and slowly move away.

While talking to oneself aloud may raise some eyebrows and conjure up cheesy self-help advice (“I’m good enough. I’m strong enough…”) new research highlights how self-talk can be harnessed to bring out the best. People naturally talk to themselves and most research has focused on the negative voice in our head, the one saying, “I am such an idiot,” whenever we lose our keys.

Psychologist Ethan Kross studies how self-talk can be deployed strategically to boost confidence and make better decisions.

How people conduct their inner monologues has an enormous effect on their success in life. Talk to yourself with the pronoun I, for instance and you’re likely to fluster and perform poorly in stressful circumstances. Address yourself by your name and your chances of acing a host of tasks from speech making to self-advocacy, suddenly soar.

In other words, speaking to yourself in the third person, albeit quietly, has important advantages.

By toggling the way we address the self—first person or third—we flip a switch in the cerebral cortex, the center of thought, and another in the amygdala, the seat of fear, moving closer to or further from our sense of self and all its motional intensity. Gaining psychological distance enables self-control, allowing us to think clearly, perform competently. The language switch also minimizes rumination, a handmaiden of anxiety, after we complete a task. Released from negative thoughts, we gain perspective, focus deeply, plan for the future.

When used strategically, self-talk is a powerful instrument. Related research shows it can help us face disappointment, handle negative feedback and deal with challenges.

On that note, “Samantha needs to work on her book.”

Why do some people get the flu while others get through the entire winter without ever needing a Kleenex? General health, genetics, and environment influence immunity but what else is involved? According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon, mood and emotional style play a role too.

In one experiment I am grateful not to have been a part of, the researchers infected participants with the rhinovirus, the virus that causes the common cold. They were then placed in quarantine and closely observed for the next five days. Researchers monitored symptoms including cough, sore throat along with a battery of blood tests and other measurements. Tissues were weighed to assess mucus production.

Results showed that those who reported more positive emotions were less likely to catch a cold. Even when they did, they didn’t report feeling as bad as the “Debbie Downers.” As the lead researcher said:

We need to take more seriously the possibility that positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk.

Related studies reveal that people who are stressed out are more susceptible to the common cold and other diseases. Perhaps one of the best strategies to boost your immune system is to do something that puts you in a good mood.