This pandemic, and all of its restrictiveness, protocols and fear-based spirited discussion, is a nightmare for many of us who are already battling within the confines of anxiety and depression.
I have experienced a return of depression, something I have not experienced much in my life, save for a few bouts as I grew into adulthood and again after the births of each of my children, in the surrealness of the postpartum stages of life. I have, however, suffered anxiety for most of my life, with many of those bleak years filled with vibrant panic attacks.
This global pandemic has, not surprisingly, ramped up my anxiety, as it has for many. Interestingly enough, it has shown itself to those who haven’t ever experienced it before.
I’ve realized that those who have never suffered anxiety or depression are now experiencing it through this global crisis. We constantly read comments and posts on social media, and see in TV interviews, the lighthearted ways in which people are coping.
They use words and phrases such as staying in one place, locked down or locked in, sheltered in place, stuck, trapped, alone, lonely, desperate for companionship. Many describe how they feel like they’re “losing their minds,” or “going crazy,” or “feeling down and hopeless.”
Welcome to mental illness.
While I feel great empathy for folks who are suffering in any way during this pandemic, I am somewhat silently grateful that regular, everyday non-mentally-ill folks are understanding what so many of us endure when there is no global threat.
In fact (for myself anyway), for many folks I know, that is precisely what suffering anxiety or depression feels like—your own self under a global threat, all the time!
We don’t get a projected end date for our illnesses. There are no phases to excitedly plan and prepare for. We just exist this way.
One of the most interesting happenings I have noticed is how the physical manifestations of anxiety are now affecting everyday people. They are now consumed with their physical health.
I have lived most of my life inside a worry-plagued mind, much of it in an unfortunate hypochondriac state, or health anxiety, as it’s called. Assessing and obsessing over physical symptoms that are the result of the mind’s postulation.
Heart palpitations, trouble breathing, sweating, all the classic fight-or-flight symptoms, have been normal to me for as long as I can remember. But, since COVID-19 has entered the world, and has steadily forged its way through each and every country at its terrifying pace, I have witnessed much of what I endure on a very large scale.
I watch the world practice my sickness
As soon as protocols began to be put in place, soon resulting in the media onslaught of death tabulations, symptoms became a daily report screaming from our TVs. People have become obsessed with monitoring their bodily symptoms to avoid this deadly virus. Thermometers are sold out, there are Google searches in epic proportions and people are posting on social media, begging for answers.
Everywhere you turn, someone is asking “Is this normal?” when they feel something ‘off.’ “Is this cough the Coronavirus?” “Do I have a fever?” “Is congestion a symptom?” “Am I breathing normally?”
I won’t deny that I have asked these questions a million times, since the inception of this virus. But for me, such is the way of my shaky anxious life. This has brought back other aspects of my mental illness, ones that I had successfully managed for many years. OCD is one of them.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as described by the American Psychiatric Association, is an anxiety disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions) that make them feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions). The repetitive behaviours, such as hand-washing, checking on things or cleaning, can significantly interfere with a person’s daily activities and social interactions.
To say I have perfected the art of Lysoling groceries and take-out containers, along with extreme constant hand-washing and the hazmat-sanitization of my home and anything that enters its realm, would be, sadly, an understatement. But I digress. For me, that’s a way of life, even prior to COVID-19. But to watch the world practice my sickness right along with me has been profound.
It’s discomforting as well, because part of my coping mechanism is constantly seeking reassurance that I am, indeed, healthy and safe. Living in a new normal, a broken world somewhat crumbling around me as it fights a deadly unknown threat, is beyond strange to me. I feel like I am hovering above the Earth watching, and not really a part of it. Desensitization, I suppose.
People are also (for obvious reasons, due to the self-isolation and physical distancing practices we are forced to maintain) suffering bouts of sadness and many aspects of depression. Many have lost jobs, or are now working from home. Their worlds have shifted greatly, and they were forced to change on a dime and carry on when everything normal erupted.
Others are alone, unable to be near family or friends, and from what I’ve read, those who describe themselves as extroverts are suffering the most. Unable to be their happy boisterous selves around others. Unable to recharge their minds and bodies, they face endless pain trying to cope.
Where to find comfort now?
Me? I am dealing with my various mind-intricacies and, not surprisingly, struggling to keep my mind healthy. I am absolutely suffering quarantine fatigue, which is defined as “weariness from bodily or mental exertion,” according to Dictionary.com.
I have lost motivation for most things, managing bit by bit and utilizing the mantra of ‘one day at a time.’ For someone who needs answers and reassurances, this is my worst nightmare. But I am focused on being proud that I am coping at all, in any fashion.
I am finding comfort in knowing that the world around me is experiencing what I do on a daily basis, although it does heighten my own anxiety. I can’t yet comprehend how I can cope with my own depressive thoughts and hopelessness, when those around me (most often, my own go-to-points of comfort and help when I am in need of it) are now turning to me to find those exact things.
I am tired of watching commercials that claim “we’re all in this together,” or worse, “you’re not alone.” If it’s true, then why is everyone expressing precisely this? That they feel alone? That they are suffering, and in fact, cannot be together? There is more to ‘being together’ than making a (failed) profound commercial statement. At least in my opinion.
In any case, witnessing the world around me walk with me in my mental illness, tasting the bitterness I taste daily, growing weary and struggling to stay with it, does bring me something. Watching those I know fall apart a little bit because sensations are making them uncomfortable and are new to them, is off-putting for sure.
The way I have forged a life through my mental illness has been by relying on the world around me to stay firm, strong, fearless and defiant. This gives me the ability to carry on, knowing my fears and issues are mine alone, in my head. In the past, I could bear them and cope because I knew, for the most part, it was all ‘false,’ and that if I looked around me, all was fine. Normal.
And now it’s not.
So where to find comfort now? True comfort must come from within, they say. But, if ‘they’ are all suffering and fighting as well, is there any comfort, anywhere? With anyone?
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