THE PANDEMIC CHANGED A LOT OF THINGS: school went virtual, work (for those of us who were able) went virtual, social distancing and mask wearing became standard fare (or at least should have), and many livelihoods and social circles were challenged and disrupted. So, now, as life starts to resume with vaccination rates rising, there is a buzz of excitement to “get back to the way things were.” However, this hope belies certain complexities within the readjustment to a post-COVID world (though we are still not yet fully “post-COVID”).
The first thing to remember is that adjusting to the pandemic-stricken world last March left us all collectively reeling with little time to process the immediate impacts of the changes it wrought. Then we were locked inside for over a year, with many having to risk their health as frontline and essential workers. This left many feeling isolated and adrift, having lost both their ability to socialize and the capacity to engage in various activities that we used to cope with the stresses of normal life, let alone the chaotic confinement of COVID-world (for instance, one of my primary ways of dealing with stress is going to coffee shops or libraries to read; for many months of 2020, this small-but-important act was entirely curtailed). So don’t forget, things were weird for a long time in ways that we as a society haven’t collectively experienced in generations. It’s okay to be wrestling with things still and feeling strange about the last 15 months.
The second thing to keep in mind is that things will not just “snap back” to the way they were beforehand. We can’t sweep this experience under the rug. COVID and the pandemic will very much be a “before/after” event, like the Civil War or the Great Depression. Therefore, it will be incumbent on all of us to give ourselves time and space to reacclimate and also understand that we are not the same people who started March of 2020. Both of those things are okay! You might be inclined to ask, “But why would it be a struggle to adjust to something good like being able to go out, see friends and family, shop, vacation, etc.?” The answer is this: human beings tend to prefer stability, even if the context isn’t ideal, so drastic changes, even good ones, can leave us emotionally rattled.
The final thing I want to mention here is this: in addition to cutting yourself some slack, don’t forget to cut others some slack, too. This was a burdensome time for everyone. Economist Minouche Shafik once wrote, “We owe it to each other, and to ourselves, to muster that courage and sense of unity.”1 We build up both each other and ourselves when we give others the benefit of the doubt as they, too, struggle with the implications of 15 months of COVID and the whiplash swings of life during that time frame.
1 From What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society, by Minouche Shafik, published in 2021 by Princeton University Press.
Brandon Tomlinson, MA, LPC, NCC, is a therapist who does Telehealth sessions at The Willow Center and can be reached at 419-720-5800.
