Why You Feel Awful and How To Fix It
We were supposed to feel better by now, right? Yes, the beginning of the pandemic was scary, and the start of stay-at-home orders was stressful, and yet many of us weathered those early stages — assuming we weren’t dealing with health crises — with a guardedly cheerful dive into baking bread and scheduling fun Zooms. (Remember “fun Zooms”?)
But surely I’m not the only one finding that the adrenaline that animated those early months has evaporated, leaving me feeling, weirdly, worse. We’re exhausted. We’re stressed. We’re not depressed, exactly, but we’re not quite ourselves either.
Turns out, it’s not just me, and it’s not just you. Tara Haelle breaks it down for Elemental:
In those early months, I, along with most of the rest of the country, was using ‘surge capacity’ to operate, as Ann Masten, PhD, a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, calls it. Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.
Haelle offers useful strategies for finding activities that fulfill you, maintain and strengthen your relationships, and build your “resilience bank account.” The surge is over. Now it’s time for strengthening those sea legs.
