CLEVELAND, Ohio – Americans are impatient.
We can watch an entire TV series with the click of a remote and have dinner delivered pronto.
That’s one reason we’re so uncomfortable in the coronavirus pandemic’s holding pattern, living isolated or on top of each other, with no idea what the future holds. So as we turn another corner on the calendar, we may feel like we’ve reached the end of our rope and are just barely hanging on.
Barbara Warren, an Ohio State University nurse who leads the school’s Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Specialty Track, calls the blah-ness “COVID fatigue.”
“The surge happened. Everybody sprang into action. Then it began to go on, and on and on,” Warren said. “There’s a lack of human contact in day-to-day interchanges outside of your own family. Then the very thought that this is not going to go away. Stress levels, I think, are going up and out the roof.”
Maybe you feel lonely working from home or sluggish after hours staring at Zoom. Maybe you’re sad because you miss your family or mad at the cancellation of yet another significant event. Or maybe you locked yourself in the bathroom to cry after picking up your kids’ online school schedule.
You may be angry or overwhelmed, sad or depressed. That’s normal, psychologists say.
Clevelanders’ feelings right now might run the rainbow, from hopeful to hopeless, said Eileen Anderson-Fye, the director of educational programs, bioethics & medical humanities at Case Western Reserve University. Many of us are stretched, and we keep stretching further.
“I’m a single working mom,” Anderson-Fye said. “That’s insane. I’m teaching classes at Case while my daughters are yelling down the stairs that I’m being too loud.”
Related: How can I work from home with kids during the coronavirus pandemic?
Anderson-Fye has received Bat Mitzvah invitations, where the hosts keep changing the date.
“Most of us are walking around with an imagined ending. When will I get to get on a plane again? When can we reschedule the celebration for the wedding no one could go to?”
It’s hard for Americans not to know.
“Even if we knew it was a long time, but we knew when would be easier for people. Not knowing makes it more stressful and harder to push through,” MetroHealth psychologist Brittany Myers said. “We don’t know how long and what we’re pushing through towards.”
There is no data yet on how stress caused by the coronavirus is affecting Americans long-term, but psychologists know that chronic stress is bad for both the mind and body. Our bodies are not supposed to be in fight-or-flight mode for an entire year.
As a culture, we’re grieving the loss of our regular rituals, said Lisa Ruman, founder of the Child & Family Counseling Center of Westlake.
“We thought this was short term,” Ruman said. “That’s what we kept thinking, when are we going back to normal?”
We need to create a new way of life, she says. As colder weather approaches with darker days, that means figuring out how to get exercise and stay social without long, warm evenings outdoors. And inventing new ways to celebrate milestones and holidays.
But human beings are resilient.
“People are capable of adapting and remaining resilient even in the face of severe stress,” said Autumn Kujawa, a Vanderbilt psychology professor who has researched how the coronavirus affects the mental health of young adults.
“I think many of us thought the situation would be better than it is right now, but at the same time, we have come so far in that we know so much more about how to reduce the spread of the virus and people are adapting and adjusting their behavior in their social and professional lives…We can get through this.”
So how do we get through this, as we enter a new season with the same virus?
“I think we are learning how to live with enormous paradox,” Anderson-Fye said. “Where you can have hope and dismay and find joy in the little things at the same time, the misery will be intensified. Do I really have more dishes in the sink again?”
Psychologists have a few tips for your mental health, even if they don’t have an answer for all those dishes.
Feel like you used up all the grace and patience you had allotted for the summer of coronavirus? Envision a new stock for the next season. A new rope, if you will.
“Part of it is trying to carve an unknown future into manageable time blocks,” Anderson-Fye said. “When you reach the end of that rope, that’s when you have to create a new rope in your mind.”
It’s natural to have to reimagine our lives as we cross benchmarks like Labor Day or the first day of school.
“We are maybe the pinnacle of give-it-to-me-now. I want it perfect. I want it shiny,” Anderson-Fye said. “The kind of ongoing crisis hits the American psyche in a particularly hard way.”
You take care of your mind, body and spirit every day, Warren said. That means doing the activities that satisfy the essence of you.
Exercise, especially outdoors.
Take out that bike you bought last spring. Or alter your schedule to go for a walk at lunchtime. Maybe hit some golf balls. Research shows that just being outside enhances our mood.
And getting sunlight will be even more critical as the days get shorter and colder, psychologists say.
I’ve played more tennis in the last five months than I did in the previous decade. Smacking a tough serve provides some major stress release. So do regular stand-up paddleboard sessions with a crew of mom friends.
To take care of your mind, escape in a book. Read something other than social media.
If you’re a problem solver like me, you want to fix everything. But it’s not like I can solve a pandemic. So that leaves me to rail against what the coronavirus has wrought. (For example, virtual school.) How do you stop feeling so angry, other than eating ice cream each night?
Radical acceptance.
“What radical acceptance teaches I might not like what’s going on right now. I might hate it. But I am no longer going to tantrum or fight,” Ruman said. “I am going to go into a level of acceptance.”
Radical acceptance requires creating a new perspective on life, new habits, new rituals, and new routines, she added.
Children thrive with structure, Myers says. And many people find comfort in routines. So set up new ones.
Give your kids chores to lighten your load. Teach responsibility. Make them feel like integral members of your household. Find a way to socialize that’s safe. And stop wishing life were different.
“Everybody needs to be kind to themselves,” Myers said. “Remind yourself that even though it’s uncertain, we still know it’s temporary. It’s not forever.”
I know mindfulness is a major buzzword. But if you’re finding it hard to live in the present, you can also find joy in planning the future.
After all, kids are going back to school, and Halloween candy is invading grocery store aisles. So we might as well start thinking about the holidays.
Related: How can we save Halloween and holidays from the coronavirus?
Those holidays are anchors in our year, traditions we look forward to each year. Just anticipating a positive experience makes us feel good.
“We don’t want to give up our traditions and the things we’re looking forward to entirely,” Myers said. “Those are some of the buffers we use to get us through stressful times. We just have to figure out how to do them safely and in a modified way. For us planners, sometimes it helps to have something positive we’re looking forward to.”
Kujawa said families could be creative about modifying traditions.
“It is OK to be sad and grieve the experiences and time with loved ones we are missing out on,” she said. “Finding even a small amount of joy in the holidays this year and having hope that we will be able to safely be back with our family and friends soon will help us all get through this challenging time.”
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