Adjusting to a Post-Pandemic Life
Last week the CDC announced that vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks, even when they are indoors. States are seemingly opening up overnight, with many businesses returning to normal indoor capacity. Concerts and vacations are getting booked, flights are full, and many work places are preparing to welcome their staff back into the office. Just a couple of days ago the NYT morning newsletter “Covid on the Run” proclaimed the pandemic may now be in permanent retreat.
This is all good news, isn’t it? Yes. Maybe. In some (most) ways.
While many of us are eager to return to pre-pandemic life, many others are struggling to make this transition. Many are still anxious and further perplexed and even ashamed of their hesitancy. Didn’t we all just want things to go back to normal? Why I am so reluctant and scared? Why can’t it all just go back to how it used to be?
For starters, the aftermath of trauma is often just as bad, if not worse than the actual trauma.
For starters, the aftermath of trauma is often just as bad, if not worse than the actual trauma. During times of danger, our nervous system kicks into gear and our entire body and mind mobilize in order to cope and survive. Fight or flight as we often think about it involves a hungry tiger or a mugger in a dark alley — an acute danger you can easily spot and if you’re lucky, outrun. But the reality of trauma is that it often presents in longer, more chronic, and by definition, less avoidable and out-runnable circumstances. Cue the pandemic.
Almost 15 months into the pandemic means almost 15 months of what may be described as a “rolling trauma,” one in which the dangers keep coming and keep changing, making it hard to adapt and get a sense of control over the danger. Over this time we’ve had to contend with an ever-evolving set of dangers, from the actual virus to loss of jobs, health insurance and housing, loss of schooling and childcare for our kids, loss of contact with many of our sources of support, both relational and recreational, and ongoing social and political distress. Even if you were lucky enough to not die or get severely ill, the other dangers were present and pressing. There was no time to process it all and as soon as you thought you had a handle on it, mandates, rules, and scientific findings changed yet again. There was not time to “settle in” to a new normal before it all changed again, throwing us into yet another fight or flight response.
More often than not, humans cope with distressing and dangerous situations by jumping into action and doing what needs to get done in order to ensure survival. Figuring out how to work from home (oftentimes in cramped quarters), how to be at work and become an overnight teacher to your children, how to not drop the ball at work and suddenly be 100% responsible for childcare, how to safely obtain daily supplies (remember the toilet paper shortage scare?), how to provide support for loved ones when you couldn’t see them, let alone hug them, how to bring respite and maybe even joy to the grind of life when so many activities were out of our reach. These difficulties came in like unrelenting waves. Maybe you managed to catch your breath between them, but soon enough another one came crashing in. This is precisely what required use to keep moving, keep figuring out, no time to reflect. Pause to ponder and feel it all and the tiger eats you.
Once your body and brain think the tiger is gone, the reality of the terror you just survived starts to sink in. You may be physically safe, but your mind and body may take a while to catch up.
So, what happens now that many of us are pausing for the first time in over a year? The cumulative trauma emerges. The months of barely processed emotion come out and all the difficulties you’ve endured start to catch up with you. Once your body and brain think the tiger is gone, the reality of the terror you just survived starts to sink in. You may be physically safe, but your mind and body may take a while to catch up.
And this is why for many of us, things don’t just go back to normal the minute the CDC’s most recent mask announcement went out. This is why we can expect lingering mental health difficulties and raising numbers of PTSD. The vaccine didn’t erase your memory of the last 15 months so it’s no surprise that we aren’t just going to wake up in a safe and “back to normal” post-pandemic world. If you’ve been lucky enough to survive, now may be the time of mourning and grief, time of anxiety and disorientation. And if this is the case, know you are not alone and that biologically speaking, this delayed reaction makes complete sense, even if state governments and local businesses would have you believe otherwise.
So, if you are struggling, know you are not alone, know this is a natural part of surviving trauma, and know that there are resources out there to help you heal. Reach out to your loved ones, openly talk about your experience, normalize it for yourself and for others. Also know that there are plenty of mental health professionals who understand this process and have tools to help you work through it in a way that doesn’t minimize but instead validates your survival and teaches you how to move through the trauma so that you can get back to your life, if not exactly how it used to be, but how you now want it to be.
