Hannah StothersI’m sure that since March 2020, your WhatsApp groups, like mine, have gone crazy with constant sharing of memes and videos, as collectively we’ve tried to wrap our heads around a year none of us saw coming.
Many called for 2020 simply to be cancelled, with lots of us looking forward to a fresh start in 2021. Yet this new year has started with similar memes, such as: ‘I’d like to cancel my subscription to 2021. I’ve experienced the free 10-day trial and I’m not interested.’
We may chuckle or roll our eyes, but behind the memes there are real fears, a huge weight of mental fatigue and strain.
I’d like to help make sense of how we’ve been feeling. These are unprecedented times, and I’m sure that in years to come there will be countless research studies detailing the mental health effects of this past year but, until then, we are all just figuring it out as we go.
We know it’s normal to grieve after the loss of a loved one, but did you know that we can experience grief after a loss of any sort?
During the pandemic, of course some of us have lost more than others but we have all experienced loss on multiple levels. Loss of physical human connection, loss of routine, loss of our sense of safety and control. We can even have a sense of a loss of self; not quite sure who we are, outside our normal routines.
With all this loss, it is normal to be experiencing grief, which can cause intense feelings of shock, distress, and sadness, as well as anger and irritability. We can also experience physical symptoms, such as trouble sleeping or eating, and there can be a tendency to become socially withdrawn.
Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross put forward the classic theory (itself a rich source of memes) that we go through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But experience doesn’t necessarily follow the theory. These stages aren’t necessarily linear, and some days you may have come to a place of acceptance, only to go right back to feeling depressed again. Going through this grieving process is our brain’s way of helping us to adapt to our new reality. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. It is something very personal and individual to us all. It’s important not to compare yourself to other people.
This grieving process often goes hand in hand with poor concentration and a general lack of motivation. During the first lockdown, there appeared to be an initial increase in motivation, with some people learning new skills and getting more exercise than ever before. But as the year went on, and on and on, lack of motivation became increasingly common, with a lot of people struggling to be productive.
A lot of us had much more free time than ever before, so it should have been easy to write a bestseller, master a new language, come up with a world-changing invention or, at the very least, get started on our taxes. And yet it wasn’t. It was actually harder to achieve even the same standard of productivity we had before.
How did many of us handle this lack of motivation and productivity? Generally, by berating ourselves for not being good enough, or by labelling ourselves as lazy, which just increased the mental strain and pressure.
Spotify helpfully informed me that ‘Be Kind To Yourself’, by Andrew Peterson, was one of my top songs of 2020. One line in particular really resonated with me: ‘When the voices in your mind are anything but kind…’
We all tend to have a self-critical voice in our heads, and during this pandemic that unkind and harsh voice has been louder than ever. We need to make the active choice to have kinder, more encouraging thoughts towards ourselves. This won’t just help to increase our motivation and productivity but also to reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
We are living in a time where there is so much fear and uncertainty it’s no wonder that mental health difficulties have been exacerbated: if you have been feeling more anxious or depressed in this time, I would urge you to talk to your GP.
Don’t be afraid to reach out and continue to reach out. Living in a pandemic is a universal problem but that doesn’t negate how you feel as one person going through it. Don’t make light of what you’re experiencing and do talk to someone, whether that’s a friend or an organisation like the Samaritans.
Even for those whose health and loved ones’ lives have not been directly affected by the pandemic, we need to acknowledge the fact that life continues to be just a bit harder to deal with right now. It is likely we are all going through a grieving process as a result. We don’t need to cancel 2021 but we do need to be kind to ourselves as we continue to adapt to an ever-changing new reality.
Useful Links
