MANAGING MENTAL HEALTH IN THE AGE OF CORONA
14 JUNE 2021 (15 MIN READ)
Picture yourself a couple years back, laughing at the idea of a potential pandemic, watching movies like Contagion with a high degree of spectacle, and consider where we are now. First, we were stuck inside our homes with no avenue to express our fear or repressed pain. Then we could leave the house but only with a blue diaper covering ¾ of our faces and staying six feet away from our friends. We then started viewing our neighbors as enemies—a potential threat to our own livelihood. The news kept telling us how we were going to die rather than ways in which we could protect our immune systems. Front pages of newspapers kept showing heinous death tolls to break our hearts every morning. We had a deep-rooted narcissist in office negating the severity of the disease for personal gain. And on the other side, politicians exaggerated the seriousness of the disease and capitalized on fear for control—all while going to fancy dinners while we were stuck inside. Young, loving children were forced to stay inside away from their friends and teachers, robbing them of their only safety net against physical and sexual abuse. Those with mental health issues going into the pandemic only got worse, myself included. And those who never experienced mental distress finally confronted that harsh reality. All in all, we have been through a lot. And those who think life will completely go back to normal could not be more wrong. We will face a mental health pandemic for years to come. Sure, the masks will come off and the rosé will flow, but the depression behind those masks will start to show.
Change needs to come as soon as possible. And the fight begins with you. Help yourself first and then help others who refuse to express their repressed pain from the pandemic. To assist you on this journey, here are four key ways to manage mental health in the age of Corona.
TRAUMA FOLLOWS
Each one of us has experienced some form of trauma from the pandemic; and we must become aware of it to stay mentally fit. For those in New York especially—sitting in a small box worrying about the lives of your loved ones and your own, listening to ambulance sirens every ten seconds, and having no social connection to get through it—you experienced some serious pain. And that pain will not magically dissipate once Corona ends; that anguish sticks inside you and gets squeezed out whenever you get triggered. This pattern is called PTSD. Whether it be sitting alone all day in uncertainty, getting freaked out by news headlines, having loved ones die, or experiencing some form of familial abuse in quarantine; that memory is now coated in a high degree of pain. So, once reminded of that moment, the memory pops back up (consciously or unconsciously) and the pain that comes with it can take over your whole body for a certain period of time. For instance, let’s say you go back to the same house you quarantined in alone, and you turn on the television to accidentally see the news frantically talking about a new strain of Corona. Now, your memory of being alone, in deep pain and fear, in that same environment panicking at the news, comes back to haunt you. But it’s not just the memory alone, it’s the feelings that occurred with the memory that really throw you off. You are now left in a great deal of fear and anxiety that you are deeply confused about. But we’re passed this. I’m no longer scared of Corona. I got the vaccine for fucks sake. Your brain understands but your body doesn’t; it keeps score. It only remembers the visceral pain you experienced throughout the pandemic. Luckily, there are a couple of ways to dance with that pain stuck inside you.
First, reflect on your experience during the pandemic, especially in quarantine, and list out the soft spots that caused a lot of emotional pain. Once you have listed these sensitivities, pay attention to how your body feels once reminded of them. Sit with that feeling and make friends with it; try to really know its characteristics so when it comes back you can see it for exactly what it is. Now that you are familiar with your trigger points, when activated, you can associate the feeling to a point of trauma and calm down the brain’s biggest weak spot: uncertainty. All you're left with after this is a central nervous system issue; you merely have to calm your body down. There are a number of ways to calm down the body, here are some that work for me:
When our bodies are in shock it can be seen as repressed energy or pain, begging to be released. So I literally yell and throw a temper tantrum about the issue at hand, barking like a dog and flailing my hands in the air. Since we now know the issue stemming from our pain, we can direct our energy towards that issue and yell out the anger we have about going through it. Now that your body is more calm, you can effectively engage in abdominal breathing exercises. Breathe from your belly: five seconds in, ten seconds out; this works well for stress because breathing out twice as long activates the parasympathetic nervous system—your body's natural resting state. Finally, for the cherry on top, take an ice cold shower to shock any lingering damage out of your body; the extreme cold temperature will force your body and mind to forget about the issue at hand. Obviously, these coping mechanisms only work when you have a lot of free time on your hands, so here’s a simplified version you can do anywhere:
Feel your feet and ground yourself to the floor; this will help get you out of your head and into the body, so you can better figure out how to help yourself without panicking. Next, connect to the source of the pain and look at your surroundings. You can now tell yourself that everything is ok. You just have to calm your body down. To do so, tap into your body’s natural supply of Xanax, which can get released wherever you are through abdominal breathing.
Although this will sound hard to believe, we are all unconsciously addicted to our traumas. Freud labeled this phenomenon as the “compulsion to repeat”—an effort to unconsciously gain power over a painful moment from the past. And with repetition, our unconscious mind thinks that we can get mentally better with each re-exposure and eventually master this pain. Luckily, evidence exists to throw a big middle finger at our unconscious mind and act against it: forcefully reliving our traumas makes everything significantly worse. In terms of Corona, we were all genuinely concerned for our lives and those closest to us. And guess who capitalized off this? The dirty fucking scumbag that is the news. When your business becomes monetizing purely off of fear; you have combined with dark forces. Why should you ever listen to someone whose job it is to make you scared? It’s like watching Friday the 13th and using it as a trustworthy lens to live your life through. If you think I’m being hard on poor old news companies like CNN, then consider this statistic: 54% of international news articles were negative, while 91% of media reports in the US were negative.¹ And this study was completed during Corona, a time where everyone needed more positivity and therapeutic material than ever. As Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, David Leonhardt, excellently put it: “When COVID cases were rising in the US, the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it.”²
The news knows we all have repressed trauma from thinking we were going to die for a period of time, and they have successfully capitalized off of it. In terms of Freud’s theory, the popularity of the news and its fear-inducing darkness, especially this year, shows how humans feel the need to unconsciously stir in their traumatic fear to feel alive. If the news suddenly started posting predominantly positive stories, no one would feel the need to voraciously refresh their favored news sources every hour. So, pay attention to the way your body feels before and after you check the news. Do you have an addictive appetite to feast on fear? Do you feel well-fed after consuming anxiety-inducing headlines? Or are both cases true for you? It is essential for each of us to ask ourselves these questions. We must stop letting the news dominate our mental health and disallow us from healing our collective trauma from the pandemic.
YOU'RE NOT ALONE
We all now know what it feels like to suffer alone, having been quarantined amidst the height of the pandemic and sitting with that frightening uncertainty. We can use this understanding to note two important things. One, we can truly see the importance in asking others for help and how horrible it feels to suffer alone. And two, we possess a higher level of empathy for others in agony, who are suffering in silence and contemplating the benefits of vanishing into thin air. Thus, our collectively awful experience of Corona has created a beautiful silver lining: understanding the human condition. And that condition is that we are all suffering. Next time you are feeling down, extend a hand out to those you love asking them to bring you closer to your own heart. Although getting vulnerable is tough, especially for men, people are less inclined to judge your pain now and more likely to see your courage, inspiring them to express their feelings. Human beings connect off of emotions, not off intellectual ideas. We remember people by the way they make us feel, not by the facts or opinions they possess. If someone holds opposing views to you, it’s not their opinions you remember them by, but rather, the immense frustration they fueled within you. By speaking vulnerably—telling people how you are suffering—people will not only feel better about their own struggles, but they will be more likely to share them, releasing a massive pit in their stomach and creating happiness. This positive feeling you handed someone else will make them cherish you. However, there is a key mistake people make when embracing vulnerability.
It is important to never share from a place of victimization. Do not share your pain to gain sympathy votes. Read that again. People will automatically tap into your false, narcissistic energy and feel a visceral distaste. Express your pain from a place of freedom; not expecting sympathy, but just sharing your part of the human experience. By placing no expectations on other people, they end up appreciating your realness and independence, leading to a higher level of respect and a desire to form a deeper connection. On the other hand, those who constantly bathe in their suffering and believe their pain is worse than others will not command respect and nobody will want to help them. Be careful with these kinds of people as they will easily call you an oppressor or victimizer any time you deviate from what they want, manipulating you into a feeling of guilt, which in turn makes them your master. These people often befriend caretakers and milk them of every ounce of energy in their body. So notice if you see yourself starting to become this person and respectfully steer away from going into egoistic overdrive. And if you have this type of person in your close circle, run away and drop the guilt they instilled in you. To be clear, I’m referring to people who make small issues into big ones, and purposely suck everyone into their grandiosity—those who possess the “I can’t catch a break” mentality and refuse to take ownership of their lives. (Other forms of pain, such as physical or emotional abuse, require a lot of attention and healing, and are not associated with the example above.)
In summary, share your story as a way to connect with others and have a conversation about human suffering; in turn, making yourself and others feel validated about their struggles. However, it is essential to not speak from a place of victimization and to not make your pain superior to others’, as it will stunt your healing process and push others away. And whenever you feel like you’re in this painful world alone, sit on this statistic: one in ten people last year seriously considered suicide.³ Imagine ten people you know—one of them is actively thinking about ending their life. And I genuinely believe the number is a little higher since most people suffer in silence. This disheartening metric shows the extent of which humans are deeply in pain at the moment, so never think you stand alone. For however bad you think you have it, somebody else has it worse, and they’re just waiting to talk to you about it. You’d be surprised by how many of your friends are suffering, just ask the right questions and you will see the reality of the times we are living in.
You are not alone. We are all suffering. Always remember that.
VULNERABILITY HAS NEVER BEEN MORE WELCOME
Although we can be a serious pain in the ass, Generation Z has introduced one monumentally important paradigm shift in American society: the power of vulnerability. Rather than hiding behind one’s emotions and putting on an everlasting mask, younger people nowadays are starting to embrace their emotions and wear them with pride. I believe this habit is directly tied to the rise of technology and social media. Never before has a society been as manipulated and profited off of their emotions as they are now. The 24-hour news cycles manipulate fear to keep viewers hooked. Social media reaction buttons are designed to fuel emotions in users to either unite or divide them. And the explosion of comparison culture due to social media has stirred mass envy like never before. Since Americans are on their smartphones for hours on end, they experience a rainbow of intense, manipulated emotions every day. This toxic trait is especially concerning for Gen Z, who were raised on smartphones and social media from a very young age. Thus, their brains have been developed to react emotionally very easily and have that outweigh their reasoning skills. In other words, we have never felt more validated by our own emotions than we do now.
Although this generational habit can lead to severely unhealthy emotional regulation and narcissistic entitlement, a beautiful silver lining arises: suffering is no longer taboo. Since everyone is experiencing intense emotions all day, and watching others online do the same, people no longer hold the same level of judgment as they once did about getting vulnerable. It’s almost as if it has become a comfort zone for Gen Z to watch people get emotional. Obviously, a deep generational divide exists. Many are not as likely to respect your vulnerability, as it is not as deeply tied to their generational identity. So find comfort in your own tribe and take pride in their ability to embrace emotions. Nothing unites humans like common suffering. Most of the best friends I have made in life are based around a common struggle, such as depression or drug addiction.
Fighting the battle that is life with people on your side is a lot easier than facing it alone. And with the emotional prowess Gen Z possesses, the odds are deeply in your favor to create that support system.
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
Trauma does an especially good job of robbing us of our reality and stripping away all our gratitude for life. A relaxed evening watching a movie can suddenly become a war zone of terror and intense panic. As was stated earlier, your mind may know the difference between reality and a projection, but your body does not. If triggered, it will treat the situation at hand the same as the moment the pain was inflicted. Our deep, repressed memories of suffering in quarantine and the visceral emotions that come with them can leak out at any moment, creating a ticking time bomb ready to unleash in your body. To combat this, ground yourself by adopting a thorough reality check. First, mindfully observe your surroundings by noticing objects, specifically their shapes, colors, and sizes—the more specific the better. Then treat your emotions the same way. (Hopefully, you can get to the point where you know what trauma the feeling stems from; this way your mind is at ease and you know it’s a nervous system issue). Note the emotion without giving it a story; become one with it and observe its short journey through your body. Lastly, restore what you are grateful for in life. Trauma’s intense toll can sometimes make us focus too much on the pain we experience in life. Think of those who love you and how lucky you are to have their support. And more importantly, focus on all the positives you have in your possession and understand that you are not your trauma.
This last exercise is probably the most powerful one for combatting any pain or moments severely lacking motivation. Envision your own death. Go ahead. Picture yourself stepping outside your house and suddenly a car runs you over. Your life is now gone; you are nothing but roadkill. Those who love you are distraught. And they can only remember you by what you have accomplished, as well as how you have acted. Sit with that frightening thought because it could become a reality at any moment. Now ask yourself whether you are satisfied with your life. Have you accomplished everything you wish to do? What’s holding you back? Have you stayed true to your values and been kind to yourself? Every morning I practice this exercise and it gives me more energy than the biggest cup of coffee ever could. More importantly, it puts inconveniences in my life into perspective. Do I really want to let this pain get the best of me and ruin my day? How can I attack what’s holding me back? This attitude will motivate you to lean into your traumas and try to come out stronger. Live the life you wish to live, don’t stay dreaming until you die. Confront the issues that hold you back with intense vigor; lower your shoulder into that wall and break through the fucking barrier. Because the other option is dying with regret and I would not wish that upon my worst enemy.
¹ Soave, Robby. “U.S. Media Readers 'Strongly Prefer Negative Stories About COVID-19’.” Reason (2020).
² Leonhardt, David. “Bad News Bias.” The New York Times (2021).
