COVID-19's Effect on Mental Health (+ 3 Things You Can Do To Heal)

“In lieu of the beautiful balance of grit and grace that I believe is essential in any healing journey, we’ve gone Full Grit, and we are seeing the ramifications of that in our own lives. We’re tired. We’re anxious. We’re lonely. Our hearts are hardened. We’re desperate for a thread of hope. ”

Ever since the pandemic hit back in March 2020, we’ve resorted to using the word ‘unprecedented’ to describe just about everything — unprecedented times, unprecedented emotional experiences, unprecedented grief. This word has become a failsafe in the absence of any other remotely sensical language to describe this terrible period of time that we’ve been caught in for going on two years. 

But I don’t think we’ve truly stopped to recognize just how traumatizing an effect COVID has had on us— both collectively and individually— and our respective worldviews. We haven’t examined how hard a pandemic has been and continues to be on our mental health. 

We expect ourselves to carry on as usual, to put on a brave face, to deny ourselves our own internal experiences because our external experience has become significantly more pressing. We only have so much energy to spare, so we’ve turned it towards what feels most important, denying ourselves in the process.

Additionally, in lieu of the beautiful balance of grit and grace that I believe is essential in any healing journey, we’ve gone Full Grit, and we are seeing the ramifications of that in our own lives. We’re tired. We’re anxious. We’re lonely. Our hearts are hardened. 

We’re desperate for a thread of hope. 

The COVID-19 and Mental Health Correlation

“Our sense of stability in the world and trust in just about anything has been shaken to its very core. We don’t know what to believe or when to believe it, and that has created an increased vigilance within our own skin.”

The human brain often needs facts and figures— logic— to help it make sense of the world, to provide a sense of safety, to breathe a collective sigh of understanding. By describing only some of the ways that COVID-19 has affected your mental health, I hope to grant you the information needed to see yourself and your lived experience in a more grace-filled light. 

I pray that this post serves to remind you that you are doing your absolute best, that your mental health is of the utmost importance now more than ever, and that whatever you are going through right now is valid. 

Here are a few of the ways that the pandemic has taken a toll on mental health and likely affected your own experience:

1. The veil of safety that shrouded each of us in our daily lives has vanished entirely. We feel vulnerable and are on guard 24/7/365— both from the virus itself and from our fellow human— meaning we are effectively in perpetual fight or flight mode all of the time. When we fail to process it, this survival energy gets trapped in our bodies— circulating and cycling and wreaking havoc on our nervous systems. This has made us significantly more prone to anxiety, depression, fatigue, and even physical symptoms like chronic pain or lack of appetite.

2. For fear of catching the virus, we have ostracized ourselves from our communities. In a time where we needed connection more than ever before, we instead became self-reliant and alone. Even as the risk ebbs and flows, “alone” has become our default setting, and we might feel unable to connect to our communities anymore.

3. Our sense of stability in the world and trust in just about anything has been shaken to its very core. We don’t know what to believe or when to believe it, and that has created an increased vigilance within our own skin. Again, our nervous systems are on guard at all times, seeking to protect us from anything that looks, sounds, or talks like a threat. You don’t need me to tell you this, but that is EXHAUSTING… and we are doing that around the clock. It makes sense that you’re so very tired.

4. We find ourselves without a tool chest of coping skills. All of our go-to coping skills that we used to move through life pre-pandemic don’t work in this extraneous situation, so we might feel like a boat without a paddle— directionless and stuck spinning in circles.

5. Finally, the grief journey has been compounded, not only by the loss of life itself, but by the inability to process grief in the ways we know best: rituals, final goodbyes, visitations, etc. We might not have been allowed in the hospital to say goodbye to our loved one… because of the virus. We might have been restricted to travel home for a funeral… because of the virus. We might not even have been able to hold a funeral… because of the virus. All in all, the already-stigmatized grief process has been even more impacted, amplifying the need to engage in the grief conversation in our circles, in our larger communities, and in our world.

Reading this, you might be nodding your head. You might finally feel understood. You might even be in shock that this much plays into your mental health, into how you’ve been feeling lately. 

No one has been left unaffected by the pandemic, including you. Grief and anxiety and depression (and and and…) has become a global experience, and we’ve all experienced and continue to experience trauma. It’s important we begin the difficult work of addressing it. 

3 Ways to Repair the Pandemic Wound

Change starts with ourselves, so here are three ways that you can start to heal the trauma you’ve endured the last two years.

1. Know that a true sense of safety stems from within. You don’t have to look outside of yourself quite as much as you might be, because, in all honesty: We don’t know when we are going to get that veil of safety back as the virus continues to rage on. Instead, you can realize that you hold infinite wisdom and healing within your own body and mind, and that you are safe in your own skin.

2. Find ways to complete your stress cycles and release your survival energy from the confines of your body: go for walks, step out into the sunshine, give your emotions time and space to flow through you, foster connection with someone through laughter, sing along to your favorite song. Movement and social connection is one of the best ways to resource safety from your own body.

3. Seek help. You have gone through a traumatic experience, and it’s hard to know how to heal and resolve that trauma all on our own. It’s okay to need an ally in your healing journey. If you struggle to find a therapist with openings in the midst of this therapy shortage, get on wait lists, or reach out to me for resources and referrals. Talk to people in your support system if they have the emotional bandwidth to listen (remember that they are going through a lot of the same stuff you are, too, so have patience and give grace). Prioritize your wellbeing, and create a daily practice of self-care and movement.

Above all else, I beg you to be compassionate with yourself. There was no way you could have planned for this, nor was there any way you could have navigated your mental health throughout such a sustained trauma experience. 

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