Header
blue watercolor image with different gradients of blue cascading across the screen, starting with deep dark blue on the far right and ending up with light light blue on the far left
Life

You Need Help: Trying To Live Through the Pandemic Is Destroying My Mental Health

himani —
Feb 22, 2022

Q:

Hey y’all,

I am fucking tired, and stressed, and low-key su*cidal, and just don’t know what to do about it anymore.

Things were getting better with the pandemic. And then suddenly every government around the world decided to give up on trying to contain the virus and it just gets worse and worse and worse and I don’t know what to do.

I could
1) spend four hundred dollars on a switch and become a recluse
2) go back to drinking and call it quits
3) ?????

I am so tired with people pretending that the pandemic is no big deal. I’m sick of seeing hospo friends being forced to work when I know their bosses aren’t obeying any of the remaining regulations. I hate seeing people I used to respect post on social media in favour of all those stupid and harmful protests that are going on. I’m scared to death for my disabled and immunocompromised friends and family. And finally, I’m counting down the days until my small town hospital is overrun by cases.

I don’t know what to do. Leaving the house makes me anxious and angry and afraid, but staying in as someone who’s got schizo makes me sick. I’ve made unbelievable progress on my mental health in the last decade, and I’m scared that’s all going to errode in the current global climate.

I’m logging off social media, but I also feel really isolated.

This is big and rambling and you probably can’t answer it, but if you do… halp? pandemic? what do?? aaaaaah???

Lots of love,
MC

A:

First things first: if you are feeling suicidal, please do not suffer alone.

In terms of the pandemic, I want you to know that you are absolutely not alone. Without a doubt, governments are moving away from protections, pretending like the whole thing is over, when in fact, even health experts are saying that we are (once again) throwing caution to the wind. And, as you point out, the most recent conversations around pandemic safety measures completely devalue the lives of the people who are the most at-risk if they get COVID, putting the burden entirely on those individuals and their communities to keep themselves safe, which often means further self-isolation while everyone else moves on with their lives.

I know I’m not saying anything you already don’t know, but I just want you to know that I see you: I see your pain and your fear and your anger. I don’t know if any of this will be helpful, but I want to offer you a few thoughts. You may already be doing some of these things or they may not be relevant to you, and so I hope that others share additional recommendations and advice in the comments as well.

As I was thinking about your question, one of the things that came to mind for me was the idea of existing in the present moment. I believe there are certain lines of Buddhist thinking that say, for instance, that hope is an illusion; we must live in the present, even when it feels unbearable. Honestly, I am of two minds on this. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly found value in existing more in the present rather than living for the future. Often times, when I was younger, I’d pin my hopes on some point in the future only to arrive in that future moment and find it didn’t live up to all the expectations I had placed on it, leading me to even greater despair and disappointment. At the same time, though, some of my hardest, bleakest times have been when I truly had no hope for the future at all.

Ultimately, I think it’s a matter of balance. Acknowledge the pain and uncertainty you feel in the present when you feel it. But also seek out joy in the small places you can, like video or phone conversations with your close friends and family or other means of communication and connection in ways that are safe. One of the things I’ve found to be really helpful is to create recurring video chats with at least some of my friends, because it gives me something regular to look forward to and reduces some of the burden of having to reach out cold and say, “Can we chat?” Also, read books or watch TV shows or movies that bring you a little bit of solace to break up the periods of hopelessness. It’s hard and this is certainly something I am continuing to work on, but I think we need to hold and make space for both the pain and the pleasure in our lives, now more than ever in the pandemic.

Personally, I don’t think healthy distractions (like games) are bad, as long as you don’t spend the entirety of your time suppressing your feelings in that way. For me, this has been a matter of ebb and flow. There have definitely been times in the pandemic when I was just burying my feelings with games constantly, and I’ve had to find ways of pulling that back, recognizing when playing games is crossing the line from comforting to numbing.

Another thing I’ve found helpful is to create projects for myself to work on that I’m genuinely excited about, like learning a challenging piece on violin or writing projects here. I’m not the best at prioritizing those over the games all the time, but having an activity that I enjoy, which isn’t completely mindless with some kind of “goal” helps me break the numbing patterns of endless games and TV sometimes, at least.

For me, alcohol is kind of similar to the games, though more extreme and with an even more substantial toll on the physical body. I’ve personally had to pull back on alcohol and limit my consumption to buying single serving drinks at the liquor store or drinking socially with people who I’m less likely to drink too much with. As before, I think it’s a matter of balance. I don’t think forcing ourselves to exist in our pain, anger and uncertainty all the time is particularly useful, but I also don’t think we’re served by running away from these emotions constantly.

When it comes to social media, honestly I basically stopped using it a few years ago because, similar to what you’re describing, I was finding myself increasingly disgusted and caught up in seeing fucked up posts from people I thought were at least somewhat decent or even some who I actively liked. That said, social media can be a great place for finding out about virtual events and making connections to feel a little less lonely. The way I’ve struck this balance most recently is I’ve essentially deactivated the accounts I had the longest and had the most connections on (in my case, Facebook) and created a new, extremely private Instagram account that I hardly post on and basically didn’t tell anyone except very, very close trusted friends about. I use that IG account to follow artists, groups and organizations I like and respect. That helps me also know about upcoming events I might be interested in and engage with content that I find entertaining without having infuriating political content randomly pop up into the mix. (Though I did have to block a few pro-Trump posts on Instagram a few times before I fully got anything political or news-related off my feed.)

My approach in terms of my news consumption is quite similar. Sometimes, I find that reading the news is another kind of addictive, numbing activity, much like games and social media, but one that takes an even greater toll on my mental health. There have been times where I catch myself spinning through one news site after another, reading endlessly and becoming more and more depressed with each article I click on. Again, I’ve had to recognize when that’s happening and cut myself off. There have definitely been times where I intentionally don’t engage with the news at all because I knew I was already in a bad headspace. Honestly, when it comes to local news I often live in a place of willful ignorance, only checking COVID rates insofar as it informs what I might feel safe doing. I don’t think it’s helpful (or realistic) to fully disconnect from the news all the time, but again it’s about being kind to yourself and recognizing when staying engaged with the news is doing you too much harm.

Balance is really the underlying theme in everything I’ve said. And given the stakes of the situation we’re in, balance often feels impossible. I’ll be very honest: at some point in the pandemic I had to reckon with the way I was taking care of my mental health. I was already in therapy before the pandemic started, but as things started to feel worse and worse (for me, the lowest point was really when things initially started reopening across the U.S. in the summer of 2021), I finally made the decision to take an antidepressant. Undeniably, I have probably struggled with some form of depression for most of my life and in the years leading up to the pandemic, I do believe I was finding non-medicated ways to take care of my mental health. But the pandemic did two things to me. First, it very, very strongly triggered a lot of the isolation and loneliness and lack of control that defined the entirety of my childhood, undoing work I had been doing to deal with that and second, that pushed my struggles with depression to a point that was untenable. It was only after starting medication that I was able to approach my life and what was happening in the day to day with the kind of balance I’ve been talking about. Before then, this type of approach was impossible for me to accept intellectually or emotionally and act on.

I don’t know what this means for you. As a starting point, if you aren’t in therapy, please do try to seek out services. If you haven’t already, share some of the things you’ve written about here with mental health professionals and talk to them about different forms of therapy you might benefit from, different types of treatment options or tweaking your current mental health care approach, as needed. As a dear friend said to me when I first confided that I had started medication, you should not have to suffer like this.

I know that none of this actually changes the reality of the pandemic or the reality of the situation we are in. I know that reading this, it might feel like all I’m doing is telling you more things you should do, when really the problem is all the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and conspiracy theorists and right-wing politicians who are literally just cashing in the deaths and suffering of the same people who have always paid the price for everyone else’s convenience. I really am so sorry for all of us for the situation we are in. Sometimes, what makes me the most angry and the most depressed is the knowledge that none of this really has to be this way. We (as a society, as a world) are doing this to ourselves and, worse, to each other.

And yet, somehow, we must find the strength to live, despite it all. One of the things I sometimes try to hold is the idea that while I cannot personally change or end the suffering of people in worse and more uncertain situations than mine — whether that’s people who are immunocompromised or disabled during this pandemic or people living in war torn areas or the people most affected by climate change — I must honor their lives. Part of honoring their lives, to me, is about bearing witness to their experiences, doing what small things I can (like voting and donating to trustworthy organizations) and, to the extent possible, making personal decisions that support them (for instance, being mindful about the kinds of activities I’m doing during this pandemic and where I shop). But the other part of honoring their lives is living mine. I cannot materially change other people’s realities, but losing myself and sacrificing my own life by being debilitated by depression from trying to hold it all is a disservice and, honestly, disrespectful to everyone.

Finally, more than anything else I’ve written, I want you to hold this: Even though the world is kind of terrible, your life is precious and valuable, and you are loved.

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

Read ad-free: join AF MEDIA