COVID’s double-punch to your sense-of-self … and how to hit back

We’ve all been through a lot in the past 18 months and, if you felt lost, you’re not alone.

Most of us have felt that way and, for those who were significantly impacted by the virus – such as losing their jobs, being separated from loved ones, or being directly affected by COVID-19 – it’s not surprising that they would find themselves in periods of depression and anxiety.

But what about those who, on the surface, weren’t significantly impacted but still found – or find – themselves experiencing the same mental health challenges?

Your Story of My Life Journal team, through sheer arbitrary luck, is based in Perth, Western Australia – arguably the safest place in the entire world. Not just now, but throughout the entire pandemic (touch wood).

Yet, despite enjoying freedoms much of the world would envy, West Australians – like many others in similar positions – have been no strangers to mental health challenges over this time.

So, why?

There’s a couple of possibilities.

The world as we knew it pre-COVID

Let’s quickly take stock of what actually took place over the past 18 months.

It’s been an unprecedented time (with unprecedented use of the word ‘unprecedented’).

We’ve been required to stay indoors and isolate, physically and socially cutting ourselves off from family and friends, both overseas and interstate, and in times of lockdown, even a short drive is no longer possible.

We’ve been bombarded with alarming news from around the world, but more importantly from the perspective of our minds, within our own countries and states.

At the time of writing this, more than half of Australia remains in lockdown, with the worst outbreak the country has experienced during the pandemic spreading through New South Wales.

Either you, or someone you know, likely lost their job or had it significantly impacted.

Those of us whose employment was unaffected would have had to make adjustments to their working habits and routines, with long stints working from home, without seeing another soul for weeks – sometimes months.

And there were those who had to do that, plus juggle home schooling for the kids.

What about those of us who have missed weddings, births, and funerals? Who haven’t seen immediate family members they used to see regularly? Or those who were directly impacted by the virus?

It’s all created a lingering sense of unease, of waiting with bated breath for the next press conference that delivers a revelation of community spread and snap lockdown, creating a base-level sense of anxiety that permeates everything.

We can cope with a little fear – we were built to handle it, and it saves our lives on occasion – but we weren’t built to handle 18 months of it, and the adrenal fatigue eventually takes its toll.

You’ve undoubtedly heard of the fight-flight-freeze response; we’ve effectively been on high-alert for 18 months.

It would be like a rabbit trying to use its fear-driven adrenaline to outrun a fox … for 18 months.

Eventually, it’s just going to run out of juice.

Issue 1: Your brain detected a threat

This next part is important, because there are people who appear to have been unaffected by COVID, yet still find themselves in a tough place … and they feel guilty for it, like they have no right to feel challenged.

If that’s you, listen up: you have every right to feel that way. And there’s a very good reason you feel like that, too.

Consider what we laid out in the above section and note that almost everything about life as we knew it changed.

Let’s take something as simple as travel, for example: you might have not had any plans to travel, but in the back of your mind, you always knew you could if you wanted to. So long as you had a passport, a clear criminal record, and the money to do so, you could go anywhere in the world.

It was a freedom-of-movement so taken for granted that we didn’t even consider taking it for granted. It was just a way of life.

Not anymore.

It would be surprising if more than half of your previous way-of-life remained intact.

But your assumptions and your ways-of-life – even those unarticulated – acted as your psychological safety blanket, and when they were torn apart, it left you in a state of anxiety.

Your mind processes those impacts in the context of your life – it doesn’t look across the country, or at what someone else is going through – and, when it realises its assumptions were wrong, it suddenly no longer feels safe and is forced to expand its threat-detection radar.

That’s a problem, because your mind parses the world into three categories based on relevance to your goals: tools; obstacles; irrelevant.

Check out this post for a comprehensive explanation of that system.

The ‘irrelevant’ category is the important one in this context, because it contains almost everything in the world. You want most things to be irrelevant, otherwise there’s too many things for you to focus on.

And, when your psychological safety-blanket and assumptions are torn up, that’s precisely the issue you run into, because your ‘irrelevant’ category is thrown into turmoil – everything becomes relevant.

Your mind switches to fight-or-flight mode and expands its threat radar, re-scanning everything it thought was irrelevant, trying to work out if it’s now relevant and just how much danger you’re in.

It takes an enormous amount of emotional and physical energy, leaving you in a constant state of alertness, pumping you full of adrenaline and cortisol, raising anxiety, which increases the likelihood of depression.

It takes a heavy toll on you, regardless of whether you perceive yourself as being worthy of suffering.

Issue 2: Dissolution of identity

Another significant issue brought about by COVID has been the dissolution of our identities.

It is quite possible for us in the western world to go through the majority of our lives effectively on autopilot, because our cultural stories shepherd us down the race of life without requiring us to pay much attention to what we’re doing.

We’re required to go to school until a certain age, then we’re encouraged to either get a trade or go to university, after which we’ll put our skills to work by finding a job and progressing up the career ladder.

We complement our careers with the understanding that we should look for a partner, find one we want to marry, get a mortgage together, so we have a place to start a family, by which point we’re somewhere around our mid-30s.

Mid-30s, and we’ve barely had to think about life, let alone who we are, why we’re doing what we’re doing, if we even like what we’re doing, or what we might want to do if we made a conscious decision to do something of our own choosing.

Our understanding of our own identity is effectively dictated to us and manufactured for us by all the ‘things’ going on around us, which play out as part of our cultural and familial expectations.

That cycle carries on uninterrupted, until a year like 2020 throws a global-pandemic-spanner in the works.

Suddenly, the scaffolding we were unconsciously using to form our identity is ripped away.

We might not realise it – and, hey, you might be different, but many are not – but much of sense of identity, our understanding of ‘who we are’, is tied up with ‘what we do’.

Our jobs, our relationship status, our hobbies, whether or not we’re a parent.

COVID-19 came in and decimated economies, taking away jobs, separating people from each other, grinding social activities to a halt, and confining people to their homes.

It took away all our ‘stuff’ and left us with ourselves and, for many of us, we didn’t recognise the person in the mirror without any of that.

Why would we? We spent most our lives not needing to know who we were, not needing to think about what we were doing or where we were going.

COVID stole our identities, strapped on the electrodes, and shocked us into an almighty state of self-awareness for the first time in many of our lives.

It should come as no surprise at how that state of being can result in significant anxiety and bouts of depression.

How goalsetting can help hit back against COVID

All of this is why those who are not directly affected by COVID can, in fact, be significantly affected.

It comes down to the individual and how significantly their minds have perceived their reality to have changed, and how comfortable they are with who they are, separate to all the external elements of their lives.

So, how can knowing this help you overcome the challenges?

Firstly, if you’re experiencing significant periods of anxiety and/or depression, or you feel your challenges are beyond your ability to manage by yourself, then it’s important you seek professional support.

However, if you just need some strategies to support you during this time, goalsetting can be an invaluable tool.

We’ve discussed how your emotional response to everything that has taken place from 2020 and beyond can stem from your mind being on high-alert, searching for threats amidst what’s relevant and what’s not.

You might also be attempting to reconstruct an identity and understanding of yourself.

If you take the time to establish some goals across the eight dimensions of wellness, you can begin resetting your mind.

These don’t have to be complex goals; for the ‘Physical’ dimension, it might be something as simple as going for a walk or run twice a week.

The goal itself is not necessarily important; it’s the act of setting a goal.

Your goals will then help your mind understand what is a tool, an obstacle, and irrelevant, and it can stop scanning everything ad nauseum.

That will give your mind and body a break, but it will also provide you with a narrower focus and make you feel more in control of your life – you’ll be acting local, not global – and we know competency is a key psychological need.

That focus and your goals will generate meaning and purpose in your life again – you’ll start to reconstruct an identity of your choosing – and, before long, any sense of foreboding and feelings of anxiety and depression should begin to dissipate.

You’ve got this

You might have felt lost in 2020. You might have felt unworthy of those feelings.

But those feelings were valid – they were the product of your mind doing what it does in its attempts to survive.

Your brain is remarkably resilient and, as it adjusts to this new way of life, it is weaving a new safety blanket.

Eventually, it will complete its stitching. 

In the meantime, try set some goals to help it on its way and bring positive meaning and purpose into your life.

And, also, know you’re not alone.