By Claire, Founder & President of Youthoughtism
Introduction
The Covid-19 pandemic has become less serious as before, and we can finally return back to our normal lives, after 2 years of lockdown. Everything which was stopped can resume, everything that was gone can come back, well, mostly. However, there is one thing that we haven’t paid attention to, but has yet to be solved — how Covid may have affected our mental health, your anxiety, especially.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety happens when you feel like you are potentially in danger. It is a feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness. It might cause you to sweat, feel restless and tense, and have a rapid heartbeat. It can be a normal reaction to stress. For example, you might feel anxious when faced with a difficult problem at work, before taking a test, or before making an important decision. It can help you to cope. The anxiety may give you a boost of energy or help you focus. But for people with anxiety disorders, the fear is not temporary and can be overwhelming.
The Sympathetic Nervous System
When you are anxious, your normal ‘parasympathetic nervous system’ turns to a ‘sympathetic nervous system’. Basically, this system helps you to prepare the body for strenuous physical activity, and produces what’s so called ‘fight or flight’ responses. You will either fight it, or you will run away from it (flight), and that’s why this system gives you the energy to do these things. The ‘sympathetic nervous system’ controls your whole body, especially your internal organs. This system stimulates saliva, which helps you digest food and in fact, eating can kick this system in. The heart rate slows down, breathing slows down, the stomach becomes more active, the gallbladder becomes more active, the intestines become more active, etc. So this is again about processing the food, getting the nutrients to the body, extracting the waste, and getting rid of the waste.
The Relationship between Covid-19 and Anxiety
Anxiety is the No. 1 disease people got due to Covid-19. In particular, the elderly, health care providers, and people with health conditions suffered most from this disease. Covid-19 is a long-term threat to us. It’s not just the virus that we are afraid of, it’s the economic impact of the virus, it's the lifestyle changes, it's the isolation, it's the not being able to hug people we would like to hug, that thing is all feeding into this threat system. But, most importantly, it is the news that makes you most anxious.
The News
You might think people only get addicted to gambling, mobile games, smoking etc., but a lot of people, especially during the pandemic, are addicted to the news! How, you may ask. Let’s take a slot machine as an example. How a slot machine works is that you pay money, and then it spins. Most of the time, you will lose money, but once in a while, you will hit that jackpot, and win a lot of money. The thing that makes this machine so addictive, is that the rewards come in a random way. People won’t want to leave the machine, since they also have the thought of , “What if I win on my next spin?”. Being addicted to the news has the same reason. We are living in this unpredictable world, and people want to be the first to know the news. However, a lot of times when you watch the news, you hear the things you already know. Sometimes, though, you land on a ‘jackpot’, which is some important news. Landing on a ‘jackpot’ is very uncommon, so most of the time, you will just be seeing the large number of Covid cases on your TV screen, which is kicking up your anxiety system.
How to Solve Anxiety during Covid-19
Normally, the sympathetic nervous system is gone within a short period of time, after you fight or flight. However, this Covid-19 situation is never ending, so our sympathetic nervous system will stay here, for as long as this Covid situation continues. This is why we really need to treat it. Here are some ways to solve your anxiety:
Learn how to ‘relax’. Learning to relax is really hard, that’s why you have to train yourself for it. After you learn how to relax, it can be a very useful tool from your ‘toolbox’. So how do you learn to relax?
Listen to guided relaxation audios. There are tons available online, so you can just follow them whenever you are stressed, or you can do one before bed, and after you wake up! At first, you can follow it, and then, do the exercise without the audio, and at last, you can relax by yourself even without doing the exercise. Here’s one that we recommend to you! Relaxing the Entire Body - A Guided Relaxation Audio Practice for Deep Rest
Listen to relaxing music to calm your anxiety. Recently, we launched our Spotify. In there, we created a 2+ hour playlist with relaxing songs for you to listen to when you are anxious or stressed. Do go check it out! We have had a lot of comments saying it really helped them! We hope you like it too! https://open.spotify.com/user/31ifpf4avizsvpjqwq3n6jvmeyuq?si=875dd18ecb6c4564
Distract yourself. If the news is what’s making you anxious, pull yourself away from the news for some time, or change channels. You can also set a timetable for you to watch the news 2-3 times a day, and during the other times of the day, just do something else, like socializing via social media, calling your friends and family, watching Netflix, exercising, etc. After you watch the news, always give yourself some time to forget about the parts that increase your anxiety, and listen to the guided relaxation audio or some relaxing songs.
Talk to someone. Talking to someone is a really nice way to decrease the level of anxiety. In this pandemic, a lot of people are anxious, so you are definitely not alone. Go talk to your friends or family! That not only increases socialization, which makes you forget about the millions of covid cases, but also helps you to learn some ways of how other people are coping with it, and know that you are going through this with someone else.
Conclusion + Reflection
During this research, I, as a person who has never experienced any mental health problems before, has surely understood a lot more as to how people feel when they feel anxious or stressed. Although the Covid pandemic is a lot less serious as before, I also hope that this helps you solve your anxiety in the future, no matter what it’s caused by. I also hope to tell you how important your mental health is, and how Covid may have affected your mental health. If it really did, please do follow the methods above to solve it, and do it as soon as possible. Just always remember, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!