Understanding and Recovering from Covid-19 Anxiety

Feelings of worry, unease, and fear are normal and expected in the face of a threat. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it is natural to feel worried about your or your loved one’s health, concerned about threats to your job or the economy, worried about loss and the uncertain future.

According to CDC, after the initial Covid-19 shutdown, 40% of Americans experienced an increase is anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms. In July, about four months later, that number increased to 55%, and the number continues to grow daily as continue to slog through Covid-19 anxiety.

This pandemic has been at the root of anxiety because humans can physiologically and emotionally withstand significant amounts of stress but only for a short period of time. If you are experiencing long term stress, your body goes into fight, flight or freeze mode—which means you may feel like you have to either try to escape, become aggressive, or silently wait for a threat to pass. As a result, you may be on edge much of the time, unusually irritable, or exhausted from the strain of being in the midst of a prolonged stress response.

Covid-19 Anxiety Thoughts

During this pandemic, I have seen people experience significant amounts of stress and experience thoughts like:

• What if I get sick, it might be really serious

• I’ll never be able to catch up with school or work… what if I lose my job

• I can’t stop thinking about what can go wrong

• Watching the news and stories on social media make me nervous

• I can’t cope with not knowing the answers

It may be clear to you that you are caught in an anxious loop; however, sometimes it may be difficult to identify if you are experiencing anxiety or not. Anxiety can be incredibly subtle or incredibly evident. On the subtler end, people have described their anxiety as worrying some or most of the day, feeling on edge, and having a hard time concentrating and making decisions.

On the more severe end of the continuum, people experience feeling scared, trapped, angry, disinterested in things that used to feel meaningful (i.e., at work, home, relationships), and have a sense of impending danger, panic or doom.

Trying to Escape Covid Anxiety

A normal response I have seen people do is push feelings of anxiety away, mostly because no one enjoys anxiety. So, people will engage in avoidance of anxiety (a common way of coping) by watching hours and hours of TV or maybe turn to substance like tobacco, alcohol and marijuana, for example.

In addition, anxiety can also take an unpleasant physical form, like having an increased heart rate, breathing rapidly, muscle tension, stomach problems, headaches, body pains, and a difficult time getting to sleep or staying asleep.  

An important experience to highlight is that even if you are not so aware of the constant weight of Covid anxiety, you still may experience something called “Pandemic Fatigue.” This is exhaustion due to months of spending extra time and energy dealing with a new lifestyle—being confined in your home, having your kids at home, working where you sleep, and experiencing seemingly endless dread.

Constantly adjusting to this new normal may cause you to feel a change in your energy, mood, and memory. For example, fluctuating energy levels and productivity, as well as feeling irritable, anxious, depressed, and having decreased motivation may cause individuals to experience feeling worn out or burnout.

Therapy for Covid Anxiety

Therapy can help you learning more about your anxiety, feeling heard and understood, getting clarity on why you may be experiencing anxiety, increasing insight about your emotional triggers, and of course learning effective ways to handling your anxiety.

In session, I often encourage my clients to give themselves permission to be kind to themselves because wellness and gratitude have never been more important. It’s essential to focus on what’s good and connecting with pleasant moments each day. Even though pleasant moments can be spontaneous, sometimes we have to create those in our life, like fully participating in hobbies, meaningfully connecting with family and friends, or wholeheartedly prioritizing self-care, especially sleep, healthy eating, and exercise.    

I also teach my clients, either in individual or group therapy a set of skills called Distress Tolerance (from Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) which are a group of skills that help us cope in situations where we may feel intense feelings of worry, fear, or heightened anxiety.

For example, coupling a breathing exercise with holding something cool, like an ice pack can bring your attention away from your rapid thoughts that are causing you to feel panicked and/or causing you to stay up at night, to the sensation of coolness on your skin. This will allow your physiological response to quiet down in a healthy way.

If you’d like to talk about the anxiety you are experiencing and learn ways to decrease feeling worried or unease, please feel free to reach out.