Managing Pandemic Fatigue Anxiety

Pandemic fatigue is one of the phenomena that show the psychological impact of the COVID-19 crisis. And it is that the way in which the pandemic affects us psychologically is not limited to the fear of contagion or the experience of having loved ones passing due to the disease: the entire social context has been transformed in response to the spread of the virus, and adapting to this new reality can be complicated.

That is why what happened during the coronavirus crisis has triggered many anxiety problems. In this article we will see some clues about what to do in the face of this phenomenon caused by pandemic fatigue.

• Related article: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics"

How does pandemic fatigue arise?

Pandemic fatigue is a psychological state characterized by emotional distress coupled with the experience of apathy or demoralization in the face of the pressure we feel after months of suffering a pandemic, trying to adapt to a reality in which we cannot live as we always did.

In this phenomenon, elements associated with an excess of anxiety, and on the other hand, disorientation join and demotivation caused by the impoverishment of the stimuli and the incentives to which we had access. That is, on the one hand, both the fear of contagion and the prevention measures to tackle the pandemic make us feel stress or directly anguish and fear, and on the other hand, our day to day is limited to many fewer actions due to the social and economic context crisis. If to this we add the time factor, which implies having to experience the constant postponement of the "return to normality ”, the result is that the pandemic causes us to burn emotionally and worsens the mental health of many people.

However, there is no one way that pandemic fatigue leads to anxiety problems or other emotional disturbances. Precisely because the coronavirus crisis and others like it have a global impact on society, each person lives this experience in different ways. different: some suffer more from the fear of losing their income, others from not being able to have the social life they would like, others from the fear of losing relatives, etc. In any case, it is possible to detect sources of stress and anguish that often affect many people:

• Economic instability
• Uncertainty about how and when restrictions will be applied
• Hypochondria or fear of getting infected
• Frustration at not being able to continue doing a specific hobby
• Social isolation due to movement restrictions
• Constant bombardment of bad news, or doomscrolling
• Traumatic experiences associated with death or illness

What to do to manage the anxiety generated by this context?

As we have seen, the context of the global pandemic and the restrictions associated with it creates the perfect breeding ground for anxiety problems to appear, either through anxiety disorders such as phobias or generalized anxiety, or through excess stress and anguish but without constituting a psychopathology. Now, in the face of these emotional imbalances, it is possible to take measures, both from the prevention and from the management of anxiety once it is present in us.

Of course, the best way to advance in this regard is to attend psychotherapy; psychologists are trained to attend to each individual case and provide the appropriate tools you need the person we serve, taking into account their particularities, and monitoring their progress. However, there are also some self-applied strategies that usually help manage anxiety. Next we will see several of the most important.

1. Maintain a healthy lifestyle

Physical well-being is closely connected to emotional well-being: if your body is in good shape, it will have more resources to maintain proper functioning of the nervous and endocrine systems, with all that that implies for your mental health. Therefore, it is important that despite the fact that COVID-19 has meant the reduction of some freedoms, you do not give up maintaining a physically active lifestyle, or eating healthy.

• You may be interested in: "Anxiety in health personnel in the COVID-19 crisis"

2. Control your exposure to bad news

As I have anticipated, anxiety is fueled by being exposed to a constant barrage of bad news, something that has intensified in these times of COVID-19. So, It is recommended that you make a deliberate effort to control the time you spend browsing the Internet, not only reading texts of this type, but receiving headlines of this type.

For example, look at which outlets are more likely to broadcast pessimistic news, and stop to think if You can do something to prevent them from having that influence on you (for example, by unsubscribing).

3. Try Mindfulness

Many people benefit from Mindfulness as a regular practice that helps keep anxiety under control. What's more, There are several types of Mindfulness exercises, some of which are so easy to do that you only need to follow the instructions in a short audio, of few minutes of duration. You can incorporate this habit at key moments of the day when it is convenient for you to disconnect.

4. Start projects

Faced with the withdrawal of some incentive systems associated with face-to-face social life or the fact go physically to different places, it is important that you create other sources of motivation and satisfaction. Therefore, plan projects that are meaningful to you, whether they are only meaningful on a personal level or if they also have professional implications. These projects will provide you with several goals and sub-objectives that will contribute to your life experiences of progress and direction towards something that is important to you.: write a book, launch a website, learn a new language ...

5. Structure your day to day

Staying longer than usual at home makes some people neglect time management, having the feeling that the hours pass and everything remains the same. So, It is advisable to follow schedules and, above all, be very clear when to go to sleep: Lack of sleep is an anxiety bomb.