I just got off the phone with a friend who is living in Hanoi, Vietnam. He was teaching English there at the beginning of the year, when COVID-19 started to become a pandemic, and he stayed.
This, it turns out, was a great choice. Vietnam took the pandemic very seriously. They closed their borders and went on full shutdown. Following the government’s lead, residents were compliant and sheltered at home. And because of this, since the beginning of the summer, life in Vietnam has been… for lack of a better word, “normal”.
My friend gathers with friends. He goes to bars and restaurants. He even recently saw a community theater production of the musical Les Miserables.
This conversation, paired with the news about pending approval of several vaccines, has me thinking a lot about what life will be like after COVID.
New Social Norms
When we went on lockdown in March, I remember watching movies where there were parties, or even just handshakes, and involuntarily flinching. I don’t feel that way anymore. Those movies just exist in a different universe – like Hogwarts, or Panem, or 2019.
But I do have those flinching reactions in real life. I have them when I see birthday parties in the park, with 15 unmasked adults singing “happy birthday” to an 8-ish-year-old who blows out candles on a cake that’s about to be distributed to all of his guests. I have them when someone leans in and pulls down their mask to say hello to my 1-year-old, “so he can see my smile”. I have them when I would see (until a few weeks ago) outdoor dining patios, where it looked like piles of unmasked people were on top of each other.
There’s no question about it – those of us who are being conscientious have established new social norms.
Different cultures have different social mores about how far to stand from someone when having a conversation. Our expectation of that distance has increased.
We used to turn sideways to eek by someone at the grocery store if they were blocking the aisle. This is no longer considered respectful (safe?).
How long before we return to our old social norms? How long before we stop feeling jumpy? What can we even expect from that process?
Trauma Reactions are Individualized
The phrase “collective trauma” has become common lexicon by now, but this is truly what we’ve been experiencing. Depending on your experience, the trauma might be:
- Getting very sick
- Losing a loved one
- Worrying about your economic stability
- Being a healthcare professional with a front row seat to devastation every single day
Or it might be quieter and less dramatic, like my trauma:
- Trying to integrate the idea that people are potentially poison
- Fearing that with one wrong move, you could do serious harm to people you care about
- Developing hypervigilance every time you leave your home
- Worrying about your decision to bring children into a very hard world
But here’s the thing about trauma reactions: They’re not just about what happened, but also how you perceive the events.
Here’s an example. Let’s say it’s “the before times”, and you’re in the backseat of an Uber with a friend when the driver gets into a horrible car accident. No one is seriously injured, but both cars are totaled. You might get out, adrenaline surging, and say, “wow, that was scary!” but then go about your life. But your friend, who experienced the same car accident, might experience panic attacks every time they think about getting in another car.
Both you and your friend had the same experience, but because of a lot of factors, especially your level of resilience, the car accident impacted you and your friend in very different ways.
This will be true when we start to reemerge into a post-COVID world. It will be easier for some people than for others.
Life after COVID will be about “exposure therapy”
In the anxiety and phobia world, there’s a treatment called “exposure therapy”. It basically means that you immerse yourself in the anxiety-provoking situation repeatedly, until you learn that it has no actual teeth. With repeated non-traumatic exposures, your anxiety decreases.
A friend who is also a therapist told me that this was how going back to the grocery store was for her. For months after the beginning of the pandemic, she got all of her groceries online, but eventually decided to return to the store.
The first time she went, she was very targeted and very hypervigilant. She didn’t linger. She only got the items on her list, and then she got the hell out of dodge as quickly as she could. If someone came close to her, her heart leapt into her throat. She didn’t get COVID. Her anxiety decreased.
The second time she went, she was very targeted but less hypervigilant. She still only picked up the items on her list and got the hell out of dodge as quickly as she could. If someone came close to her, she didn’t feel anxious, she just cautiously stepped aside. She still didn’t get COVID. Her anxiety decreased some more.
The third time she went, she was less targeted and less hypervigilant. She browsed a little bit. She focused on picking up the items on her list, but also paused to see if any interesting seasonal produce was on sale. She kept her distance from people, but didn’t feel anxious around them. And she still didn’t get COVID. Even less anxiety.
“Ah,” she thought, “I’m doing exposure therapy to myself.” And then: “I don’t know if it’s a good thing to become less anxious, less hypervigilant, with the pandemic still raging.”
And to varying degrees (see above section about how everyone’s responses are different), this will be how we reemerge. Cautiously, anxiously at first… and then, through exposure therapy, more comfortably, until we can just enjoy the experience of walking through Target, or even watching Les Miserables in a crowded theatre.
”Life After COVID” is a relative notion
The fallacy here is that “life after COVID” is a thing that will happen all at once, in a flash. It won’t happen as soon as the first vaccines roll out. It won’t even happen right away when you, personally, get your second dose. If it’s managed responsibly, “after” is a thing that will happen slowly, incrementally, as more and more people get vaccines, until finally new cases dwindle to nothing.
It can happen. My friend in Hanoi is living proof.
But it won’t happen all at once… and for a lot of people, managing that reality is a challenge. How do you handle the cognitive dissonance of the fact that several countries have begun to roll out effective vaccines, and also there were almost 3,000 COVID deaths in the United States yesterday?
You Can Do This
The challenge here is patience. I think so many of us would be thrilled to be staring down the barrel of the question of how to manage reemergence anxiety. Right now, we’re contending with the more immediate question of how to manage the stasis until we get to that point.
And of course the grand truth here is that the better we are at patience, the sooner we’ll get to “after”.
You can do hard things. Regardless of what your COVID-world reality is – whether you’re an overburdened healthcare worker, or you’ve gotten sick, or you’re just extremely burned out from hunkering down and following the rules in a world that seems to be “business as usual” – you have made it this far.
You’ve survived 9 months of a global pandemic. It’s exciting to start thinking that there will be an “after” to contend with soon. And right now, the hardest part will be getting there.
Therapy can help.
Reach out if you need support as you navigate the barrage of overwhelming pandemic-related news. If sitting with all of this is hard, and it feels like a good time to dive into some therapy, schedule a free phone consultation to discuss how therapy can help. I would love to help you navigate the task of being patient now, and the experience of unwitting “exposure therapy” once we get to the “after times”.