Overcoming pandemic re-entry anxiety
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- How to cope with the anxiety of returning to work and school during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Topics discussed:
0:00 - Introduction
0:47 - The context for re-entry
2:07 - The risk of everyday living
3:25 - Behavioral independence
5:56 - Manage difficult emotions
8:16 - Ask for help and give help
10:47 - Do it bit by bit
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Have you experienced re-entry anxiety? What helped your deal with it?
As a person with an anxiety disorder, I know how deliberate I need to be to overcome re-entry anxiety. Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m forcing myself back into low-risk activities, and it has been emotionally challenging. What has been crucial is having a safe, pleasant environment to retreat back into. After I go out into the world, I come back home and I reflect on my new behaviors, and over time once-stressful behaviors become normal parts of my routine.
My son and I are both going through it. He’s extremely anxious about getting “regular” sick (vomiting in particular) since it’s truly been a year and a half of us being healthy at home! I’m not fearful but the overstimulation re-entering shops and small crowds (vaccinated friends) is intense. I love people and going out but it’s like the world is too fast and noisy and just too much for me to handle now. Every place has different safety procedures every week. I’m constantly reassessing all environments. It’s stressful. Thank you for talking about this. I suspect many many people are suffering too
"It's really hard to tell with a mask what emotions people are experiencing." Very well said.
Dr Ali I really appreciate your videos and sharing your personal stories. Since the pandemic started I have struggled with anxiety cause I work in the Psych Dept for over 26 years in a large hospital and OCD... just had my 3rd therapy appt tonight.. Your videos is helping me also. I'm praying for a breakthrough. I can now understand what our patients go through. Be blessed.
Rule No. 1: Respect each others decisions and boundaries and accept everyone's limits. Be honest and find solutions. Apart from that, be patient with yourself. It's a process and a matter of risks vs benefits. The whole thing is highly individual. Be open to your family and friends. Everything else will come with time. That goes for situations that you can control. If you can't control something, like you have to go to work, university, whatever, try to find means to make it work for you and try to accept that there are some things out of your control. What I found is that most of my friends have similar fears and worries, just to a different extent. What is special for us is that we study medicine and most of us work in hospitals part time now. On the upside that is why we are all vaccinated and have similar experiences and can relate to each other, on the downside we do have contacts that I would call "high-risk" and are sometimes caught in a bubble. We are all worried as we think we might harm our families. That is why most of us very rarely meet our parents/ family/ friends outside our medical-bubble and if we do so take great precautions.
REALLY good point about respecting each other's boundaries! I have some friends that are more open to social contact right now and others who aren't anywhere close to it. Both are right.
Man, this subject is ALL I've been talking to my therapist about the past month or so. I've been diagnosed with "adjustment disorder with anxiety" during the height of the pandemic when my anxiety started actively taking away from my life and I sought help. Now, I have an OK handle on my anxiety, but as of right now work has been floating going back to the office in September and I have a wedding to go to next month (I'm fully vaccinated) and I'm just SO WIRED UP about it. I like what you said about there always being a "risk of living" though. My therapist has said something similar.
It seems like a lot is changing very quickly, at least in many parts of America. I hope you can take these changes one step at a time and advocate for your boundaries wherever possible. Good luck! Sounds like you've got a great therapist on your side.
Great video, thank you. I’ve been worried a lot about this topic and i feel like those around me don’t feel the same, which makes me sometimes feel like I’m overreacting. I’ve struggled with the idea of “risk of living” a lot - especially in the past few months my anxiety about the pandemic has almost metastasized and spread to other things, so that I have begun to also intensely fear things i wasn’t particularly concerned about before like driving, going to grad school, being awkward or unlikeable in social situations. I’m learning to manage it, but it’s difficult, as you said. Thanks for this video, it really helped validate my emotions and break things down into explicit, doable steps
Thank you for sharing. I can definitely relate. Have you been able to return to grad school? If so, how have you been able to manage your anxiety?
@@shaysim4918 I am actually in my last year of undergrad but meant that I was anxious about going to grad school in the future, and just my future in general. I think my anxiety has gotten better, mainly through seeking help (been to therapy a few times), being compassionate with myself (deliberately making time to tell myself that I'm proud of myself & that i'm doing well; sounds cheesy but honestly helps, esp bc I was trapped in a cycle of real self-doubt, low self-esteem, and self-deprecation), and using CBT strategies like the ones in this video to challenge anxious thought cycles so i don't get drowned by them. I hope this helped and that you feel better!
I'm really glad you have you figured out a balance in your life and decided to focus on helping us through youtube. I really appreciate it.
Covid is the trigger to my panic attack and panic disorder..that's why it also developed.I live in the philippines which cases are out of control..I live with my senior parents I take care of them.This really scares me,to the point that we really don't go out anymore.just little things like cough and cold makes me so scared.there's already a lot of people that I know died because of Covid..that's why I developed this disorder and fear.😔
I think I’ve just been having anxiety in general tbh 😅
Hopefully the video still helped!
The mindfulness book "30 Days to Reduce Anxiety" by Harper Daniels has good meditation exercises to practice.
I’m straight up afraid to enter in-person college classes. I do so well teaching myself the lectures on my own. Going to in-person classes is going to make it harder for me to learn.
Social anxiety will prob distract me from learning the actual content. My working-memory is also really poor so trying to quickly remember words and terms is hard for me. I never have enough time to study the words to be able to follow along with class discussion. They always use terminology that I don’t understand at the time. I have adhd and this is why I extra fear going to In-person classes
I completely understand. Have you been able to return to in-person class? If so, how have you been managing your anxiety?
@@shaysim4918 I haven’t returned yet and I decided to take all online classes again Fall semester 😂 but I plan to go in person spring semester 😳
@@H.O.P.E222 Awesome! That's so great that you were able to do all online! Unfortunately, I have to go in person starting next week. I'm praying that I'll be able to get through this.
@@shaysim4918 you’ll get through it 💞
Thank you so much for this video and all the work you put into it! I really appreciate the way that you laid it out in a list, along with the text & images you added to your explanation. One request I would have for the future: could you make the background music quieter, relative to your speaking? I have a hard time focusing on what is being said when the background noise is loud!
This was great. Very helpful!
When you were talking about how empty and quiet the schools were it reminded me of working during quarter breaks back in university. I loved being on campus when it was empty; sometimes I could go hours and not encounter a single person. To me those are nice memories. Same as being in Downtown L.A. a little while before sunrise when the streets are mostly empty. I would have loved to walk around there when everything seemed abandoned but I followed all the lockdown rules and stayed home.
For me it will be a completely new routine in many ways. I lost my job very early on during lockdown so I have to find a new job and hope they take appropriate precautions wherever I end up working. I take public transportation so crowded buses are in my future as well. I'm already fully vaccinated but that doesn't mean I get to stop taking precautions so I'll still be trying to stay away from people. My stress hasn't so much been about the virus itself, it's been about my finances.
What is hard is that my community at large, along with most of the US, has decided to open up, keep moving forward with business & school without ways that mitigate risk other than vaccines and optional masking despite very high delta variant cases. Doesn’t seem very safe.
thank you!
I'm phasing the return back to the office. 2 days, 3 days, 4 days and taking annual leave as well before a busy period starts. I have the urge to start everything at once, the gym etc but I know it will take some time and I'll be more active just going back to the office.
Great video,keep it up!🔱⚜
Do you have any videos on burn out?
Will you keep music in your next videos
I couldn't hear you clearly like before!
Can you clarify - do you want music or not want music in future videos?
@@drali No music
@@drali it was too loud. It's fine in the background but just turn it down by maybe 50% or a bit more.
Super video! I applauded for $10.00 👏👏👏
Automated comment ^^^^. I really enjoyed the "failures" video and what you learned from those failures. I'm a Psychology undergrad with a scholarship from NIH. Not sure if I want to do clinical psychology or applied social psychology.
Yay! Thank you!!!!
Anxiety is awful I have it and panic attacks! Lately I just feel if as if I can’t breath not getting enough air! So I will panic ! I saw my doctor she ran some test still can’t figure out what is causing me to feel as if I can’t breath! 😥
Anxiety causes shortness of breath for me sometimes, so do vitamin deficiencies- specifically iron and vitamin b. Might be something to look into
What re- engaging? it’s still raging in my country (India).. you only talking to rich country folk aren’t you? Right we’ve been abandoned by the world.. our mental health can go sod off ?
I did not want to offend or invalidate your experience. As someone whose family comes from the subcontinent, my heart is breaking for India right now. I tried to provide the disclaimer that this information is really depending on a community being in a low risk area and I am sorry for falling short on this.
I have created more than 10 videos about mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic. You can see them all here: ua-cam.com/play/PLItaCgXIQkHcMBJsfW2EY_nsbXc_osaLw.html.
Given the situation you are in, I recommend these videos:
How to cope when the world is canceled: 6 critical skills: ua-cam.com/video/mwrMtJ3DYXg/v-deo.html
Coronavirus anxiety (Covid-19): How to stop worrying about your health: ua-cam.com/video/3yQj-Mscn7k/v-deo.html
Living during a traumatic event: 4 skills to recover and grow: ua-cam.com/video/-_h8WQPDe_o/v-deo.html
Real psychologist puts all his coping skills into one bag: ua-cam.com/video/G_orre57tZQ/v-deo.html
How to sleep better during quarantine: ua-cam.com/video/iD7o8FtqVaY/v-deo.html
TV for your mental health: ua-cam.com/video/EtuhMxjC-iE/v-deo.html