Talking About Pandemic Feelings

I was talking about the pandemic with my therapist and how no one on my team at work has said they’re having a hard time dealing with it. I’ve been having a hard time (feeling unfocused, feeling irritated, feeling like I want to just weep in a corner and then eat cake and buy fabric) and my therapist pointed out that my team members probably are, too, even if no one is talking about their feelings. So when I saw this article last week, I decided to share it in our team check-in….and lo and behold, every teammate said that they’d been feeling the same way and that things were hard. It was a good moment.

The article–Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful–is full of good info (who knew about surge capacity!) and it’s just really comforting to know that 1.) feeling like this is normal and 2.) everyone is feeling like this.

…people are having to live their lives without the support of so many systems that have partly or fully broken down, whether it’s schools, hospitals, churches, family support, or other systems that we relied on. We need to recognize that we’re grieving multiple losses while managing the ongoing impact of trauma and uncertainty. The malaise so many of us feel, a sort of disinterested boredom, is common in research on burnout…But other emotions accompany it: disappointment, anger, grief, sadness, exhaustion, stress, fear, anxiety—and no one can function at full capacity with all that going on.