I’ve been talking about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting my mental health on social media quite a bit. I suppose many of us are. It’s a very hard-to-escape reality. Information (mostly depressing information) about the coronavirus pandemic is everywhere. But even when you avoid it, I find the pandemic affects mental health anyway. Here’s what the coronavirus pandemic is doing to my mental health and what I’m trying to do to counter it.

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affects My Mental Health

The biggest way the pandemic affects my mental health is by upping my anxiety. (I talked here about regaining control to feel less anxiety in the age of COVID-19.) I’m a person with anxiety, period, and it’s not under excessively great control at the best of times. That said, it’s livable. But, but put my anxiety into the midst of a pandemic and it runs wild. All of a sudden, it surpasses its previous levels and starts to take over every aspect of life. Now I can’t take a breath without feeling anxious.

And, like with the bipolar moods of depression and hypomania, the anxiety is illogical. See, where I live, (British Columbia, Canada) we’ve actually done a really good job of flattening the curve. COVID-19 isn’t nearly the emergency here that it is in some places. I think we reacted sooner here and with more testing and it made a big difference (and let’s not forget, luck may play a role, too). Moreover, locally, there are very few cases of COVID-19 so my relative risk is very low.

But, as I said, the anxiety is not logical. The anxiety is feeding off of the environment. The anxiety is feeding off of the prickles in the air. The anxiety is feeding off of everyone else’s anxiety. So even when I talk back to the anxiety and tell it to chill, it just doesn’t listen.

So that anxiety is affecting my mental health by:

  • Shortening my fuse\making me feel angry
  • Creating unending agitation
  • Making me feel extremely stressed out
  • Silently taking up my energy and making me tire extremely easily
  • Making me want to grit my teeth
  • Creating excess, negative energy and emotions
  • Making it feel like I can’t breathe sometimes
  • Making me feel miserable

I know some of those aren’t necessarily traditional anxiety symptoms, but they’re what I experience because of increased anxiety. And all of these things are decreasing my functionality when it comes to absolutely everything — not necessarily just psychological things.

And don’t get me started about how anxiety-provoking it is to leave the house. That just amps up the anxiety to hellish, medication-needing levels.

For more on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting my mental health in my own words (including what an anxiety attack in your sleep feels like), watch this:

Note: the video transcript is available in the YouTube description.

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Affecting the Mental Health of Others

But of course, how the pandemic is affecting my mental health isn’t the only way it’s affecting the mental health of others.

While I’m experiencing the fiery, painful energy of anxiety, many people are feeling more depressed. I commonly hear that people are:

  • Not eating
  • Not doing anything productive
  • Sleeping all day (or not being able to sleep)
  • Not moving; hibernating
  • Getting angry at those around them
  • Constantly worrying (about pandemic-related issues or not)
  • Feeling extreme depression (and all the things that go along with that)

And some people are reporting that other disorders, like eating disorders, for example, are also worsening because of the pandemic. And I think many of us are employing negative coping techniques to deal with the pandemic as our standard coping techniques just aren’t cutting it. (That’s why so many people are gaining weight due to this isolation. Comfort food is fattening, but it does make an effort to comfort us during a very difficult time; and, that is really what we need right now.)

In short, people’s mental health is being negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in pretty much every way possible.

How to Deal with the Coronavirus Pandemic Affecting Your Mental Health

I do not claim to have a miracle answer, here. If I could take away the pandemic’s negative impact on everyone’s mental health (including mine), I would. All we can do, though, is work with what we have. We have to work within our current reality and our current reality includes a pandemic.

I think the first step is to recognize what the pandemic is doing to our mental and physical health. There are many affects and I’m sure I’ve missed many in this article. Whatever they are for you, just understand that you’re not alone. Whatever you’re feeling others are too. You are not crazy because a pandemic and its associated isolation is affecting you. That makes you pretty normal.

So, understanding that the pandemic is affecting you in many ways, don’t beat yourself up about it. Be gentle with yourself. Recognize this challenging situation for what it is: a challenge for everyone. And if you already had a mental illness before all this began, understand that it’s going to be harder for you than for many, and that’s okay. Just take a deep breath.

Other steps to fight for your mental health in a pandemic:

  • Limit news consumption. Limit news consumption in time and in limit consumed sources to trusted, impartial sources like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
  • Don’t obsess over the problem, if at all possible. Focus, instead, on the solution. And today, we know the solution is physical distancing, wearing a mask, washing our hands, not touching our face and so on. Know that when you’re doing these things you are part of the solution.
  • Get support. from your loved ones. While you may not be in physical proximity with others, you can be in emotional proximity to others. Reach out. Text, phone, virtually meet and so on. Your loved ones are still your loved ones even if you have to give them a virtual hug instead of a physical one.
  • Get professional support. Reach out to professional help when you need to. This might be a telehealth appointment with a doctor or therapist or calling a helpline. Remember, you don’t have to be suicidal to call a helpline — don’t wait for a tragedy, reach out now. (You may also want to reach out to a virtual support group. Talking with others going through what you’re going through can be very helpful.)
  • Keep up with treatment. This means keeping any appointments you have (virtually), taking your medications and using as-needed medication as prescribed.
  • Try to reinstate a routine. We all lost our routines the day that physical isolation started. This is really bad for mental health. Try to create a new routine. This will help you feel more in-control and decrease anxiety.
  • Make eating, sleeping and exercising a priority, if you can. For me, my functionality is impaired right now so making things like healthy meals and exercising are just impossible. That said, if you can make them a priority, they will do nothing but help you.
  • Use your positive coping skills. I think in times of extreme stress, our negative coping techniques want to take over. Be conscious of this and try to use your positive ones as much as possible.
  • Be understanding of your limited functionality. If you’re finding that the pandemic is stealing your spoons, don’t beat yourself up about it. You can only do so much.
  • Help other people. Sometimes we can get out of our own heads if we help others. Whether that’s sewing a mask for someone else, picking up groceries for an elderly neighbor or checking in on loved ones, helping someone else can help your own mental health too.
  • Forgive yourself for not being perfect. No one can follow every suggestion and just fix the way the pandemic is affecting their mental health. This is normal. If you find yourself veering from the recommended practices, understand that this will happen. You are human and imperfect, and this is normal and not a point of shame.
  • Know this will end. Understand this is an extraordinary time, but that ordinary times will return. I don’t know when, but I know they will; and when they do, things will get easier, I promise.

I know the fact that this pandemic is affecting our mental health is unfair and painful, but we can deal with it and we can get through it.