Every single day people are surrounded by information designed to feed an anxious mind, rightly or wrongly this constant feed of fear and stress is creating a pandemic which will be around much longer that the receding virus. Anxiety doesn't come with a how to guide and it is as unique to an individual as their fingerprint, created from the various stressors impacting their life at any time. This in the past 12 months could be a parent reaching capacity from having faced so many extra pressures over the last 2 years of major COVID impact, including months of full-time parenting, home-schooling and having to return to work whilst still unsure how any changes would impact the coming months. Or even an essential worker exhausted from numerous months of extra work and pressure with no rewards for their efforts yet no let up on this extra stress, to a shielded person coming out of their safety zone, after being convinced they would likely be killed by a virus we are now told to simply live with. Yet still scared of how a virus they were worried enough to shelter away from, could impact them and their health.
The greatest impact though may be to our youngest minds, who have faced changes they could not even comprehend, asked to abide by rules that they didn't understand only to be left in limbo when the rules stopped in some but not all areas. Add to this confusion, having to spend months being schooled by frazzled parents, not having the social life they are used to which created negative emotional issues in itself and seeing the visual changes like face masks everywhere. The sudden introduction of people obsessively hand washing, hand sanitizers everywhere you go, and then the just as sudden dropping of these measures. This is a recipe for anxiety on a massive scale, people already face a good amount of stress everyday and if you overwhelm someone with high stress then boom!! you've entered anxiety Ville. Now some parents have had this lesson in hand and have been able to talk their kids through the situation, which is great of course, if there was stress present before this all kicked off though then no amount of explaining will stop the development of this anxiety as the overwhelm from all of the change will create it regardless.
Anxiety is not born of a single situation, it is the culmination of many events and an individual's reactions to these. Imagine for a second having an internal bin just for all your negative emotional baggage, and every time you experience an event which creates negativity in your life you add all of your anger, sadness, fear, guilt and hurt into this bin until it is overflowing. Now imagine that in February 2020 it was already overflowing, creating moments of overwhelming emotion but just about manageable. Fast forward a month and now there is the negativity of being shut in, deprived of social interaction, trying to do things we've not done before, fear of losing jobs, uncertainty over GCSE and A-level results, worry about money and benefits and the overhanging threat of an invisible killer and what do you think is gonna happen to that bin? Continue to 2 years on and you have all the worry of those months of uncertainty, job losses, kids schooling impacted, the great resignation, wait times for medical and mental health support higher than ever and it stands to reason that this is not an easy fix and looks to get worse before it gets better.
So how do we help? we make sure that everyone regardless of age, situation and background has the same equal access to services that work, are designed to resolve issues and do not increase anxiety through the process. We offer support to those impacted most and we put funding into people and organisations who can help fight the anxiety pandemic to help those struggling regain their resilience. We must also recognise what support facilities may be required for both adult and young minds, focusing on looking outside of the standard box and opening up opportunities. Also working with schools, workplaces and other organisations to show how creating positive mindsets is a must for us all to come out of the other side with the mental capacity to adapt to whatever the future holds. We must learn from this experience and ensure that those most at need do not continue to suffer.
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