Pandemic anxiety may be driving it.
You’re desperate to switch up your life.
Quit your job, change your career, end your relationship, move to a new house. Or town. Or country. Or get a piercing. Or a tattoo. OMG, to just do something.
But you’re also struggling mentally; flat, anxious, detached — even numb — and your moods are up and down. You wonder if this is a good time to shake it up. Maybe you should sit tight till the world — and life — settles down a bit?
If those feelings are familiar, you might be struggling with what US social psychologists refer to as Pandemic Flux Syndrome. While not a clinical term, it neatly captures much of the global mood of the moment.
Pandemic Flux Syndrome presents as low mood or mild symptoms of depression, a rumbling anxiety and blunted emotions. At the same time there’s a sense of wanting — needing — things to be different.
If that’s you, hit pause and check this out.
What Chronic Uncertainty Does to the Psyche
When the pandemic arrived, we went into crisis emergency mode. People often cope surprisingly with the acute phase of a crisis because it requires short-term thinking and practical action.
But when the acute phase morphs into chronic uncertainty, it forces us into state of flux —instability and constant change — which stirs up uncomfortable feelings.
Our efforts to “get rid” of those feelings come out differently, depending on who we are and how we function. When we can’t relieve uncertainty, we tend to respond by (1) shutting down or (2) seeking change.
Our psyche has been heavily taxed during the past 18 months. Most of us would like more control, or at least not feel so powerless in the world, but we also need to be wary of being fooled by our feelings.
Because they love to be in charge.
If You’re Craving Change….
Be careful. Change can be healthy but radical, impulsive change can have significant consequences, and not necessarily positive ones.
One woman struggling with pandemic-related anxiety told me she wanted out of her marriage. “I told my husband it was over, but I don’t even know if that’s what I want. I feel numb, detached. I’m just desperate for things to be different, for some sort of fresh start.”
When we unpacked it, the problem was less about her marriage and more about her discomfort with uncertainty, feeling out of control, helpless and bored.
If that rings true for you — or you have another itch you need to scratch — read this first.
1. Craving change is normal.
When we feel bad we don’t want to feel bad any more. It’s that simple. We want life to be DIFFERENT.
Who has felt consistently good during the past 18 months? Some people may have, and all power to them. But most of us have been on a roller coaster we want to get off. Confusion. Fear. Worry. Angst. Anger. Frustration. Outrage. Optimism. Disappointment. They’re all normal. So are all the responses that go with it, whether it’s wanting to wanting to crawl under the safety blanket with noise-cancelling headphones and a king size block of chocolate — or ditch the safety net altogether and go wild.
So your feelings don’t make you strange — quite the opposite, actually.
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” — Audre Lorde
2. Sit with discomfort before you act on it.
When you’re in this state, the great temptation can be to act impulsively — ditch your partner, quit your job, take a massive jump to the left. But there’s no more rush now to switch it up, than there ever was. It just feels like there is. So don’t be in too much of a hurry to do things you can’t undo.
Look, maybe you need a change and big life events can be the catalyst for that. But challenge yourself to sit with the discomfort first. Feelings, even horrible ones, won’t hurt you. And learning to tolerate them, that they will pass, is a hugely helpful life lesson.
“In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” — Pico Iyer
3. If you must change, be clear on WHY.
If you’re committed to change, be absolutely clear on WHY you want to do it. What’s your true motivation? Why are you desperate to do it NOW? What will happen if you don’t? Is the problem really your job or your partner? Or is that life as you knew it has changed beyond recognition? Is it what’s going on in your head right now? Are you struggling with mental health issues?
Even if you have great instinct, you still need to do your due diligence in making a life-changing decision. You still need to gather facts and work through the pros and cons. Intuition is a fine thing, but it’s even better when paired with intelligence.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
4. Take a life lesson from the trenches.
Traditional psychological advice has been to suggest people wait for their mental state (or life) to settle before making big changes. That advice seems slightly redundant now, given that flux is the normal of the future.
We didn’t ask for a pandemic. We didn’t want it. We didn’t need it as some kind of test or global means of building resilience. But it came anyway and now, like it or now, we’re learning to live alongside uncertainty. That future will belong to those who can adapt to the world as it is, who — somewhere, somehow — can still find meaning in it.
“The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.” ―Joseph Campbell