Hi all,
How is everyone doing? I think most of us got used to this quarantine changes. That is what I feel, at least. But I have been noticing some things that tell me I am not fully adapted in my subconscious yet.
One such point is that I have cycles of feeling good and feeling bad. This is part of normal life but these cycles are a bit more extreme during the quarantine. I had a very stressful time in the last two weeks. I could not see a specific reason to be stressed out. I don’t have deadlines. I don’t have kids to care for all the time. I like staying home anyways. This lack of identification of a stress factor made it harder to target and fix the situation.
Then I realized two things.
One is that a lot of my friends were going through a similar phase. We were all having the same kind of sleep issues, for example. And I never have had sleep issues. I fall asleep in the first two minutes when I put my head on the pillow. So, this was a first for me.
The second thing is that there was actually a reason why I was stressed. You might know by now. I don’t live in my home country. I visit my family in the summer. When the quarantine started, I was thinking I would go visit my family at some point in the summer. For the past two-three weeks, I am slowly realizing that I may not be able to do that and probably will not be able to do that. That was causing distress, because it means I will not be able to see my family for more than a year, possibly.
It was only when I realized these two things that I started relaxing a bit. I started accepting it. Everyone is paying some price in this situation and this is mine. And it is what it is. There is nothing we can do. I also cut myself off of social media altogether for some time, which really helped me find some calm.
It seems like this quarantine is challenging our mental constructs and with each mental construct that is challenged, we go through a stress-relief period. Ultimately, this is a good thing. We are learning a lot.
Have you noticed changes in your mood lately? Do you have these cycles of distress similar to mine? How is the quarantine going for you after all?