Tired? Having trouble concentrating? Depressed? Numb? Do even small tasks seem monumental? It could just be your nervous system's normal response to a year of nonstop stress.
From the latest On Being podcast:
'The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing — yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation — what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead.'
Says Runyan, 'We talk about fight or flight, but there’s also a state of freeze, which can look very much like you’re describing — this state of apathy, of detachment, of even disembodied or dissociative, and numbing, a lot of numbing. And that is a state of physiological high arousal, actually; there’s still a lot happening underneath the skin, in terms of the arousal, but the body has essentially tucked in. And it’s a protective stance. There’s a lot of protection there. And anybody who is at risk of depression, has previous depression, it can be a scary place to be, because it has so many — there’s so much residue there, of, “Oh, this seems familiar — I remember when.” So it can be really scary, because it’s like, oh, is that coming back?'
Listen here.
See the transcript here.
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