Stop quarantining your anxiety
Stop quarantining your anxiety
Baylynne Brunetti / Asst. Opinion Editor
When lockdown first commenced and we were forced online, I will admit that I was not gravely upset. As a student who suffers from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder), nothing was more enticing to me then to have to sit at home with limited human interaction for the foreseeable future. The first few weeks were fine as I schlepped through class online and took naps with my beloved dog, Meela.
However, a month came and left, and I began to long for the very thing that frightened me … human interaction. As the days pressed on and I ran out of Chloe Ting workout videos and random hobbies, I began to get more anxious than I had been at school. I was not sleeping, I was irritable and I was suffering from depersonalization, a feeling of being in a dream-like state. I began to start to process a lot of trauma I had endured in my lifetime thus far and it was painful, sometimes borderline unbearable. I wanted nothing more to go back to the distractions that I had pre-COVID.
I am not alone in feeling this way. In fact, since quarantine began, Distress Helpline, a sub-network of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline that offers emotional support to people in need after natural and human-caused disasters, saw an 890% spike in call volume in April 2020 compared with April 2019. The Alliance, known as NAMI, reported a 65% jump in HelpLine calls according to USA Today. These are just a few statistics that are replicated across hundreds of suicide prevention lines across the country.
A global pandemic is obviously terrifying. There is fear of dying, or our loved ones dying, and it would be naive for me to brush over that when gazing at these statistics. But, there also needs to be a light cast on the baseline of these calls and the anxiety around quarantine — underlying mental health issues.
This country has a history of not being the best on mental health care. Uninsured people can rarely afford mental health help and the county health care systems are inundated with so many people, it is hard to be seen. Mental health is still taboo and people do not like to share what they struggle with. In normal times, it is even easy to completely distract yourself from the issues you may have and hide it from those around you. But, with quarantine, this is next to impossible. Sitting at home with yourself is very uncomfortable for a lot of people, myself included. It is terrifying to have to sit with yourself and hear your own thoughts, which is why a lot of people cannot be alone. Quarantine forced us all to sit with ourselves and our demons, and unfortunately some beautiful souls lost that battle.
I have been in therapy for anxiety since I was in 4th grade. I have tried every management style in the book and they all usually rely on deflection. Every therapist tells me to envision a stop sign, or think happy thoughts instead of facing my anxiety. My question is, what is so wrong with facing my anxiety? Is mental illness so taboo that I have to ignore it? These are such irrational thoughts and situations that I build up in my head until I want to explode in tears … so, why do I give them so much power? With that planted in my mind, I decided to go on a quest to face my fears.
Let me clarify that in no way did my anxiety disappear or magically cure itself. It is very much real and very much still here. However, the way I deal with it now helps calm me down at a much higher rate — by facing it. Instead of feeling an anxiety attack coming on and getting scared and pleading with my brain to not go down that road — thus triggering the flight or fight response — I tell my brain to bring it on. Instead of allowing myself to create these hypothetical fears, I draw a mental chart and pinpoint what the fear is that I am feeling. By no means is this the right way to navigate anxiety. We all have tips and systems in place to manage the fear that takes place. At the risk of this sounding like a self-help book, I will leave it at that.
Quarantine has been profoundly difficult for us all. The fear of the unknown, having no social life, having no school or other saving grace from our thoughts, has made a colossal impact on our lives. The most important thing I can leave you with is that you are not alone. Believe me, with the levels of anxiety I have, I am almost always convinced that no one could possibly feel this way. But, that is not true and plenty of people battle the same demons. We are all in this together, and it is time to face it.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
USD Counseling Center: 619- 260-4655
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
“The views expressed in the editorial and op-ed sections are not necessarily those of The USD Vista staff, the University of San Diego, or its student body.”