When social-distancing first started, I figured, besides my anxiety about the virus itself, my life wouldn’t change a huge amount and the transition would probably be easy for me. My work is already remote, my financial situation is stable, and my partner and I are pretty used to co-existing in our apartment for long periods of time.
Almost immediately, I found that if I didn’t work hard to use my systems and tools meant to support my mental health, my functionality would quickly deteriorate. I frequently felt like I wasn’t okay and also that I had no business feeling that way.
After some reflection and conversations with my therapist, I realized there a whole bunch of very normal mental health-based reasons why the stable circumstances of my life don’t line up with my emotional responses to those circumstances.
I wrote this article, “Why Does Everything Feel So Hard Right Now If I’m Fine?” on Medium on the topic, which went on to be curated for their Mental Illness section. As a result, the article has already seen more than 1,200 views!
I wanted to make sure to share it with all of my blog followers as well. (You can read the rest of my work on Medium here.)
Here’s a clip:
“When businesses closed and social distancing began, just about every aspect of our lives changed, which also means, almost every routine needed to continue meeting our basic needs also changed. How we buy and cook food changed; how we do our jobs changed; how we socialize and entertain ourselves changed; how we run errands changed. Even the most basic task of walking around in public — continuously altering your path in order to stay 6 ft away from everyone at all times — changed.
Every one of these changes required us to abandon dozens of solidly autopilot habits and learn equal amounts of brand new habits to adapt to the changes, in a very short amount of time. Unlike that fitness-kick we went through in January, the consequences for failing to adopt these new habits could be deadly, to you or someone you love. You’re not supposed to start twenty new habits at once but we didn’t have a choice.”
Go read the whole article on Medium
About the writer: Kella Hanna-Wayne is the creator, editor, and main writer for Yopp. She specializes in educational writing about civil rights, disability, chronic illness, abuse, and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, The BeZine, and Splain You a Thing and in 2022, she released a self-published book of poetry, “Pet: the Journey from Abuse to Recovery“. You can find her @KellaHannaWayne on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Medium, and Twitter.
At Yopp we're dedicated to providing educational material for social justice that emphasizes the individual experience of lived oppression and helps you understand the whole picture instead of memorizing do's & don'ts.
