Post-Covid anxiety is real | Psychology Today

Have you noticed that you have been more vigilant since the pandemic? And maybe more anxious in public? After a life-altering and life-threatening event, this is normal. Any traumatic situation involving life and death can lead to trauma.

Here’s why people develop it during a pandemic: In many ways, Covid-19 has trained us to be very vigilant for contact with other people or potential contamination.

Clinically, hypervigilance is a feature of anxiety. So, in many ways, the pandemic may have taught some of us to be extra vigilant to stay safe. In military contexts, service personnel are trained to exercise extreme caution for safety, look for signs of danger, and avoid potential threats. When they leave the military, they often find that even if they are not showing symptoms of shock, hypervigilance remains because it was part of their training. For example, many veterans who have left the military for a long time still mark exits whenever they enter a building or always carefully monitor their environments for signs of danger. We might expect, then, that those who have endured the stress of the pandemic will remain anxious and very vigilant for some time.

What can we do about this? The key is to retrain your nervous system for a greater parasympathetic tone: the calm response, rather than fight-or-flight. When you do, you may see that through any traumatic experience, there can be post-traumatic growth.

breathing Exercise is a fast, effective, and efficient way to calm anxiety by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system (“rest and digest”). We exit our sympathetic response (“fight or flight”) and return to a calmer state, our perspective widens, and we can see things from a more rational perspective.

When you inhale, your heart rate rises. When you exhale, it slows down. Taking just a few minutes to close your eyes and exhale (making them twice as long as your inhale) will help you calm down within minutes.

Our research shows that one breathing technique, SKY Breath Meditation, can improve anxiety and depression while increasing well-being to a greater extent than other well-being practices, such as mindfulness. In addition to. It may be a good supplement or adjunct exercise to conventional treatments for trauma.

Meditation: Regular meditation practice has been shown to improve stress, anxiety, and depression, and enhance emotional regulation, well-being, and even physical health. The psychological benefits associated with meditation make it worth a try. Gentle yoga, tai chi, yoga nidra – any physical movement or relaxation that calms the mind and stimulates a meditative state that activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Regular practice trains your body to calm down faster and is basically calmer.

temper nature: It has also been shown that exposure to nature greatly benefits mental health, promoting well-being while reducing stress and anxiety. Even a limited amount of exposure can have a significant impact. If you can’t go out for a walk, putting a poster of a nature scene on your wall can make all the difference, like a nature screensaver or a plant on your desk. This is how deep exposure to the natural world can affect us.

sympathy: Several studies have shown that being on duty, in any capacity, improves your mental and physical health while contributing to longevity. Whether you are visiting a single aunt or volunteering at your local pet shelter, when you help others, it helps You are. The impact of small acts of kindness or community service can be enormous, even aiding recovery from illness.

Pity in particular: Many of us are self-critical and hard on ourselves. In the process, we harm our mental and physical health, which increases our anxiety. Self-compassion involves treating yourself as you would a colleague or friend who may not have lived up to expectations in a given situation. Instead of blaming and judging and thus increasing your friend’s desperation, you should listen with understanding and encourage your friend to remember that mistakes are normal without fanning the fire. Better mental and physical health, improved relationships, and a greater parasympathetic tone emerge as a result of self-compassion.

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