Where do you stand on the Fear-o-meter?

As lockdown begins to lift, Guy Kelly discovers if you’re ready for the next stage of coronavirus

No two people have had precisely the same experience over the past 11 weeks. Whether age, family circumstances, employment status, health concerns or enthusiasm for Zoom quizzes – myriad ingredients have been baked into our feelings about lockdown, and as we’re fickle creatures, those feelings could change at any given time, on any given day.

It should come as no surprise, then, that as the lockdown leash is gradually slackened, our attitude to reemergence is no less individual, and no less unsettled. Those carefree people who danced all night at illegal raves last weekend? They were probably rolling their eyes at the queues outside Primark yesterday. Those worker bees who have been commuting in to central London all along, and have no fear? They could easily be married to someone who daren’t leave the house without Naomi Campbell-levels of PPE.

“It’s no surprise that we’re all feeling different,” says The Telegraph’s psychologist Linda Blair. “It takes around 12 weeks to form a routine, so now we are faced with undoing a set of habits we’ve only really just established. It’s very stressful, and compounded by the fact we are perpetually uncertain of what is the right thing to do, what is dangerous, and so on. It’s a lot to ask of the human psyche.”

The nation is now divided, then, in its attitude to “The Fear”. Divided by gender (recent ONS data has shown that just a third of women felt safe leaving their home last week, compared with almost half of men); by age (understandably, those statistically at the least risk of the virus, the young, appear most eager to get back to normal); by region (having recently been cackled at by a local for alighting

‘You will happily go home if a seventh person arrives at a socially distanced drinks’

from a train in rural Hampshire, wearing a mask, I can attest that this is “a thing”); by circumstances and, of course, by health.

But if there is one thing British people can unite around, it is the love of a slightly reductive sliding scale. Introducing the Fear-o-meter: from still fully-locked-down to laid back, where do you stand on it today?

1. Full fear

There are, of course, millions of people for whom continuing to take the lockdown seriously is a matter of life and death. In early June, the Government updated its guidance for those who are shielding – around 2million thought to be “clinically extremely vulnerable”, including those with cancer, or who have had an organ transplant, or have a weak immune system – allowing them to leave their home, if not to join social bubbles.

But there are plenty of entirely fit and healthy people cautious about “bubbling”, too, now corona-anxiety has morphed into a mix of agora- and germaphobia. After 11 weeks inside, even the sight of two people shaking hands in an old film might bring you out in a cold sweat. And, paradoxically, you might have felt happier at the height of lockdown, when the guidelines were stricter and therefore easier to follow.

“When we experience an emergency, like a hijacking or an earthquake or a tsunami, we go numb, we just do what we have to do,” says Blair. “So we had that heyday at the start where people were going, ‘You know what? I’m going to learn Spanish.’ There was no emotion at that point, it was the body’s way of numbing and protecting against the shock.”

It might be useful, she suggests, to think of heightened fear at emerging from lockdown as a delayed reaction, rather than a reflection of real risk. “Now, we’re in the beginning phases of healing, so we’re getting floods of fear and flashbacks, almost like in a PTSD case, which is a flood of different emotions and anxiety,” she says. “Really, though, you could just be anxious now about what you’ve been through.”

2. Anxious

You’re cautiously re-engaging with the world, but you’re not going to take any risks doing so. That means fresh gloves and masks – and not some pointless Liberty print homemade thing, the real deal, with filters and whatnot – whenever you go out.

It also means happily going home if a seventh person arrives at socially distanced drinks, upholding the two-metre rule in supermarket aisles like Catherine Zeta-jones dodging lasers in Entrapment, rejecting hugs from friends in the strongest terms, and knowing that when Professor Chris Whitty recommends you thoroughly wipe down your bathroom if a guest has to use it, he means it. So buying a jet washer.

Oscillating between this phase and the next – anxious and laid-back – is probably where most healthy people are, most of the time. It leads to inconsistencies, like refusing to touch a kissing gate on a country walk, but half an hour later, using a gloved hand to unlock the phone you then put to your face.

That’s entirely understandable, Blair says, given that official advice can be so vague, and that what is deemed “safe” or “unsafe” changes so rapidly.

“The conclusions we reach aren’t always logical, but that’s because the problem has been too layered, and the messages unclear. Things change every day, and we are all so weary of uncertainty,” she says.

“If you want to get it as right as possible, I’d recommend doing a little flow chart, listing the things we know as of today – how far to distance, which surfaces can hold the virus – then at least you can be sure you have some structure, some logic to follow.”

3. Laid back

Chances are, most of the people in the second, anxious section of this spectrum spend some of their time in the third: taking a broadly relaxed, laissez-faire approach to the whole thing. Forgot your mask on the way to work? Well, one trip can’t hurt (expect everybody else in the carriage to give you a death stare, though), can it? Unthinkingly pay in cash at the bakery, meaning you receive a handful of change that’s been God-knowswhere? Whatever. Drunkenly hug your friend when saying goodbye after some drinks on their driveway? They’ve had the virus already, haven’t they? It’s probably fine.

“It’s often about motivation and clarity,” Blair says. “If you really want to do something, the fear will be less, so your motivation will drive you in a positive way. You might know that being in a crowd is unsafe so you get worried, but if you desperately want to be there [as in the case of a protest], that can be overtaken.”

The balance is tricky: being laid back might be less stressful for you, but it could add to a new type of social anxiety in those around you, as bolder types push for greater socialising and rule-bending, forcing those more timid to do things they aren’t at all comfortable with – whether sharing a pot of hummus, or high-fiving.

“I would hope that people who feel less worried about the whole thing now can at least respect [another] person’s boundaries, and understand that we’re not all at the same stage, for all kinds of reasons,” says Blair. “So invite them to a barbecue, but make clear they don’t have to come.”

4. Gung-ho

At the far end of the scale, we find the fearless flouters desperate for us all to just pull ourselves together and get back to business as usual.

Some may claim to have “done the reading” – by which they could mean anything from poring over the latest graphs and data from epidemiologists around the world and drawing their own informed conclusions, to hearing on Reddit that the virus has burnt itself out – and deem the Government to be grossly overreacting.

Others might have once identified as laid-back or even anxious, but simply grew bored of lockdown (or worked through it) and have decided social distancing has gone on for long enough. These individuals probably aren’t afraid to let others know, either, and encourage them to join them on the “other side”, recruiting with potentially aggressive public lectures or brushing up against them in the bread aisle.

It’s certainly simpler than following updates, considering each situation as it happens, and remaining respectful of others. “I’m afraid we cannot form habits around something that’s constantly changing, like loosening lockdown,” Blair says. “This will get easier as things become more certain, but in a sense, even psychologists are on new ground. Not in theory, but in terms of dealing with people,” she says. “We all react differently.”