A guide for managing end-of-pandemic anxiety

With schools and offices reopening, restaurant restrictions loosening and even masks less ubiquitous, more introverted people may be experiencing some anxiety.

But experts say there are ways to prepare for the gradual but eventual end of the pandemic.

“We are close to the end of this pandemic,” said Yale New Haven health system Chief Medical Officer Tom Balcezak during a recent press conference.

The prospect of a possible life without masks spent within six feet of each other, while exciting to some, is filling others with dread.

Moki Kokoris, for example, considers herself an introvert.

“Many of us in the introvert group are getting nervous about being expected to get back into socializing,” Kokoris said in an email. “I, for one, don't want to leave my personal sanctuary. Masks, in a way, have been a legitimate reason to avoid smalltalk, which introverts greatly dislike. Go to the store, get what you need, pay, and go back to your own little paradise.”

Karen Steinberg Galluci, an associate professor of psychiatry at UConn Health, said pandemicenforced isolation afforded an opportunity for more introverted, less naturally social types.

“I know people and work with people that, at the beginning, they were kind of like, ‘Yeah, this is cool,’” she said. “Like, ‘I got this down, this isn't a problem for me. I don't want to be going out to parties and doing all this stuff.’ So it's sort of like permission to do that.”

But, like it or not, pandemic-related restrictions are loosening, students are more often in-person and offices are beginning to ask employees to come back.

While Sherry Pagoto said “we have been avoiding social situations for a good reason,” there are equally good reasons to begin the process of getting back into regular social interactions.

“As people move to engage more socially, there's one thing that really fuels anxiety is avoidance,” Pagoto said. “Regardless of why you're avoiding, avoidance can cause fear to build.”

Pagoto, a professor in allied health sciences at UConn, suggested some strategies as “a way to prepare.”

“Start thinking about ways to kind of transition back in,” she said. “Are there ways to be social right now that might make you feel a little bit anxious, but might be worth trying and doing, like going to the Zoom happy hour or something that you might have been avoiding?”

Pagoto said it is a good time to start asking yourself questions: “What do I want post pandemic to look like for me? What did I learn from this? What were some things in my life that I should probably rethink, in terms of whether it was bringing me value, or taking me away from things I care about?”

Pandemic isolation has, for some, become a reset, and as that period comes to a close, it does not mean our lives need to return to exactly what they were a year ago.

“I think, in our minds, we might be like, ‘We'll start doing everything we used to do before,’” Pagoto said. “But it might be useful to just kind of make that list of things that I really missed, and things that I can live without.”

Families may find the shift out of isolation particularly difficult. Yes, the in-home schooling will be over but so might the family game nights.

“Someone told me who had a stay-at-home wife, ‘I think my wife's going to have a really hard time because she's had me home for a year, and that's going to disappear for her,’” Pagoto said. “So, thinking about what this is going to be like for family members who got used to, over the last year, everyone being home.”

There may be a sense of freedom, Pagoto said, “but I also wonder if there's going to be a sense of loss for some people. It was kind of nice having everybody home.”

The primary strategy Pagoto shared was communication. Take the time, she said, to think about what you want to take with you as the pandemic ends, and discuss that with your friends and family.

“If we don't think about it and plan for it, I think we will just gravitate right back to where we were. And maybe that's where you want to be, in which case, that's fine,” she said. “But it may not be where everybody wants to be. And so there's a good opportunity for a family discussion or a discussion amongst couples of like, where are we? What are we doing going forward? And what should that look like?”