Fighting back against isolation and anxiety amid pandemic
People have to make changes as they try to adjust to ‘a new normal’
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, working mom Kelly Cardenas was initially thankful for the break. She and her husband frequently traveled for their jobs, so the shutdown allowed them to spend more time at their San Antonio home with their four children.
But as the months dragged on, she began to feel isolated.
“It really hit me then that it was going to be a while,” recalled Cardenas, 37, a senior training consultant at a financial firm. “And I didn’t know that it would ever be the same. And that really got me down . ... As time went on, things weren’t getting back to normal. It really scared me.
“I recognized that I was having negative feelings about the circumstances. I was feeling down, maybe even depressed.”
Cardenas is among many who struggled with feelings of isolation and uncertainty during the pandemic but who are finding ways to boost their sense of wellbeing. Anxiety and depression “increased considerably” across the nation during the initial months of the pandemic — from April through June 2020 — compared with the same period a year earlier, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
Some people have felt weary and shut off from others during the COVID crisis, which has persisted for 21 months.
Cardenas and her girlfriends sometimes ordered takeout food and met in a neighborhood parking lot, positioning their vehicles 6 feet away from each other so they could visit safely. But it wasn’t the same as gathering at someone’s home.
“That was still really hard be
cause we couldn’t hug each other,” she said. “We couldn’t just drop (in) at each other’s houses. That is so important to me, to have that human interaction face to face.”
Cardenas tackled her feelings directly, searching for solutions. She exercised on yoga mats in her garage, talked to her therapist by phone, watched church services online and started a Facebook group for women to discuss their workouts.
She later taught tap dance online but eventually had to undergo surgery on both feet.
When she joined a North Side gym earlier this year, Cardenas began to feel like herself for the first time since the pandemic started. She started her workouts slowly and proceeded with a coach’s guidance.
“I think just being around likeminded people, having that personalized attention, the energy in the room and that guided workout — it really works for me,” she said.
By September, she was running more than 2 miles on a treadmill, exercising at the gym four to five days a week. Her outlook became more positive. She was sleeping better, and her diet and her mood had improved.
“Keeping with that routine has been really beneficial . ... Therapy, praying and moving my body — those are all things that have really helped me get through this,” she said.
People aren’t just dealing with a feeling of isolation — the last two years have been stressful, and people almost have to reinvent themselves as they try to adjust to “a new normal,” said Dr. Luz Maria Garcini, a psychologist and assistant professor at UT Health San Antonio’s Center for Research to Advance Community Health.
Some people have had trouble articulating or communicating their internal emotional battles during the pandemic, which can lead to a sense of feeling alone, she said. Those struggles have affected people of all ages.
“From younger to older, I think it has been really, really hard to communicate what has been the overall toll of this pandemic,” Garcini said. “Some of the ways in which people have coped is to pretend that everything is OK . ... People have suppressed their own negative emotions or failed to communicate them to other people.”
Transitioning work responsibilities to a home environment led to bigger workloads in some cases, which created “another compounded stressor that got in the way of interacting with family,” Garcini said.
People have expressed that they now feel awkward in social situations, almost as if they have forgotten social etiquette, she added.
Garcini was among a group of health officials who published research this year showing that Hispanic communities in South Texas used several strategies to cope with the COVID pandemic — engaging in distracting activities, such as gardening or cooking; practicing relaxation techniques, like deep breathing or yoga; performing exercises in mindfulness, such as enjoying the outdoors; restoring routines or schedules to regain a sense of control and normalcy; and relying on education, such as gathering information from credible sources.
Children have struggled with more anxiety and depression since the pandemic began, said Dr. Brigitte Bailey, a psychiatrist and professor at UT Health San Antonio who sees pediatric patients at University Health System and other locations.
“We are always pretty busy — but we are really busy since COVID,” Bailey said. “So we are seeing more anxiety, more depression . ... Most child (psychiatric) hospitals for October were full. So you had kids sometimes waiting in the emergency room a little longer than we’d like for them to wait for a bed to open up.”
Children’s anxieties concerned virtual school or returning to classes in person, while other youths were troubled by stressful circumstances at home, she said.
“If your family lost their house, lost a job, had to move — it could have been significant changes. And that just creates a sense of being out of control,” said Bailey, who serves as UT Health San Antonio’s child and adolescent psychiatry residence training director.
One way parents can help is to avoid discussing their personal views on COVID and how the pandemic should be handled if children are within earshot, she said.
“Sometimes keeping adult conversations away from kids is helpful,” Bailey said. “Kids don’t need to hear all the things we believe in and not, especially when we’re super passionate. Little ears pick up a lot even when you think they’re not listening.”
She also suggests parents watch for changes in their children’s behavior or demeanor that could indicate anxiety or depression. Younger children may cling to their parents more or need increasing amounts of reassurance — or they could appear more sensitive, crying at small redirections or minor occurrences, Bailey said.
Children feeling uneasy also may express vague somatic complaints, such as stomachaches or headaches, or find reasons to stay home with a parent or to keep their parent from leaving the house, she said.
Stress has been high for children and families during the pandemic, said Dr. Barbara Roblesramamurthy, a family psychiatrist at UT Health San Antonio. She pointed to a CDC report that concluded that children’s visits to ERS for mental health ailments increased last year, beginning in April 2020 — a month after the pandemic started — and remained at heightened levels through October 2020.
Last month, three groups described a national emergency in children’s mental health, noting the pandemic was one of the factors contributing to that crisis. Those groups — the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association — pressed for solutions.
Robles-ramamurthy provides full consultations to pediatricians trying to address their young patients’ mental health needs.
“I think that after the whole year of virtual school, it was definitely difficult for some kids,” she said. Social anxieties have surfaced. Children uncomfortable or fearful of social interaction may have thrived fairly well with virtual learning but “now going back to school, that can be challenging for them.”
Adults who surround the children can be buffering systems. But when those adults are stressed out, “that can trickle down to the kids,” Robles-ramamurthy said.
Parents or caregivers can help by being more patient and understanding that children’s moods may change fairly frequently during this time, she said.
“Instead of immediately jumping into what’s wrong or ‘You’re misbehaving’ — can we reframe that and say ‘How can I support you? What do you need right now?’” Robles-ramamurthy suggested.
Cardenas urges anyone struggling with isolation or pandemic fatigue to continue searching for solutions until they find something that lifts them up.
“Sometimes things don’t work,” she said. “Sometimes you figure out that what you’ve tried or what you’ve invested in just doesn’t work for you, and you have to move on and try something new. So I just kept doing that.
“Just keeping trying, keep going — ‘What’s the next right decision I can make? What’s the next right thing that I can do to help myself?’ Nobody’s going to help you the way you can help yourself. So just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It’s amazing how much better you feel when you just go outside for a 20-minute walk and just get fresh air, put down your phone and think for yourself. Stop exposing yourself to the things that are scary, and expose yourself to the things that will help you.”