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Post Pandemic Life
It’s wild out here!
There is so much change occurring now that it’s head spinning. People are moving around, changing jobs, deciding to work less, and planning future trips. We seem to be weaving around scary road blocks toward a more integrated way of living. Healthy living in fact, seems to be on the lip with deeper questions being asked about the impact of past traumas on current health.
Autoimmune diseases have been on the rise for a while now. These mysterious health problems appear to be stress related, and doctors really do not know how to understand them. A 2016 New York Times article estimated that one in 13 Americans has one of the autoimmune diseases (cited in Maté, 2022, p. 72). Gabor Maté is concerned that our overall culture is harming the human spirit (The Myth of Normal, 2022).
The news is terrible too: wars, conflict, and mass shootings (even at a birthday party, knocking on the wrong door, being in the wrong drive-way, kicking a ball by accident into another yard). Fear seems to be everywhere, and school lock downs are now a part of school life in all grades.
Social media appears to have created a “dehumanizing” phenomena in our youth where “people are constantly packaging themselves for public consumption and seeing their popularity and the popularity of others quantified” (Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, February 25, 2023, emphasis mine).
Here’s the good news: A teen I work with announced that she deleted TikTok from her phone because it was “too dark.” Wow!
We have to be careful to not fall into endless negativity as the news, of course, has a tendency to report what is wrong. This negativity bias is a well-know brain based concept that is found in both humans and animals. Essentially our brains pay greater attention to negative information because it appears to enhance survival. However negative events can have more contagion (Rozin & Royzman, 2001). Does this mean the more we hear about scary things, the more afraid we are? I think it does.
What I want to see is a turn toward collective health and wellbeing. I want to land in a green, verdant, safe place where we grow naturally…like the irises above. I believe this will require us to radically change our lives to achieve more balance. Perhaps in some way this is what is behind the incredible change we are experiencing. If we are made up of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual elements (and I believe we are) did the pandemic shutdown actually provide some weird sense of security for many who were on lockdown together even though there was fear lurking “out there everywhere?” I think it might have for many.
Now we are ‘out there’ in the world from our prolonged encapsulated moments and nothing is the same…yet fear still seems to be lurking everywhere in many people’s minds. I believe the time requires a radical change in how we live.
We have to find a balance where we can soothe our emotions, heal our physical bodies, reduce our mental tension, and renew our spirits. I recommend the following:
· Radically reduce screen time including TV, social media, posts etc.
· Increase genuine interactions with people/others
· Increase outdoor time
· Set healthy body routines for sleep, eating, and play
. Increase celebrations (NCAR now has a monthly celebration for something!)
· Play with children, talk to children, hug children (and animals)
· Work/Life balance is now completely necessary. The old juggling-multiple-balls
work approach is likely a thing of the past.
· Slow everything down
· Allow moments of reflection such as meditations, breathing, and/or yoga
· Allow moments of silence
. Increase laughter and play
· Give to others what we genuinely can, not what we believe we ‘should’
In my opinion, we are still trying to live (unconsciously) with what worked in the past when this reality is long gone. We need to find our way to what heals us completely. In all of this chaos, it looks to me like the human Spirit/Heart is what is left standing, and our job is to realign our physical, emotional, and mental bodies to this world.
We, and all of our Children need this.
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