Let’s allow ourselves to imagine that COVID-19 is a storm. Usually, when these arrive, despite being able to know what is coming, they never allow us to keep in mind the havoc that they’re going to leave in their wake.
No matter how prepared we may be for its arrival, the consequences of its passing will always be incalculable.
The peculiar thing about this never ceasing storm lies in the fact that its devastation, beyond what the news presents to us daily in the rates of infection, the number of COVID-19 deaths and it’s many variants, presents itself in the mental calamities that have affected the majority of the global population.
Although the figures are important for health control, which is responsible for measuring health costs and the control that each country has over it in it’s population in relation to the commitment of the States regarding mental health, this measurement always falls short in what it has to do with the reality that each human being lives.
The mental symptoms of COVID-19
It’s clear that the first symptom that is evident due to the pandemic in humans is fear, whether it be fear of contagion, fear of death, although this is slight and goes unnoticed, it’s the loss of emotional balance.
The second symptom is restlessness, which has the effect of altering emotions and putting the person’s state of mind on alert.
In other words, a state of anger arises in some people that can create social tensions, which revolve around meeting our schedules, payment of goods and services and the fluidity of our routines. This results in mild or moderate disputes with people we interact with on a daily basis, especially with those with whom there is greater trust.
At most, and without the intention of being deterministic, the COVID-19 pandemic has come to alter our feelings about the vast majority of securities that we have clung to.
The sense of our daily lives and the security that we found in the plans that we traced to achieve mental balance have become blurred. The global order has stated that everything is going to change after the pandemic, as a result of the global economic consequences that are at stake because of it.
The positive side of the storm
This reality that we are going through, beyond the fact that it will pass soon, is what we deludedly think will allow us to return everything in our life as it was before, to resume our course from the securities we had at that time. It imposes on us, as a consequence of the emotional imbalance in which we have entered, to take a breath. To breathe deeply. To take the prudent time that allows us to think about ourselves.
Yes. For the first time, we have to pause and think about ourselves, with the purpose of rethinking the meaning of life from a storm that has not stopped and that will change the reality of humanity. Whether we understand it or not.
Thinking about yourself is the first step to assume the mental balance that the storm has taken from us. This involves evaluating our course, reflecting on the meaning we give to our lives and clarifying the purpose of our existence in the place where we find ourselves.
Of all the negative things that a storm brings, the good thing is that if we know how to overcome it, the reconstruction of the rubble will allow us to build a new place in which we can implement elements that we weren’t allowed to put before or pose.
Tips on how not to suffer
- The COVID-19 pandemic brings us closer to ourselves, whether through fear of contagion or our own mood.
- Before letting ourselves be carried away by the mental imbalance that is reflected in our mood swings, the priority is to think that this is the symptom, which shows us that we have to think about ourselves.
- It’s opportune to start a path of reflection to rethink the meaning that we have given to our lives and the purpose we have in our existence. These two elements bring us closer to mental equilibrium, which brings about the security that allows us to face the instabilities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.