Corona Coaster

*TW // TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL HEALTH ILLNESS; ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION*

What it is about this week? My mood has been all over the place. Highs, lows and all the twists and turns of well…a rollercoaster.

I swear I cannot be the only one asking myself this question. Of course, these erratic changes in my mood isn’t exclusive to this week or even Corona. I’m a woman, I have periods and I have the mood swings to prove it. I have anxiety and depression and I know just how quickly they can take a hold on me. However, being locked down with your own thoughts for 12 weeks does have the tendency to make things all the more obvious.

If I had to pick a side- Team Introvert or Team Extrovert- I would have to pick the latter pretty much every time. I am a social person, I enjoy being around people and it’s something that I have really felt the loss of after moving away from the buzz of a little city and my university friends. I rarely stay in the same space for more than 5 minutes. I’m usually jacked up on coffee, bouncing from spot to spot. In my whole time at university, I never stayed in Dundee for longer than three weeks. I get bored and restless and I am compelled to explore. The prospect of staying in my house and without the luxury of access to overpriced coffee and indefinitely for that matter felt more of a challenge than I would be able to handle.

Of course, I have done- the way that we have all had to- but as you will know from my coronavirus series, that has not always been pretty to witness. It’s been a real rollercoaster at times, some weeks are obviously better than others and some are that much harder.

I was recently trying to make sense of why, despite very little changing, that was the case. Why sometimes, I was full of energy- writing murder mysteries and quizzes for my friends and family and why sometimes all I could do was cry and watch New Girl repeats. Why even though it was only 3 months ago does Tiger King- Banana Bread Lockdown feel more like 3 years?

By sheer coincidence (or more likely as a result of the sneaky cookies that track your every move ) I stumbled across an article in Stylist on the 5 emotional stages of Lockdown. According to this piece, a wellbeing psychologist Dr Andy Cope ( please tell me that someone else giggled at the irony of his surname) has identified 5 emotional stages that we have all collectively experienced since Lockdown was announced on March 23rd.

As part of his study, he has monitored the emotional patterns of participants through a sleep tracking app. The idea was that the participants would record their alcohol consumption habits, their sleep quality would be monitored and every day they were asked how they were feeling.

From this data, Dr Cope mapped out 5 major emotional stages:

• The Digestion Phase
• The ‘Fleeting High’ Phase
• The ‘Honeymoon is over’ Phase
• The ‘Reality Hits’ Phase
• The ‘Emotional Plateau’

The titles of these phases don’t really warrant explanation except to say that they often corresponded with major events in the news cycle. It’s understandable that there was a slight dip in the national mood when Lockdown was initially announced. It also makes sense that following the introduction for ‘Claps for Carers’, freedom from the monotonous routine of the office and flexibility that comes from working from home that there would be a surge in public attitude. We could even argue that this was partly as a result of denial. If you’re anything like me, I didn’t feel the effects of Lockdown until much later. I didn’t fully appreciate everything I had lost until it felt like a memory. The expressions of creativity: the music in the streets, the Saturday night pub quizzes, the rainbows in our living room windows as heart warming as they were, were all a means of distracting ourselves and a way to help process and manage the loss we felt.

At the beginning of Lockdown, we were all drinking more. Why wouldn’t we? We are living through a Pandemic after all and it’s the little things that get you through. However, as the reality of a “New Normal” set in, the attraction of drinking a couple of gins on a Tuesday wore off as the Wednesday hangovers got harder to recover from. We sobered up…quite literally. Some voice in the back of our minds told us to keep going despite all the bizarre things going on around us. Even in chaos, we crave routine.

Finally then is the emotional plateau. The moment of clarity, not peace but acceptance. We’ve just come from 4 turbulent emotional stages that have all occurred in approximately a month. Dr Cope suggests that in this final stage, our moods start to settle. We still experience highs and lows but not to the same violent extremes.

Personally, that hasn’t been the case for me. As I’m sure it hasn’t been for most people. The emotional stages that are shown here present but a rough outline of a random sample of people so that we can draw a comparison with the ongoing news cycle. I’ve jumped between stages, skipped some, circled back again and sometimes it felt like I was feeling them all at once.

I didn’t want to write this post without mentioning Black Lives Matter and the importance of this movement. By now, you should be more than aware of it and if not, I do implore you to educate yourself. It will be one of the most important things that you will ever do. I cannot emphasise enough about how important it is to keep up to date with events, sign petitions, share stories and donate- among the many other ways to campaign. To my white friends, I understand that this might feel overwhelming. It’s not surprising that you will be experiencing “feed fatigue”, a phenomenon that I want and hope to write about soon. For the moment though just remember that if you’re experiencing feed fatigue, it is because it is overwhelming. The events that are happening in the news are horrendous but the lives of Black people are depending on you standing up for them. They do not have the luxury of walking away and not talking about it and neither should you.

That being said, your health is important. As an activist, as a campaigner and as a human being- you have the responsibility and right to look after your wellbeing. There is nothing wrong with taking a breather. Social Media can be a void. I’ve written time again about how much an advocate I am for it as a tool. Movements like this would not be possible without it but please do not mistake me here that I don’t see how crippling and disheartening it can be. I see it. I feel it. But we must fight against it.

With this in mind, please remember to look after yourselves and those around you. Remember this is a pandemic, within a pandemic. These are not interesting times. These are unprecedented ones. This was never going to be easy. There were always going to be highs and lows with its own twists and turns. Sometimes you’ll be on top of the world and others, you’ll be clinging to your seat hoping that you won’t hurl. All of that’s okay. Just work on being a good human and the rest will work itself out, in time.

If you are struggling, please do not struggle alone. I’ve been there- more than once- but it gets better when you talk to someone. If not to your friends and family, these organisations are always here to listen and you will be heard: Samaritans , NHS Tayside and other mental health helplines. For further Mental Health resources and online video support during COVID, contact Feeling Strong.