- Experts say that some people may have trouble adjusting to a more normal life as the COVID-19 pandemic eases.
- People may have concerns about socializing or being in crowded places, emotions they should recognize as being valid.
- They add that people can acclimate themselves by making specific plans and slowly immersing themselves back into society.
A year ago, we were hunkered down in quarantine and dreaming of the moment we’d plunge into those life experiences we savor.
Oh, the taste of freedom would be so sweet, we thought back then: We will hug everyone.
Here we are now, on the cusp of a fully opened society, with ballgames in full swing, concerts making a comeback, and masks no longer required in most places for people who are vaccinated.
Anyone feel kind of hesitant at the thought of those very things we yearned so deeply for?
If so, you’re not alone.
“I am seeing this a lot,” Marna Brickman, LCSW-C, a psychotherapist at Guiding Therapy in Annapolis, Maryland, told Healthline. “People are out of practice and out of the routine of being social,” she said, “so now something that was so natural is making us nervous.”
While some people are diving full speed into life again, others are struggling with everything from the notion of sitting in a movie theater, walking into a store maskless, flying on a crowded airplane, and even just bumping into a friend on the street.
“I was born an extrovert, always have been,” Eileen Mell, a public relations specialist in Massachusetts, told Healthline. “Now I feel strange and a little nervous at the idea of extroverting.”
Source: healthline