Normalizing Depression and Anxiety
January 6, 2022
As we go on our second year of living with COVID, we need to support and normalize the mental strain it has brought. Particularly the high rates of depression and anxiety that we continue to see in our lives, at work, with friends and across the world. As a mental exercise, sit and list on a piece of paper all the changes you have gone through over the past year. How many can you list? Possible changes in your schedule, your children going back and forth from remote to in person school? Have you lost or changed a job, or even more upsetting, lost a family member and you are still grieving. Now think about friends and family members? What changes have they experienced? Then add the stress and worry of possible illness that all of us are continuing to live through.
Of course we are experiencing anxiety and depression. People will have varying severity, those with more complicated histories will be even more at risk but what we are seeing now is such a high number of individuals struggling and it completely makes sense. How could we not be feeling all the emotional burden of the past two years. We need to normalize and tell each other, of course you feel this way and it’s ok! It’s ok to feel the stress, the pressure, the grief of these last 2 years. We need to acknowledge it to ourselves, support each other and talk to each other about the grief, the adjustment, and the stress. Don’t expect your employees, your family members, your children, your friends not to struggle emotionally. The more we acknowledge all the emotions and struggles the more adaptive we can become.
-Darci Polla, LCSW
