Pandemic Anxiety Depletes Bandwidth You Need to Cope With Stress of Living

We’re all weary of hearing about COVID and mask wearing precautions. Aren’t we?

About the negative impact of isolation. And while we see improvement on the horizon through wide spread vaccinations, there are still imminent risks, and new cases as well as deaths every day. Those risks add to your daily stress in ways you may not realize. Pandemic anxiety depletes your bandwidth for coping with daily living. The story of Carolee and Jacob illuminates the kinds of stressors that can go on behind closed doors…

Carolee and Jacob walked the two blocks to the grocery story to pick up food for dinner. They were discussing a news story they’d read on the internet about how some states are lifting mandates for COVID precautions, like wearing masks, social distancing, and use of hand sanitizer. They liked walking to their neighborhood store when they could, just for fresh air and exercise.

Since they passed a number of people on the sidewalk as they walked, they always wore masks, even when they were outside.

Carolee expressed her frustration that those particular states were lifting the requirements, in spite of the fact that each governor had strongly encouraged citizens to continue to use precautions on their own. 

Of course, there will be those who step up and “discipline themselves” and maintain the precautions. But she knew there would be so many… so so many…who would not. Her frustration and disgust exploded.

“WHY????? Why would they drop this requirement before we’re ready for it?  People aren’t going to do the right thing. They’re going to just be glad to be rid of it all and do what they want to do for fun! And the cases will start growing…and more will die… and….”

You Can’t Control Everyone… Just Yourself, Right?

Jacob squeezed her hand and tried to soothe her. “Carolee, you know there are already so many who don’t follow the rules. But you and I can only do what’s best for us…Don’t you think it’s futile to struggle about everyone else, when it’s something we have no control over? It’s really not worth you getting wound up and shaken about something you can’t control…is it?

“It’s about bandwidth, Carolee. The amount of information your brain can receive…like per second. We’re flooded with so much more to consider about every detail of life than we’ve ever had to. This pandemic anxiety depletes the bandwidth we need just to get through every minute, every hour. We have to find ways to tamp down our own response to things, so we have more energy for everything else.”

Jacob knew that Carolee hadn’t been sleeping well lately. She seemed to wake up frequently, sometimes walking through the house wringing her hands. Sometimes just pacing. Staring out the window. Standing out on the patio.

They’d talked several times about how the COVID-19 variants were spreading, asking questions about whether the new vaccines would be effective with the variants… About how long they were waiting on the list to get their own vaccines. Each time they talked, they agreed to let it go, for their own peace of mind.

But that was easier said than done.

To make matters worse, Jacob was feeling more and more worn down by the stress of the pandemic, his work responsibilities, and Carolee’s meltdowns. He knew she would get past them, but he found himself worrying about her more and more. He needed to find a way to relax. In addition to Carolee, Jacob sure needed some relief.

Worry. Worry. Then worry some more.

Life was already full when COVID-19 came along. People were already stressed with daily responsibilities to job, family, faith organizations, maintenance of home and car, children and their struggles.

When the pandemic appeared on the horizon like a vast dark cloud of pestilence, it pervaded everything. Those aspects of life that were so routine and required little attention, came to require acute attention often overloaded with a sense of panic with fear of doing it wrong. 

A psychiatrist wrote in Psychiatric Times about the fear and guilt she experienced when she stopped by the bank for cash only to find the drive-through banking not yet open. So she wrestled with herself about whether to go inside the lobby or park and wait an hour for the drive-through to open. She went inside, but worried about whether she had been exposed to COVID-19 and who she might expose through the day as a result. She worried about it all far more than she normally would have.

Kate Murphy, a NYT journalist, made the point that your brain is overburdened by this pandemic. That things you normally relegate to your brain’s autopilot now require serious thought and risk analysis. And…as a result, you have less bandwidth for higher order thinking. 

Less bandwidth.

Isn’t it true?

And those pandemic anxiety reactions eat up bandwidth.

If you’ve depleted yourself through a panicky reaction to forgetting your mask when you MUST buy groceries, or driving through for a meal but your hand sanitizer is empty…how can you eat without sanitizing your hands?? Or you’re trying to cope with working from home and the kids are jumping out of their skins from cabin fever??

What do you do when you keep hitting your thumb with a hammer?

Those bandwidth-eating reactions are similar to hitting your thumb with a hammer, over and over and over… because more and more damage is done. You can hardly cope with everything else when your thumb is screaming in pain, you know? You just have to step away from the hammer!!

Then, if you’ve already been taking medication for anxiety, and the exponential expansion of anxiety caused by the pandemic sends your worry and panic through the roof, well, you have difficulties you hardly know how to manage.

There was a time before the pandemic was anticipated, that worrying about little things blew up into worrying about disasters in your mind, and as your grandma would say, “Honey, you’re borrowing trouble and making a mountain out of a molehill.”

But now, the ongoing stream of changes and increased risks you face everyday can result in outright panic for some, and on a lesser scale, confusion and exhaustion…and dread. This pandemic anxiety just depletes your bandwidth for life.

You probably know people who have contracted COVID-19. You may have seen some who experienced extremely mild symptoms, if any at all. Still, you may also know someone who experienced serious or extremely severe symptoms. Maybe you know people who have died.

If you’ve known more than 1 person who has died, your anxiety about death may have filled you with alarm. Alarm about masks, about social distancing, about making sure OTHERS are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

And what’s more upsetting than people who won’t comply?? You just have to step away from that hammer…

The more traumatic your experience has been, the more anxiety you may feel about the risks. On the other hand, if you have not known anyone who was hospitalized from COVID-19, exposure may not seem like a great risk to you at all.

Unique Pandemic Trauma and Loss Requires More Bandwidth

Either way, you need to be grounded. To let the world take care of the big solutions while you manage the challenges of your daily life. To help with that, take daily walks – wearing your mask! — but get out in the fresh air and sunshine. Take a friend or family member along and talk. Take care of YOU. Then look after your family.

Pandemic anxiety depletes your bandwidth for your own life. Right now, you need all the energy and mental clarity you can get just to get through life, day by day.

Because YOUR life needs to go on.

Still, if your medications and fresh air and exercise don’t help at all, then you may need help getting your symptoms of depression, bipolar depression, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts under control. Then maybe… you should consider IV ketamine infusions.

Since IV ketamine treatment is at the front lines transforming people when nothing else has helped, it may be an obvious next step for you. And receiving these infusions is a relaxing and comfortable experience. With your remission as our goal, your dose will be titrated according to your individual response during each infusion.

At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re working every day to respond to the call for helping people who are against the wall in this pandemic. If your own bandwidth for coping with the demands of COVID on top of the demands of your life is growing slim, you’re not alone. A vast mob of stressed out, overwhelmed, exhausted, and depressed people surround you. You have to decide what to do about it, if your efforts toward exercise, fresh air, and medication have become futile.

In that process, it could be that the results of stress have depleted your ability to cope anymore. You may need to reboot. You may need a remodeling project in your synapses to increase your synaptic plasticity. To relieve your symptoms of depression, PTSD, or suicidal thinking. To give you fresh bandwidth.

For your safety, we’ve installed state-of-the-art technology that utterly removes and destroys COVID-19 and viruses and pathogens from the air and surfaces. So you don’t have to spend bandwidth on your safety, when getting treated is so important for you. Just one more thing to lighten your load. You have enough on your mind.

If this sounds like you, and you’d like to discuss IV ketamine treatment, call us.

This pandemic has been hard for everyone. You’re not alone. And we’re here to help.

We look forward to talking with you and working together for your relief.

To the restoration of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, M.D.