So here we are nearly a year since my last post about my nightly awakenings. And what have I done this year? Well, THE WORK. The work has consisted of a lot of holding space for myself and others. Keeping my heart open and grounded, so I can invoke the same posture in others who need their own ability to stay present with emotional pain. I’ve listened, I’ve lectured, I’ve cried, and finally—I slept. At last.

It’s a good thing, because this year mental health workers have begun addressing a new phenomenon, one we don’t yet have a name for. I’m not quite sure what to call it either, but it is indeed a thing and I’m calling it COVID Weariness, though that doesn’t truly capture the magnitude of it. Based on personal and professional observations and experiences, here is a list of some of the possible symptoms one experiences when dealing with COVID Weariness:

1. chronic sadness

2. anger and irritability

3. irrational thinking and difficulty with concentration

4. symptoms similar to trauma reactions (i.e., hypervigilance, paranoia, avoidance of cues that elicit a triggered reaction)

5. emotionally tender and reactive or alternately numbed and disconnected

6. loss of pleasure in activities one once enjoyed

7. loss of motivation, difficulty staying motivated to do daily tasks

8. confusion and disorientation in day to day tasks and/or in planning ahead (as a result of living long-term with survival mentality)

9. acting out and/or numbing behaviors (i.e., rage, overeating, drug or alcohol abuse, shopping, excessive use of activities that promote sense of feeling “checked out”)

10. grief and difficulty naming it as grief

11. difficulty connecting with other people when opportunities arise/feeling awkward and disjointed in one’s social skills

12. persistent anxiety and difficulty identifying why

And this is really just a short list but a pretty concise one for what I am seeing in many people. Every single day clients list these complaints to me and nearly always they express confusion as to why they feel this way. In our 2020 vacuum, we are suffering and disconnected from one another while doing it. This has denied us the emotional mirroring we need to contain our own pain. We have no one validating for us that we have been and are being traumatized by the ongoing daily threat of infection, possible outside violence, and/or death. We have no one helping us name the fact that we are carrying hypervigilance and grief in our bodies because of the ravages of a pandemic and violent political unrest we’ve witnessed for nearly a year. We worry. We are afraid. We are sad and often hopeless. We have lost some of our ability to make small talk. I even noticed the other day that I no longer feel the automatic impulse to extend my hand to a stranger in greeting. I’ve trained my mind to stop offering touch or to expect it from others. This takes a toll on one’s psyche, emotional health, and physical health. As human beings we are not wired neurologically to live under persistent threat with no room or time for resolution and to do it all while living in isolation. We are a nation, a planet suffering under COVID Weariness.

COVID Weariness is something you are experiencing as a result of the world you have lived in for the last year, even if you didn’t lose your job, even if you didn’t get sick, even if your friends and family have been taken care of and well, yes, even then. You have sat in a world that faced death every day. You changed your daily patterns and your family’s daily patterns. You removed yourself from daily contact. You watched suffering or at least knew it was happening and held this in the back of your mind. All of us have been impacted and we cannot afford to minimize the emotional fallout from this pandemic. We cannot remain in denial that what we feel is a result of what we’ve experienced. We need one another’s mirroring eyes and we need community to heal.

Last night our president addressed the nation and offered some hope of emerging from this pandemic, literally emerging from our homes and gathering, when and where it’s safe, with friends and family. We need this to recover. And even more than this, when we emerge it is essential that we acknowledge one another’s suffering. We must bear witness to what has happened. We have to name it. We have to talk about it. We have to validate for one another that this is unusual, traumatic, life-altering, and grievous. We have to be compassionate and patient with one another’s emotional recovery. When we fail to offer these important elements of healing to one another, we set ourselves up for more acting out. In an effort to act out our pain and have it seen, we’ve indeed observed instances of violence, rage, and sorrow. Our sorrows have gone unattended until they grew monstrous and primitive. Our efforts to gain relief through raging have only deepened the grief trenches. We have been leveled and deconstructed, but this also means we are poised for radical change.

I write today to provide a mirror for what we are feeling and what I see each day. It’s not a pretty thing to look at, but here it is, and we can handle it. We must. We can do the hard things. We always have. I’m grateful today that we seem to be turning a corner, and it is my hope that it is not only bodies that begin congregating again, but hearts. Open, softened, and present hearts.

Melissa T. Dees, M.A., LPC-MHSP