70: Pandemic Hangover: How to Heal Your Post-Covid Mental and Emotional Health (Anxiety and Depression) and Reacclimate to the Post-Pandemic World

Travel

Jul 12

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, many people still struggle with pandemic hangover, the lingering emotional and mental health side effects from pandemic. In this episode, you are going to learn that healing from a pandemic hangover is similar to healing grief and you will also learn the steps necessary to heal from the anxiety and depression that you likely felt during those uncertain times.

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My intention for this episode is to assist you in healing your lingering and unresolved feelings from the covid-19 pandemic so that you can show up as your authentic self in the post-pandemic world. I also answer a listener question about how to heal from a post-covid rut.

Free Resources 📑

Pandemic Hangover Journal Prompts

Recommended Episodes 🎙️

References:

Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction 0:00
What is a Pandemic Hangover? 3:06
Steps for Healing Pandemic Hangover 18:36
Question 1 29:51

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or drama is holding you back. from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hi, beautiful souls. My name is Amanda Durocher, and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a safe space where I answer listener questions about the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers, you just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Today, we will be discussing how even though the COVID 19 pandemic may over, some people are still experiencing emotional and mental side effects of the pandemic, which is often called a pandemic hangover.
I think the media and the government talked at length about the physical health implications from the pandemic and the lockdowns and living in isolation. But to this day, I don't think most government organizations have made a concerted effort to provide people with helpful resources that address the lingering mental health impacts and the feelings of having a pandemic hangover. I believe that we all went through a collective trauma. And when that happens, many people will have to move through feelings that result from living through a trauma. I don't think living through a pandemic is any small feat, I think for many of us, there are still lingering side effects, and that's okay. I know that for me, the pandemic was hard and I don't think I'm alone in that. And it took me until this spring, so almost 3 years since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
To grieve the life, I didn't get to have over the past 3 years. I didn't realize I even needed to grieve it, but a part of me felt this huge toll that was taken on me, my body, and my life. And it took time for me to allow all my feelings up and allow myself to see the impact the pandemic had on my life over the past 3 years and to come to acceptance about where my life is now. In this episode, you're going to learn that healing from a pandemic hangover is similar to healing from grief, you'll also learn the necessary steps to heal from the fear and uncertainty that you likely felt during those unprecedented times. My mission for this episode is to assist you in healing your lingering and unresolved feelings from the COVID 19 pandemic so that you can show up as your fullest self and as the new version of yourself who has come out on the other end of this unprecedented time. I think that It's important to acknowledge that you are a new version of yourself, and that's okay. Life is always changing. The only constant in life is change. So I think that part of the healing is accepting that many things in life are unexpected, and it's all about how we move forward from where we now. And so I hope to help you to reacclimate to the world and figure out what your new normal looks like. After this episode, I'll have journal prompts on my website to you in healing and bringing awareness and feeling your feelings that may be lingering from a pandemic hangover. So with that, let's jump into talking about the mental and emotional effects of living through a pandemic.
Amanda Durocher-What is a pandemic hangover? [00:03:06]
So what is a pandemic hangover? I would broadly define pandemic hangover as lingering or unresolved feelings or wounds result from living through the COVID 19 pandemic. While the pandemic was okay for some people, most people experienced very challenging times because the world was filled with unprecedented fear, uncertainty, an overwhelming feeling of things being out of our control, isolation, and inner turmoil. and that left many people lacking a sense of safety and control.
Now that society has deemed that the pandemic is over, I think there is a widespread need for recovering and readjustment to a new normal. I actually pulled the new view advice community, and 67% of people said that they were still feeling effects from the pandemic and 33% of people said that they felt totally fine. So I know that this isn't something everybody is feeling, but I do think it's important to talk about because I said, I pulled the community in over 50% of people said that they still feel impacts from the pandemic, and I think that's important for us to acknowledge.
And I just wanna clarify that this podcast is not discussing the impacts of getting sick with COVID 19. We're only discussing the mental and emotional aftermath of living through isolation stress, anxiety, and the experience of inner turmoil caused by living through a pandemic. As I mentioned, I polled the new view advice community on Instagram at newviewadvice. If you're not following me, I invite you to join us there. I often ask questions to assist me with these episodes. And so 67% of people said that they were feeling impacted still, and they felt that inner turmoil. And I asked a follow-up question too. I wanted to know how are people still feeling these effects. And here are some of the answers I received. I just wanna thank everybody who contributed to this list. So some of the answers I received from the community were a lingering sense of loss, loneliness, and isolation, Anxieties in settings that didn't used to give them anxiety. For example, anxiety when driving, anxiety in group settings, anxiety at the mall, a sense of loss of control or no accountability by the community. Dating post COVID is strange.
A lot of old places are closed, and this leaves a feeling of longing, engrieving the old and having to accept that things are different. A continued disconnection from family friends or other relationship, people mentioned not enjoying the same things they used to, feeling apathetic and having PTSD dumps. So this podcast episode is focused on how to heal from a pandemic hangover. And so for this episode, I'll really be leaning on my own experience as an example. And as I mentioned, we're not going to be going into politics or public health. This is really about us healing from the feelings within our body. It's important for us to grieve, that which we feel we lost and to acknowledge that if we're still feeling impacted, that's real. I think that there's such a rush to move on as a society because so many of us feel like time was lost. but it's important to honor that which we did lose, which for you, it could be a family member or a friend. We have to acknowledge the fact that a lot of people didn't die during this time as well. and that those grieving processes didn't always have that full honoring cycle, you know, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, funerals were kept very small. Some people were doing funerals through Zoom. So if you lost somebody and you didn't have the chance to go through the full natural grading process, acknowledge that for yourself. If you're still feeling grief for the loss of somebody or for the loss of the life you which you had, which is what I really experienced, it's okay, and it's important for us to acknowledge that and to not make ourselves bad for it or wrong for it. I think that the rushing of trying to move past this is a human coping strategy that we use all the time. So many humans don't wanna sit with their difficult feelings, so that involves pushing past it. And as a society, we're trying to rush a process that deserves honoring and where some people may be feeling left behind because still feel impacted. I know for me as a very sensitive and emotional person, I need that time to feel my feelings. I can't shove them down. you know, people talk about putting your feelings in a box or, like, shoving them down, and I really struggle with that. It's really important for me, my mental health and my emotional well-being to allow whatever feeling wants to arise to arise in the moment. And for me, I really noticed that I had to move through a grieving process post pandemic.
So I want to mention that a pandemic hangover is extremely common, and you're not alone if you are experiencing this. I conducted some research and found several studies that assessed the impact of the pandemic on mental health. 1 national Institute for Health study found that the pandemic had a profound impact on mental health and that now almost half of Americans reported symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorder. Some groups of people including racial and ethnic minorities and people with pre existing conditions and children were more likely to be affected than the average. So this just shows you that there are definitely mental health side effects from living through a pandemic. I also wanna mention that it saddens me to see how little conversations and resources are offered by the US government to assist with healing from the mental and emotional impacts of the pandemic. I think that so many people have been left to figure out how to heal from the impact the COVID 19 pandemic on their own or with little to no support. I wanna send love and compassion to anyone out there who has felt alone angry, tired, depressed or anxious during and after the pandemic. I know that I have felt all those emotions and more And the more research I did for this episode, the more angry I honestly became at the realization that so many people have been greatly impacted by this collective trauma and there is little to no help from our leadership. So I wanted to share a bit about my experience in case my story resonates with anybody else, but like most people, the pandemic was hard for me. When the pandemic started, I felt uncertain and felt like a lot of things were completely out of my control. I feel like I went from having a very routine life that felt within my control. to being very out of my control, and that was very new for me. I won't rehash all the things that happened and the feelings during the beginning of the pandemic because wanna focus on how I've felt recently and towards the end of this national emergency period. And when the world started to go back to normal.
Whatever that means. I honestly think of a quote from the movie Halloween town. I don't know if anybody's seen it. like a Disney movie, but it's a quote where the eccentric grandmother says, being normal is vastly overrated. And that's what I think of at the word normal because it's really, like, what is normal, but that's a conversation for another day. So I really felt like the expectation was that life was just supposed to resume to normal, but it didn't for me. I felt that after everything that had happened and after so many people had died, and so many families and people had suffered, hardships, isolation, and pain after the immense division that was felt throughout the world and where I really noticed in America that just returning to normal without a mourning period for everything that everyone experienced felt very strange because I didn't feel like my life returned to normal. I felt like we were in a pandemic, and then we slowly exited a pandemic, but there wasn't really that hard stopping point. It felt confusing for me. I didn't really understand when it ended. It just slowly started to end is how I felt, so I didn't feel like there was that full closure moment for me. And I feel like life still is different. I feel like there's more division, more anger, more hatred towards one another. I feel like, especially here in America, there's always been division, but it feels heightened, and it doesn't feel like it has gone back to normal. And I found that it can be hard to voice how the pandemic is still impacting me, so I know it's probably hard for some of you to voice it as well. You know, I find, for me, a place I've really discussed it as in therapy, which is why I feel comfortable discussing it here, but it's taken me a while to do this episode because I feel like for a long time, I was judging myself for still being impacted, and I was feeling like the only one. And I was making excuses for still being impacted. I was like, Maybe it's not really the pandemic. Maybe it's this other thing I'm going through. But the truth is I really did have to grieve these past 3 years. This was a real experience I moved through. and I just don't think I'm alone with feeling this way. I've found that some of the impacts are also hard to put into words, but I'm going to try and do my best with articulating the lingering impacts I've noticed in my life. And I also feel like there's a collective fear that this could happen again And that's a fear that didn't exist before the pandemic, and it has created more fear rather than more peace and harmony throughout society. I wanted to spend some time telling you how I felt and how I've approached healing from this pandemic hangover. And, hopefully, this can assist you as well and maybe give you ideas on ways to begin your healing journey if you haven't already or to continue healing. I always like to take what resonates, leave what doesn't, I think that the healing journey is insanely personal.
So I think that what works for me may not work for you, but it's important to just begin to bring awareness to how you're feeling and asking yourself what you can do to begin to move forward in a new way. So some of the impacts I really felt were that I had this feeling like I lost something over the past few years. And that's something I have a hard time articulating, but it's this real feeling of loss. And I feel like I lost the end of my twenties. I feel like I lost the beginning of my thirties. And I feel like my life stalled for 3 years. I feel like I had to grieve that my life isn't where I expected it to be because I lived through this 3 year period where life felt like it stood still, but at the same time, it didn't because I'm an entirely different person.
And I started this podcast, and I got sober. I mean, so much happened within those 3 years, but at the same time, there was a part of felt like it was standing still or that it was waiting for the pandemic to be over. And I just feel like there was this deep feeling of loss that I had to allow myself to feel in order to move forward. And I know a lot of these feelings of loss are a bit irrational. I think a lot of us and barely judge ourselves for where we are now compared to where we think we should be. Rationally, I don't know where I would have been 3 years into the future if a pandemic hadn't happened, would have I reached those unrealistic expectations?
Likely not. My life would look different in some way than 2. It's so hard to know. It's so hard to live in that what if place, but I to acknowledge that there was a part of me living in that what if place. There was a part of me that continued to wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't lived through a pandemic, and I think it was just important for me to acknowledge that because it was sort of, like, this loop playing in my head of negative thoughts. And I had to bring that awareness to be like, oh, I'm living in this what if place, and this what if place isn't real. It's not a real place to be. I have to accept. where I am. And in order to accept, I had to grieve those lost expectations. And another thing that personally I've noticed And this may just be me. I'm not sure. But another thing I had to grieve was that there was an easy goingness that I felt like existed before the pandemic.
And it's likely that this may have just been in me this feeling of easygoingness, but it feels like it's societal. And I feel like people became really sure tempered and rude during the pandemic. I think people were under an immense amount of stress and took it out on one another. I know that an example I can think of was that I was on a flight in 2022, and it was still when we were in the pandemic, so people were wearing masks. still, and we were still being asked to stand 6 feet apart. And I was waiting to get off the plane, and I had a woman push me with, like, all her force and told me that I wasn't getting off the plane quick enough and told me to quicken up. But she pushed me. Like, physically pushed me. I'd never experienced somebody physically pushing me to get off a plane. And I was on another flight in 2022 where somebody yelled at me to go quicker to grab my bag quicker. And I just felt like I had never experienced this before. society having such short tempers with one another. And when I was traveling last year in 2022, there was a lot discussion about how tourists were being a little bit more short, tempered, and rude to hotel staff, tourist companies, and flight attendants. because what I think happened was that people were insanely stressed, and they were finally getting to travel, and their expectations weren't being met. And instead of being emotionally mature, a lot of people are being -- actually immature. And I really felt this in 2022, and I've continued to feel it in 2023. This loss of easygoingness is how I'm labeling it because it just felt like all of a sudden, everybody was so stressed and taking it out on one another rather than acknowledging each other as another human who went through the same thing you did. I think that's part of what's missing from the conversation. Yes. The pandemic affected us all differently, but we also all went through it together. And I feel like it created more division where I feel like it should have created more unison more union within us, more, hey. Can I help you? Hey. This has been really hard on me. Has it been hard on you too? More vulnerable conversations? But instead, there was this division created, I think, it was partially because of the media, but we won't go into that today. But I really just wanna honor that because I know that I've noticed the short temper, the rudeness, and the inability to see one another, to me, it's heightened. When somebody's yelling, to me, I see an inner child. I see somebody in an incredible amount of paint. I see somebody incredibly stressed. I see somebody who does not know how to be emotionally mature and my heart breaks because I believe that most people haven't been taught how to be emotionally mature. But, unfortunately, most people, when somebody yells, see something else. They see an angry person, a mean person, and then it causes people to react. But I'll also say with that, I have compassion when people get angry and short temper, but it also, during the pandemic, something that was triggered for me was my bully wound. So being bullied in my youth was really up with witnessing all this short temper and all this yelling, There was a part of me that experienced fear. Oh my god. People are gonna bully me. Oh my god. Are people gonna bully me when I leave the house? Oh my god. Oh my god. and I had to heal that over the past 3 years. And I can say that I believe the pandemic brought up a lot of our deepest fears. And over the past 3 years, we either looked at those fears or we lived in those fears. And by lived in, I mean, we really had them up but didn't look them, and that's an incredibly uncomfortable place to be. So I just wanna honor. If you're listening to this podcast, I bet you healed over the past 3 years. I bet you've begin to look at yourself if you hadn't already been on this journey. So I just wanna honor that because I think a lot of us did a lot of inner work over the past 3 years because there were a lot of fears we couldn't continue to ignore and suppress.
Amanda Durocher- Steps for Healing Pandemic Hangover [00:18:36]
So I also wanted to share some recommended steps I have for healing a pandemic hangover. if you are feeling stuck on your healing journey, these are some steps I took when I began to realize that I was still really impacted by the pandemic. So the first thing I recommend is self care. I realized I had to accept that I was still impacted by the pandemic, And what I think happens with trauma is that when we are in the middle of a trauma, we're in survival mode. But when that trauma is over or when we have created enough safety around ourselves, that's when we're able to heal that trauma. I see now that a lot of these impacts from the pandemic arose for me when the pandemic ended. Because while I was in the pandemic, my body didn't feel safe enough to release this because there was still too much unknown going on. I was only able to look at this now because a part of me felt that the trauma, quote, unquote, was over. So my first piece of advice is self care. I find that this also happens a lot of times with people who have parents who can maybe be abusive or emotionally harmful, and they're not able to look at the way their parents are impacting them until they leave the home.
So you get a new house or you move in with a roommate or a partner, and all of a sudden, you're able to look at your relationship with your parents in a different way or look at that relationship with your roommate in a different way. So you had a roommate that was abusive, or say you break up with somebody We talked about this in the emotional abuse episode. When people break up, they almost begin to see things in a new light. And oftentimes, it's because when we're in the cycle, when we're in the trauma, when we're in the difficult experience, it's too difficult to look at. We're just trying to survive. And so it's not until afterwards that we're able to look at it that fresh lens, and I think that may be what a lot of us are going through, is that now we're able to look at the pandemic in a new way because we're no longer in this cycle of unknown uncontrollable uncertainty. So for me with self care, I had to admit that had some healing I had to do. I had to honor myself and the hard feelings I was having. I found that I also related as some people in the interview advice community voiced that I had a new sense of anxiety that didn't exist before. And so for me, I had to honor that. When I was going out in public, I had to cap it. I had to limit the amount of time I go out. And I've continued to up the amount of time I can go out in the world I had to honor that I didn't have the same stamina I did before. That was a self care practice I practiced. I also had to take care of myself If I had difficult feelings arise, I allowed myself to feel them, and then I allowed myself to take a bath. I allowed myself to relax because the body went through a trauma. So when it's coming out of that trauma response, it's gonna be tired. It's going to need rest. It's going to possibly move through the stages of fight or flight. It's going to release this trauma. And as it does take care of yourself, that's okay. It's okay if your body is releasing this experience. I know that for me, I had to allow myself to grieve. I had to allow myself to feel feelings, and I had to take care of myself. And I think for a lot of people, they were on a really high stress response. for years. So while they're coming out of that, you're gonna need to relax. You may find that you're more tired. You may find yourself eating comfort foods. You may find yourself just wanting to veg out and relax. That's okay. Give yourself what you need. Listen to your body. Your body is always communicating with you. The second piece of advice is to allow yourself to grieve. I know that for me, as I mentioned, I felt like I lost something. And even if you can't articulate what you lost, allow yourself to grieve. As I mentioned, I had to grieve the end of my twenties, which came and went. I had to grieve the expectations I had for myself, My life is so different than it was in March 2020. For example, I'm sober now, and I really don't know if I ever would have gotten sober. If I didn't live through such a stressful time, that heighten my coping strategies, so I began drinking more because I was on lockdown. So when I didn't leave the house, I just ended up drinking every day at 5. And if that didn't happen, I'm not sure I ever would have gotten sober. So I'm actually very grateful for that, but it's a big change that's happened in my life. And I've had to grieve what my life was, what I expected it to be. Grieve the end of my twenties, which weren't what I expected them to be grieved the beginning of my thirties. You know, I had this moment too where I looked in the mirror, and I saw myself, which felt like for the first time, which was a little bizarre. And I looked at myself, and I was like, when did I look like this? When did I get so old? And I'm not old, so I'm not saying that. But there was a part of me that had to grieve these 3 years and the effect they had on my body.
I can see it, and it's hard to articulate. And maybe you felt that way or maybe you haven't. But That's just an experience I've noticed in my own life. And some of these things you grieve may feel silly, and I know I've felt really silly for having so many feelings. I mentioned with looking in the mirror and be like, when did I get old? That's felt silly to me, but I had to allow those feelings up. There were a few days where I kept judging myself, and I wouldn't allow myself to just cry about it. But once I allowed myself to cry, I was like, oh, yeah. I'm not old. I'm fine. Life is good. I had to allow that feeling to move, and it's moved, and now I can move forward. And I really feel that that's true for so many of us the more we allow ourself to feel these feelings, the more we will free ourselves of these impacts because the grieving process is allowing those feelings up, allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel, and then the feelings move, and then we move through the grieving, and then we come out the other side. as a new person. I really feel like grieving is a rebirth process. It's like the Phoenix where you burn to ashes, and then you rise up a new version of yourself. So my third piece of advice would be to become aware of how you've been impacted by the pandemic. Maybe you're like me, and it can be hard to put into words, or you don't know how you've been impacted, maybe you can connect to the feeling zone. Maybe you're more anxious. Maybe you're more depressed. Maybe you have these lingering feelings that won't go away. Maybe you have less relationships than you did before, maybe you feel lonely, maybe you have this newfound social anxiety. But I invite you to begin becoming aware and putting words your feelings and any beliefs created during this time. It's important when healing to become aware of what we feel and why, And I also think if you identify with having more anxiety, it can be really helpful to become aware of the worries and fears flying through your head. because the more you acknowledge them, the more you can begin to let them go. And the more you can see if these fears and anxieties just became heightened over the past 3 years and if they existed before the pandemic or if there are new fears and anxieties. As I mentioned, one of my big fears that came up was being bullied.
This fear existed before the pandemic, but it was very heightened through the pandemic because of all the division in the world. and all the pain and suffering I was witnessing and the way people were treating one another. This wasn't a new fear, but it was brought to light and I spent the past 3 years really sitting with it. And I'm in an entirely new place with that, and I'm really grateful for the chance to be with that part of me. but it's also a painful process. It also involves getting to know yourself, which leads me into, I think, self communion and inner child work is really how full when healing from a pandemic hangover because I think many people had their sense of safety rocked. I don't think it's a small thing to have your sense of safety rocked. I invite you to be kind to yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Notice where you feel safe and maybe where you don't feel safe. Notice of places that used to feel safe, no longer feel safe, and that's okay. And I just invite you spend time with your inner child because oftentimes, when our sense of safety is rocked, it's that inner child part of us that feels unsafe, and it brings up all those inner child fears. You may have noticed that over the past 3 years that you had some really deep rooted fears arising, and it's important to honor the one within you to be with yourself. Right? Self communion to me is being with yourself, communing with yourself, sitting with your heart and acknowledging your own pain and being with you. Because you deserve to be with you. Because you're amazing. You're awesome. You're always enough. You're always worthy.
There is nothing to fear, but fear itself. You know, that's something that's come up for me recently is seeing that so much of what I'm playing out is just fear. but that doesn't mean there aren't incredible amount of emotions that have to be felt as well. It doesn't mean that the fears don't feel really real because they really do. Fear can be terrifying. but the more you commune me with you, the more you'll begin to free and liberate yourself from those fears.
So as I mentioned, I know for me, a lot of inner wounds came up over the last 3 years to be witnessed and healed. And if this happened for you too, I invite you to really lean into that inner child work, lean into communicating with yourself. It's important to create that safety within yourself. and that starts with you getting to know you in your own heart. And I believe that all these steps will help lead you to my 4th piece of advice, which is self acceptance. And what I found during this time is that healing from the impacts of the pandemic have continued to bring me back to self acceptance. I've continued to return to accepting who I am right now and where I am right now. And is this the life that I expected? No. But that's part of life. And as I mentioned, the only constant is change.
And the more I grieve, the more I'm able to lean into acceptance. And the more I feel that inner peace and acceptance of where life has brought me. And I think something that really helps with acceptance is to look at what you learned over the past couple years. Look at who you've grown into. Look at what you're grateful for. I think if living through a pandemic teaches us anything, it teaches us that life is short. and life itself and every day we're here is something to be grateful for. So if you're having trouble being grateful today, start small. Are you grateful for your heartbeat? Are you grateful for the breath of life? Are you grateful for your life? If you're having a hard day, are you grateful for your comfy bed? Are you grateful for your support system? Are you grateful for your creativity? Are you grateful for your favorite TV show? I love comedy. comedy saved me throughout my darkest days. It's continued to save me throughout my life. The ability to laugh and to make light of situations and to sometimes escape life is something to be insanely grateful for. Part of self acceptance is looking at the lessons you learned finding gratitude in those hard moments and accepting yourself, accepting this new normal, accepting where life has brought you and leaning into this new life that you are living. Right? Each present moment is a gift, and how can you begin to shift your perspective to see that gift? rather than ruminating on the past. And I personally know how incredibly hard that is. I just don't say this with, like, Oh, it's so easy. I have spent, really, the past year living in the past is how it feels, and I'm just coming out of that. I'm just seeing that I had to feel all those hard feelings. I had to sit with all those hard memories. I had to be with the one within me in order to get to this place of self acceptance. So I hope something in there was helpful. I'm going to now jump into a listener question where we discuss how the pandemic has left somebody feeling depressed and anxious and what they can do to move forward from here.
Amanda Durocher- Listener Question [00:29:51]
Despite the pandemic officially ending, I still find myself struggling with feelings of depression and anxiety. It feels like the world is returning to normal while I am stuck in the past. I feel like my life has changed so much, and then again, not at all. I am unable to shake my negative thoughts, and it's been hard to find happiness in my daily life and in my old activities that have resumed. I feel like I'm in a rut. What should I do? Thank you so much for this question. I'm so sorry you've been struggling with negative thoughts and feeling like you're in a rut. I know you are not alone. I think many people can relate to this question. I know that I felt this way as I've talked about. And I wanna thank you again for this question because I think that so many people can relate to it and This is a great conversation for us to have. So first, I wanna say that it's important for those of us who are still feeling mental and emotional impacts from the pandemic to acknowledge that. I think it's so easy to judge ourselves and to feel like we shouldn't be feeling that way or we shouldn't be feeling all these feelings, and it's so easy to go on social media turn on the TV or go out and see happy people with happy lives and to judge ourselves. I know I can do this. It's just it's so easy to compare ourselves And I think when we're healing from a pandemic hangover, it's important for us not to compare ourselves. because as I said, I pulled the Newview advice community and 67% of people said they felt impacted, where 33% said they didn't. So there are people who don't feel the impacts of living through the pandemic, or they've already grieved it. They've already moved through it, and they've already healed. And that's great. But you don't wanna compare yourself to somebody else because, 1, especially when it comes to social media, you don't really know what's behind that post. And many times, people are going through many inner struggles that we don't see on social media. And to your journey is always gonna be unique and different. your path home to yourself is very unique. That's the point of being here on Earth. It's about your unique path and bringing your own unique gifts here. and getting to know yourself and learning to embrace life to the fullest in your own unique way. So it's just important to remember that when healing from a pandemic hangover and really healing from anything. So my first piece of advice would be that I think that you want to start bringing awareness to how you're feeling and these negative thoughts you're having. I think that acknowledging how we feel and knowing it's okay how we're feeling is a great first step. I know for me when I was beginning to notice that I still felt impacted by the pandemic, at first, I really judged myself for it. And I thought, this is crazy. Oh my gosh, Amanda. Move on. And that's not how moving on works. We can't force ourselves to move on. We have to sit with ourselves, we have to give ourselves space to allow whatever wants to rise up in order for it to then be released. It's not about shoving ourselves through some door to move forward. It's about creating space for whatever is arising within us. And the truth is I had a lot of hard feelings arise, and it was important for me to allow those up and to feel them rather than judge them. I also wanna mention here that I think it's important to differentiate feeling our hard feelings and ruminating in our hard feelings. If you are ruminating, it means that you're living from this negative space and you're in a cycle, and you're not actually moving the energy. Feeling our feelings is different. It's getting to the root of that feeling. It's identifying that feeling. It's giving that feeling all the space it needs. Sometimes when we ruminate, it's because we don't allow the fullness of that feeling up because it can feel too hard to handle on our own. So we just focus on a tiny aspect of it. But feeling our feelings is allowing all that wants to be felt up. And I think it's important to notice the difference when talking about this question. So, for example, if you find yourself having a lot of negative thoughts, I invite you to start bringing awareness to these thoughts rather than ruminating on them. What are these thoughts? Did they start during the pandemic, or were these thoughts there before the pandemic, but pandemic brought them more to the surface or to the forefront of your mind. I think that the pandemic created new fears, but I also think it brought to the surface, many fears that people already had, but were easily ignoring or suppressing. As I mentioned throughout this episode, my fear of being bullied really came to the forefront of my mind throughout the pandemic. It's not that that fear didn't already exist. It did already exist. but the pandemic brought it to the surface. I also think for a lot of people, the fear of death arose during the pandemic, the fear of dying and the fear of our loved ones dying and the brevity of life and how short life can really be and how every day is really not guaranteed, so each day is a gift. And I think that fear always existed within people, but living through a pandemic, it made this fear so much more present for them, and they couldn't ignore it. Like, they maybe were before. Maybe they had been escaping it. Maybe they had been suppressing it. Maybe they had been putting it in the back of their closet, so to speak. And when the pandemic happened, that fear was brought to the front of the house rather than the back of the closet. So I think becoming aware of your thoughts, aware of your feelings, and aware of your fear help you to bring new insights and to help you to get out of this rut. because when we're in a rut, we really just wanna start taking action. to move forward and making choices. And that choice could be just to bring awareness to your thoughts. So that's a choice. Say you're playing negative thoughts in your head starting to write them down, and identify them is a choice, and that's an action to help you to move forward. So for you, if you're feeling depressed and anxious, oftentimes, it's great to start with small steps. I wanna stress that you are not your negative thoughts, and it's important to remember that. Many of these thoughts that you're having are connected to core beliefs or your core fears. And so beginning to become aware of these thoughts will help you to connect back to yourself and dive deeper in what is really going on in your inner world, which leads to my next piece of advice that I think it's really important for you to focus on self care. I think self care is important for every single person, but especially if we're feeling depressed and anxious, it's important to take care of ourselves because it can be so easy not to take care of ourselves. So it's important to begin taking care of ourselves. And as I mentioned, this could be small steps, or you could create larger changes in your life that's gonna be up to you and where you're at. But I think that one idea I have and I wanna stress that as always, with anything in this answer, take what resonates, leave what doesn't. But I think a great step for you could be to begin practicing a morning or an evening routine And so maybe it's journaling in the morning or meditating or maybe it's doing yoga in the evenings before bed or maybe it's dancing or exercising first thing in the morning. Maybe it's going on a walk. Maybe it's spending time in nature. But I think if you feel as though you're in a rut, it can be helpful to begin implementing something for you to look forward to. and also to begin creating new habits. It's not easy to create new habits. It's not always easy, but I think this could really help you. And my guess is maybe some bad habits I don't even know if I wanna call them bad habits. But some habits that are no longer serving you were created during the pandemic, and now you need to create new habits now that the pandemic's over. I know that was true for me. I've recently started going to the gym. And over the past 3 years, I tried to be an at home exerciser, I was convinced that was gonna work for me because I love being at home. I found that it really didn't work for me. I'm really bad at working out at home. like, the last thing I wanna do. And I look at the mat on the floor or the bike I have, and I'm like, I have no interest in doing that. So it felt like such a chore. But recently, I started going to the gym, and I love going to the gym. I'm so surprised by it, but I just love it there. I love the energy. I love the gym I chose. but that's made such a difference for me with exercising. I had to create a new habit, and why I've been able to stick with it is because I enjoy doing it. So when creating a new routine and looking at creating a morning routine or an evening routine, really try to focus on what feels good. What do you want to do? I think it's really important to feel the hard feelings, but I also think that we have to enjoy life. And if you're feeling like you're in a rut, One of the best ways to get out of a rut is to implement joy, play, and things that you look forward to. Maybe another self care thing is if you have a friend, and you could create weekly date nights with this friend or with your partner or with your husband or spouse. and you do weekly date nights where you guys go out and do something fun, you try new restaurants, or you find a pottery class, or you go to a movie. I don't know. Those are just examples. that came to mind, but I invite you to find something that you could enjoy doing and leaning into that. I also wanna stress that as I mentioned in the intro, I think it's important to remember that living through a pandemic, living through a trauma is going to require rest on the other end. So if you've been feeling incredibly stressed and you find yourself starting to feel less stressed but really tired, that's normal. Don't judge yourself. As I said, we all lived through a collective trauma. It impacted everybody differently and especially for people really sensitive or very empathic
It was very difficult, and there's gonna be a rest period you need, a time just to take care of yourself and to feel safe and to create that safety within you. So another way you can lean into self care is just how do you feel safe? When do you feel safe? Respecting what you need when you need it and not judging yourself, being kind to yourself.
And I also wonder if for you, if also pushing yourself outside your comfort zone could help, so you said that the things you used to do don't really resonate anymore. They don't feel good anymore. I relate to that. Before the pandemic, I used to love to go to bars. Now I can't step foot in a bar because it's just It's loud. It's noisy. I don't drink. I pick up on other people's feelings. As an empath, I just feel it. It's just doesn't feel good to me anymore.
And so I've had to create new things in my life, new things that I look forward to, new places where I meet people. And I'm wondering for you, you need to start looking into creating these new places and things that you enjoy. You know? If things aren't resonating for you now that you used to enjoy, are there things that you've always wanted to try that you could try now? And it's about learning who you are now, not about expecting yourself to be anybody. It's about taking the time to get to know yourself. And maybe you feel like you're a new version of yourself, but you don't quite know who that is. That's okay. It's a great place to be to explore what the new things you enjoy doing are, the new people you might enjoy seeing and spending time creating the space for yourself to explore maybe some things outside of your comfort zone. That may resonate for you or it may not, but I wanted to invite you to explore the world from this new place rather than trying to fit the old mold or the old version of yourself, allow this new version of you to come forward. I think when it comes to depression and anxiety, it can be because we're not living authentically. There can be so many reasons for this, but One of the reasons can be fear. It can be that we're afraid to embrace our new selves. We're embraced to show this new version of ourselves to the world. It can be that we're afraid of what people will say or We're afraid of failure. Many fears can keep us in depression and anxiety. And sometimes the best thing we can do is try something new, step out of our comfort zone, and continually learn that it's safe to be the version of ourselves that our heart is asking us to be. My next piece of advice for you would be lean into grief if you feel grief. I think that there's a grieving stage when we realize we have become a new version of ourselves. It sounds like you've changed over the past 3 years, but you may be holding on to old ideas or expectations of yourself or maybe even old relationships. And as you bring awareness to yourself in this experience, I invite you to explore if there are things you're ready to let go of. Maybe it's letting go of where you thought you would be now or letting go of you thought your life would look like, or maybe screaming the friends you no longer resonate with, or the life that feels like a coat that's too small and you're ready to let go of. maybe you lost somebody and you're still grieving that person, and I invite you to continue to allow yourself to grieve those that you may have lost physically or maybe relationships have ended, but allow yourself to grieve. I think the pandemic was a life changing time for so many people, and priorities changed, relationships ended, people died. The brevity of life was made so clear to so many of us, and it's okay to grieve. I know that in order to let go of the pandemic, I had to grieve. I had to grieve a lot. Life is very different now, and that's okay. But I know I had to grieve my old life that I didn't realize had disappeared over the last 3 years.
So I invite you to feel your feelings, honor yourself, honor that you survived a really hard experience. I think since we all collectively went through this experience, we haven't collectively acknowledged that it was a hard time. I think there is people who are like, oh, we all went through it. So it mitigates each other's pain. That's not true. Pain is pain, and everybody's experience was different, but we all went through a hard time, and that's okay for us to acknowledge. It was a big deal. It was a collective trauma we all experienced. As I mentioned, our sense of safety was rocked. Families were torn apart by differing beliefs. Our government showed that they were human and were unprepared to deal with such large scale issues. Neighbors were cruel to one another. People were scared. People were alone. People were isolated. People died. That's a big deal. That's worth honoring. That is worth grieving. So if you find yourself a little stuck, that's okay. Be kind and patient with yourself, and ask yourself what you need each day. We went through a lot of fear, but I also think it's a time in history that reminded us that life is a gift.
Allow yourself to enjoy your life. What can you do to add more joy and happiness to your every day? Maybe you have to feel hard feelings one day, and maybe you can do something really fun for yourself the next today. I know for me, I've felt a lot of hard feelings over the past 3 years. That was really important for me to get to where I am today. A lot of fears came to the surface, and I had to look at them. A lot of my self care was just allowing myself to witness myself. That's okay too if that's where you are. But I invite you to also implement those joyful activities because joy is healing in and of itself. And my last piece of advice is to practice self acceptance. Through my own journey, I found that acceptance often comes after we allow ourselves to feel all the feelings. and honor our experience. Acceptance is truly when we accept where we are and who we are, I invite you to begin thinking about all the lessons you learned over the past few years and thinking about what you're grateful for. Gratitude really helps us to lean into acceptance because through gratitude, we get to see the bigger picture, and we get to see our hard experiences through a new lens.
Gratitude can feel hard at first when we're looking at hard lessons and traumas. but I believe there's truly always something to be grateful for. Here for you, it could be that you're grateful for your life. You're grateful for this day. You're grateful for your health. or maybe you're grateful for your resilience, for your strength, for your love of self. I know for me, I always come back to being grateful for my journey. it's been really, really hard. My life hasn't been easy. I don't think yours has been either. I don't think you would be listening to this podcast. If You never experienced anything hard. I think that these conversations are for people who understand that life isn't a cake walk, and I don't wish the pain I've experienced on anyone, but it's also taught me so much. It's also the reason I'm connected with myself And it's also the reason I honor myself. It's the reason I know how to hold myself. It's the reason that I know how to be compassionate with myself and others. And my journey taught me how valid all my feelings are. It taught me the gift of discernment. It taught me love of self and how to come home to myself. And that's something I'm extremely grateful for. And the more I heal, the more I come back to acceptance. Acceptance of where I am And whenever I'm unable to accept where I am, I'm often living in the future or the past. And when I'm living in the future, I'm living in some expectation I have for my life. And when I'm living in the past, I'm often reliving a traumatic experience or a fear. And so when we are learning to embrace self acceptance, it's about coming back to the present moment. It's about learning to accept where we are and learning to trust that we are on the right path, that life is continually showing us our next steps, and that it's okay to be where we are. We don't need to be anywhere other than where we are right now, and that is self acceptance. Because self acceptance is also accepting Tomorrow is not guaranteed. All we have is right here right now. And so when we begin to accept that, we begin to let go of all those expectations we had for ourselves and enjoy this present moment.
So I hope something in this answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful to be here with you each week and to continue having conversations with you about relationships, trauma, and everything under the sun. So thank you for having this conversation with me about a pandemic hangover. And I wanted to invite you if you haven't already to leave a start rating and a review for the podcast. Rating and reviews really help to bring more people to the podcast, and I am just so grateful for everybody who has already left a rating and review. It means so much to me. I pour my heart and soul into this podcast. I hope you can tell with each and every episode, and I hope you enjoy every episode you listen to. And if you have a question, please reach out. I truly am passionate about creating safe spaces to help people to heal. I know that this is a space I wish existed on my workers days. So thank you so much to everybody who leaves a radiant review for the podcast. Thank you again for tuning into another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful to be here you each week and to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Send you all my love. See you next time.