The past two years have been hard. The good news is that as Covid cases continue to fall and restrictions are lifted, a lot of things are going to get easier.
Here’s the not-so-good news: Our belief that things should be easier can make us feel worse if they’re not. As difficult as the pandemic has been, there has been one saving grace: We can at least understand why life is hard right now. When we feel sad, disappointed, anxious, lonely, or languishing we know what to blame. Life isn’t supposed to be easy in a pandemic.
But what happens when we no longer have the pandemic to blame for how we’re feeling? What if things improve, but we still feel like we’re languishing?
If we’re not careful, this incongruity can send us into a negative feedback loop: If we don’t feel better as the pandemic improves but we think we’re supposed to, that can make us feel bad about feeling bad. We start thinking that something must be wrong with us. And that sense of failure and shame piles on to our languishing, which makes us feel even worse, and down goes the spiral.
How can we avoid this negative feedback loop as we emerge out of the pandemic?
… Check out the rest of the article on my new blog at Psychology Today.
Also published on Medium.
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