Precipice Psyche

I wonder how long it will be before everyone - and I do mean everyone - relaxes enough to go back to their pre-pandemic, carefree attitudes and outlooks.
Maybe they never existed in the first place. Maybe everyone was rushing around in a state of constant fear without me realising it, but it seems to have reached epidemic proportions now. (Sorry to use the word 'epidemic' but its better than saying 'unprecedented'!)
I remember hearing from someone at the end of 2020, who was a mental health specialist, who said that, although the lockdowns were horrendous for people, the real psychological challenge for most would be the aftermath. When you're in the middle of something, you get on with the job of dealing with it. When it's over, it really hits you. So this guy was expecting mental health and wellbeing to get much, much worse as we went through 2021.
I wonder if we're seeing that a bit now. I'm not saying the situation in Ukraine isn't worrying for everyone everywhere in Europe and even beyond, but the way some of the British public are reacting is almost like we're on the brink of invasion ourselves. I'm not sure the behaviour isn't more a conditioned response based on what we've been through in the last two years, rather than in reaction to Russia's actions. Yes, these are scary times, but no scarier than what we were facing back in March 2020, and we coped with that, and its behind us. But we're all so used to being constantly frightened by the world immediately around us that we're now attaching that residual fear to whatever situation gets thrown at us. The pesky Covid is nowhere near as dangerous as before - we can hug elderly relatives without fear of killing them, we can pick up items of shopping without wearing three layers of protective gloving, and thanks to the vaccines we can even get a positive diagnosis now without thinking we could end up in hospital. But the good old fight-or-flight adrenaline-loving worrywort part of our brains is still in that 'Life Is Threatened - Act Accordingly' mindset and is overreacting to everything. That's why we had the Fuelishness back in September. That's why Christmas shopping was being ordered in Autumn. And that's why people are stocking up on tinned fruit again now.  A horrible foreign war being played out on the News has everyone panicking and getting them to try and act now JUST IN CASE something bad happens here, when they don't even know what words should follow the phrase 'Just in case....'

I refer you again to my posting yesterday - either it won't affect us, or it'll affect us in such a major way that it won't matter how much Nutella and dried pasta you have stashed away in your garage because you won't be around to eat it. 

 

I should point out at this point that I am not a qualified psychologist (in case these last two blogs haven't made it painfully obvious).

RC 25-2-22