Does anyone else feel like this post lockdowns?

[LizzieWallace]

OK, I admit I don't think I feel in a great place...I'm just going to write about how I'm feeling and maybe someone has some advice on how to feel better or has been through similar.

January 2020. Myself, DH and DS (10months), all happy. DH had to go away abroad with work for 2 months which was awful but we got our head round it. While he was away covid hit along with lockdown. He had to stay longer due to not being able to travel/changes in his work due to covid. Basically due to everything the 2 months away turned into just over 5 months. We don't live near any family.
DS was a wonderful baby and I honestly enjoyed every second, but at this point he was still BF and up 5-6 times every night. I was coping ok though so I thought. We just plodded along, nice walk every day, occasionally going out to get shopping etc. I didn't work at that point due to mat leave, then I couldn't go back to my job as husband was away, so it was literally the 2 of us. Contact naps, up a lot at night, and playing.

I feel like I just spent the whole lockdown just thinking "Thank god were still alive, I don't need anything else. Thank god my family are safe, I can wait to see them. I don't need solid sleep, my baby waking up means he's healthy" etc etc. I must have been running on pure adrenaline constantly. But I honestly felt OK.

Then DH came home. He wasn't in a great way mentally due to being away, missing so much of DS so that was hard. My parents struggled a lot not seeing DS as much too (although we now get to see them monthly). I started to feel so worn down.

Things are much better now. Everyone is happier...and it's like it all just hit me. I know, I'm so so so lucky not to have lost anyone due to covid, but I honestly feel like I'm in fight or flight mode constantly. Whenever I hear certain music (the opening/closing credits to moon and me on Cbeebies) I just can't stop crying. I heard that music a lot when DH was away and it just takes me back there again. I'm crying now as even thinking about it just upsets me so much.

I look awful. I'm fatter, I look older, my hair is awful, my IBS is constantly flaring up. I don't smile as much as I used to. But I can't quite pinpoint what exactly is bothering me.
We're all back to normal now. I can see my family, dh is much better, ds is thriving, im back at work. Yet I just feel so overwhelmed and exhausted....and every time I hear that fucking song I lose it!

Why is it only now the dust has settled that I feel like this?

Hi @gruffling much the same. The death of the Queen has really rattled a very vulnerable family member. Could really do without that. Hope your ok.

Lockdown was traumatic. For some it will have had a lasting impact. I do t think this has been recognised enough. I am not the person I was.

Could you book some counselling. We were lucky and not that affected by covid. Dh and I went to work as normal, ds's just got on with work at home. None of us that badly affected by covid mentally.

Yep I relate to this post. I'm a bit better now but the sadness around the lockdowns overwhelms me sometimes.
Making a conscious effort to plan and book future activities and have a calendar up in the kitchen helps a lot to remind me that largely planned stuff jydt goes ahead like normal now.

It took me a while to shake off the oh it's all pointless feeling

And yes the empty shelves in supermarkets are really triggering.

I also find a real disconnect between everyone's recovery rates and that's all disconcerting

Yes I can relate although I'm starting to get through it a bit. I've had a shit year in terms of my mindset and mood, and then took a while to get over covid. As someone above said, I'm not sure how much is lockdown and how much is small children - my eldest was turning two when lockdown hit, and the youngest was born July 2020.

I've been feeling a bit brighter lately so I'm hoping that's the start.

I completely understand. I feel the same. My mental health has been poor the last 18 months or so, and particularly awful this year. I saw my GP the other day and explained it to him, he said it's very common since covid that anxiety, depression and PTSD have soared. We may not have felt it at the time, but the lockdowns affected us all psychologically. The feeling that our lives could be changed in such sudden, drastic ways has definitely affected a lot of people. I know it's shaken me, it's made me feel that nothing is certain any more, anything could happen at any time, including terrifying things.

To suddenly be separated from family and friends, to feel it's unsafe to hug your own mum or grandma, to hear daily death counts, to have businesses close, hospitals cancelling life saving appointments, to flinch every time someone coughs, to feel afraid to get too close to people on the street, to have to queue outside buildings for safety, to not know when it would end. Etc etc etc. It was an absolutely crazy time!

Is it any wonder many of us are having a hard time now? Some people have bounced back no problem, but it's understandable if you haven't.

The post about school holidays resonates with me. I don't know how to deal with them any more and I've lost my drive to push family out and make them do anything. Some of it is my DCs getting older, some of it is that I can't face things like lugging them out to parks for cheap afternoons out.

Between lockdown, tiers and illness I struggle to make plans any more because I hate it when things get cancelled. I don't look forwards to doing things anymore because I don't trust that they will occur. I had Covid at Christmas last year so haven't had a real Christmas since 2019. Some things like swimming still need pre-booking and everything feels like a chore.

I wasn't in any bubbles because family isn't local enough and friends have local family. Many people I know didn't want to do anything in 2020 and I was stuck with a weird combination of lonliness and being permanently peopled out by DH WFH and DCs being around most of the time. My life was very slow to be restored, spring 2021. I think I was in a state of depression until about August 2021.

I long to piss off on an AI holiday on my own and just please myself for a week, and I don't think I would have felt like that without all the Covid restrictions.
DH doesn't "get it" because he retained the intellectual focus on work and some social contact. My life was turned off and reduced to battling home schooling and feeding people. The impact of home schooling and children constantly sobbing into my lap or having raging meltdowns meant that last year I couldn't cope with doing their reading or homework. We needed a break from school "intruding" into home life to let the damage heal.

We never saw "granny" again. Restrictions dragged out longer in her country and by the time travel arrangements became reliable, her health wasn't and we couldn't guarentee where she'd be or if she would recognise us. At least she existed long enough to make it to her funeral.

So much damage has been done to society.
At my youth groups, I've never known such anxious, clingy cohorts of children- the ones coming in now were around school starting age and didn't have secure routines before they were taken away for so much of their life at the time. The older children who remembered the groups pre-lockdown and were y2/ y3 have socially recovered better and faster than those a bit younger.

We've moved to be closer to family, which is helping, but also driving it home what we all missed out on. DS has also now started nursery and, like @Gruffling, I'm so conscious of his poor socialization with other children

, to hear daily death counts, to have businesses close, hospitals cancelling life saving appointments, to flinch every time someone coughs, to feel afraid to get too close to people on the street, to have to queue outside buildings for safety

The government has a lot to answer for regarding this. The daily ‘death counts’ weren’t even accurate ffs. Who updates an entire nation on how many people have died DAILY? What does that do to people’s mental health? What was the actual point apart from to scare us into obedience?

The post about school holidays resonates with me. I don't know how to deal with them any more and I've lost my drive to push family out and make them do anything. Some of it is my DCs getting older, some of it is that I can't face things like lugging them out to parks for cheap afternoons out.

Absolutely this. I just can’t be arsed any more.

There's no apart from, that's exactly what they were trying to do. There was a deliberate and concerted attempt to frighten people, particularly as those who were lower risk weren't scared enough for the government's liking. See the bit about the perceived level of personal threat needing to be increased in the document below.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/882722/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf

Unfortunately, that's hard to put back in the box when it's not convenient any more and many people have suffered because of it.

Freckl "I am absolutely traumatised by what happened during lockdown. I have to leave the room if it is joked about."

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I don't think anyone who knows me well would joke about it, because they are finally starting to see how odd it is that I didn't top myself. I never say "I told you so" but they are starting to see the psychological stuff. I'm surprised to see it mentioned here tbh. Thought those posts got taken down, you couldn't say a word against lockdown here without it being deleted before.

I have completely cut myself off from news, and I have hardly anyone left in my life, so I don't really know what most people think about it. But the people close to me saw me going through a different process to them over the parties etc and subsequently don't now mention it much at all. I usually ask them to stop even if they even say the L word.

it's the kind of damage that many of us won't recover from. I need new friends but I am wary of everyone in case they were and still are pro lockdown.

I think everyone is affected to some degree. I didn’t think I had come out of it too badly, mentally, and then early on in the Russia/Ukraine war there was a lot of fear about Putin using nukes and somehow it really took me back to the start of Covid- I sort of felt like if this one completely unprecedented scary thing happened, how was I ever supposed to know if another one was likely? I got really panicky and started obsessively anxiously scrolling the news, which is exactly what I did at the start of Covid. The fear of the early months in particular, watching the death rates go up, will stay with me I think.

I found the bank holiday and funeral difficult this week - it triggered lots of feelings from the pandemic.
The feeling of being forced to participate. Taking my DC for a walk in the countryside everywhere with a toilet being closed for the bank holiday - I have some bladder issues and that side of lockdown was just so hard.

I don't think I'll ever get over the playgrounds closing. I still feel a sense of panic rising when I think of it. I was struggling with looking after my two toddlers in a small flat at the time. When everything shut it was awful. I wasn't scared of covid but that lockdown was a nightmare. It felt like society had gone and I was trying to raise tiny, impressionable, active dc in a dictatorial, apocalyptic world and not let them be messed up by everything we had filled our lives with disappearing. I cried every day when DH came home.

The closure of playgrounds was disgusting. Showed exactly where children were on the priority list.

Just to say thank you all again so much for replying to this thread.
I went to a shop today that I don't go to often, its expensive but its the closest in walking distance to my house. Going there today just reminded me of doing my shopping there as I could walk, and keeping DS in his buggy with the rain cover down to protect him. I strictly kept my distance from EVERYONE and got shouted at by a woman for going down an aisle the wrong way.

I still can't believe that all happened. I honestly think I'm in shock from it all.

And yes, the playparks. Horrendous.

Sending so much love to those feeling the same ❤️

I've only read your posts OP. I was at a different life stage to you during lockdown but have similar feelings looking back. I honestly think its why I can't really work from home successfully now, it takes me back. I feel lonely and anxious.
I remember seeing a woman with a small toddler at our local park and the look on her face... the child was whinging, and I thought 'yeah, you're sick of this place, sick of just seeing each other...'
I really think parents to small children had a really awful time.
When I hear people say they enjoyed lockdown I want to shake them and scream 'did you have your eyes closed or something??' How could people be happy when that was happening around them?