Lockdown ending - feeling depressed

[knickerthief1]

Is anyone else finding it hard to adjust to the idea of returning to a more normal life or AIBU? I feel like maybe I'm losing the plot! I've always had a good social life and an active life in general. I really thought I would struggle badly with my mental health during the lockdown but I've found I've adapted to it very well and have hardly left the house in the last 10 weeks. Now things are changing I can feel my mood plummeting. I've been working from home for the duration.

Plus i rent

Plus i have still had exams, essays and a dissertation proposal but i am exceptionally privaledged in that i wasn't working in hospital so i acknowledge that.
All being said...this is not a personal attack on anyone...i know many have found this very tough....no one is lesser or greater for enjoying lockdown....it is almost a coping mechanism for coping with a very difficult situation.

I live a very busy and full on life (in terms of commitments)

I work, have kids at school, a disabled baby with constant stream of appointments, plus I have a health condition myself which means regular blood tests and appointments. There isn't a day of the week that I have down time. Something is always going on. I squeeze in appointments around work.

Lock down has been eye opening. I don't know if I can go back to how it was before? I was burning myself out, was in therapy for anxiety [therapy has stopped but anxiety levels have also plummeted]. I was over stretching myself!

I hate home schooling and I hate WFH but I am seeing how much I was balancing and how I wasn't coping so well.

I have terrible mental health and it has improved massively in lockdown.

I have re-evaluated my life and will now be looking at changing my job, where I live and what I do with my spare time, if I am able to do so.

I now feel a great deal about the old normal was what was making me so ill.

I think my husband feels the way you do. Lockdown removed some things he didn't much like (going on buses and tubes, having long, face to face meetings).

It's been interesting helping the children with their distance learning. I've learned more about how they both work.

For me, lockdown is more or less a load of stuff that we're not allowed to do - I won't miss that. I also won't miss the perception that people are watching what other people do (particularly in the early days of lockdown, when people were kicking off about their neighbours taking the car out more than once a day despite not knowing why).

I suspect that people will remember the things they liked about lockdown, not the things they didn't (much like the Second World War, which my grandma said was awful). So things like park benches being taped up, playgrounds being shut, people writing "STAY THE FUCK AT HOME!!!!!!!" all over social media will be forgotten by a lot of people.

Yeah I’m dreading life going back to normal.

Before lockdown, life was really dragging me down. During lockdown I’ve been struggling but I’ve in a bubble and I’ve slowed down a bit. To then have to adjust to life being semi normal again I think I will find it hard. Especially when there will still be restrictions. I think semi normal sounds worse than fully normal.

I think some people are quite harsh about people feeling this way. For me it’s nothing to do with enjoying lockdown (but is that a crime if that’s the case for somebody?) it’s more fear and anxiety about the world now. I can’t explain it. Lockdown has affected my husband’s business, I have struggled to educate 2 small children, we have financially suffered. However, lockdown ending and the social distancing and the state of the world is making me anxious and depressed. It’s not a case of ‘oh everything is so rosy and blissful’ at all.

Of course it's not a crime to enjoy lockdown. However the people that have need to recognise that being able to enjoy it is a privileged position.

Similarly, nothing wrong with having enjoyed lockdown, but people need to recognise that not everyone has and stop making sweeping statements about it as some have on this thread alone, and many others.

Statements like:

@wincarnis
"It has been great for introverts." - despite many introverts saying they're been tearing their hair out about not getting any alone time

@Cocobean30
"I do think it has taught people to appreciate the simple slower pace of life life." - SOME people, plenty of us haven't got to experience this simple slower pace of life or have experienced it and bloody hate it.

@changedforthisman

Hoping that no one will be travelling into London for work until 2021. No acknowledgment that lots of people like this and just hoping that their employer lets them continue to work from home, just putting their wants on all of us.

And many others on this and other threads too.

@changeitupagain yes SOME people, you are right. We are talking to the op sharing her experience and identifying with it , not trying to make sweeping statements about everyone, I apologise for missing one word out of my sentence.

The entire world is geared towards extroversion so many of us have taken this time as a chance to take a break. I’m still working so it’s not been a holiday for me btw. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s fine, but maybe you can see that others don’t enjoy their life outside of lockdown because it is geared towards being on the go in the rat race 24/7 so no one has the energy or time to stop and think that it might be meaningless, thankless, capitalist driven. Yes many introverts have hated lockdown because of loneliness and restriction but it’s still a chance to reevaluate what life could be like if it wasn’t consumer driven (and unlike lockdown without the restrictions that are stressing people out)

‘Of course it's not a crime to enjoy lockdown. However the people that have need to recognise that being able to enjoy it is a privileged position.’

But everyone enjoying anything ever is in a relatively privileged position. People who enjoyed life before lockdown did so by benefitting from the misery of a whole bunch of people.

Lockdown has been a beautiful time of self reflection for us here. The money loss has been the least that has mattered.

I have rarely been anxious since lockdown, after a general daily lifetime of it.

Health, the peace, quiet, home and not having to constantly clock watch has been what’s mattered to us here

People who enjoyed life before lockdown did so by benefitting from the misery of a whole bunch of people

You what? I was able to earn a living pre-lockdown. I enjoyed life a whole lot more when I had a job and could leave the house to do something useful. How on earth did that make anyone else miserable?

And @Sunflowersok the loss of my income is the very worst thing that lockdown has done to me. You must have been in a good financial position to start with, if losing your income hasn't been a complete and utter nightmare.

@Celan oh I’m not saying we haven’t suffered. My partner is self employed and we have lost thousands. We have somehow managed to pay the bills, nothing more!

And get still just ‘scraping by’ has been wonderful enough

People who enjoyed life before lockdown did so by benefitting from the misery of a whole bunch of people

Sorry how is me enjoying meeting with my friends, going to bars, enjoying the gym and liking going to the office to work each day to get out of my tiny room in a house, benefitting from the misery of other people?

No one is forced to meet friends or go to bars or gyms. If people feel they can't say no to people getting them to do these things they need to work on being assertive and saying no. Lockdown is forcing everyone to stay in, those of us who want to do things have no choice in the matter as opposed to people who don't like socialising/activities in normal times who have the choice to say no/not go to things. Me going to the office each day isn't benefitting from other people misery either, anyone who doesn't want to has the right to request flexible/home working and is likely to be granted it if reasonable (Atleast in my office). Whether with mandatory home working right now there is no choice. We are all being forced to do this and can't request anything else. Yes i understand it's necessary right now for public health but doesn't mean it doesn't make me and many other miserable.

The difference between normal times and lockdown is in normal times people can take steps to reduce going out if they don't want to - working from home, saying no to social events, online deliveries ect, whether in lockdown everyone is forced to stay in, there are no options or flexibility, and we can't take steps to reduce the time stuck inside without any of the things we enjoy because everything thing is closed/banned for the sake of public health.

‘Sorry how is me enjoying meeting with my friends, going to bars, enjoying the gym and liking going to the office to work each day to get out of my tiny room in a house, benefitting from the misery of other people?’

It isn’t. Just as my anxiety disorder being alleviated by not having to do a horrendous commute and awful job for the first part of lockdown didn’t cause misery to others. And my reduction in asthma symptoms due to reduction in air pollution during lockdown isn’t causing misery to others.

But the normal then and the normal now are both based on winners and losers.

If you had a job you enjoyed that paid you enough to go the gym and go out to bars then you were in a position of privilege compared to people like me living through austerity who could barely afford essentials.

Just as I am apparently now in a position of privilege because my life has been better under lockdown, according to the previous poster.

Does anyone else think that ‘our little bubble’ is the new ‘making memories’?

People who enjoyed life before lockdown did so by benefitting from the misery of a whole bunch of people.

What a weird, asinine statement. People living their normal lives by working/studying, dating/socialising, travelling etc benefit from others misery how? Frankly if society living normal lives makes you miserable, it sounds like you’re just jealous of others. That’s a you problem, something you should see a therapist about. You certainly do sound miserable.

The people who want lockdown to continue, particularly so they don’t have to be social, are the ones “benefitting from the misery of a whole bunch of people”.

I can’t see my therapist. We are in lockdown.

This thread has taken a very bizarre turn, as conversations always do when people start using privilege arguments.

We are not in lockdown to make people happy or unhappy. We are in lockdown to keep pressure off the NHS so they can treat as many people as possible.

Some people are better equipped to deal with lockdown and have more emotional and physical resources at their disposal to do so. Some people were better equipped to deal with life before lockdown. Some people, including me, have seen in lockdown, how their life could be better after if they made changes in their lives.

I'm feeling very off balanced. This partial return to social activity relies very much on knowing people who are a combination of fairly local, not drowning in excessive workload/ home schooling and on a similar wavelength on risk assessment particularly where children are concerned.

The structure of my life revolves around school runs, and various voluntary activites or groups. None of which is back on, and it is highly likely under current circumstances that I'm barely halfway through this peopled-out isolation, stuck in with family with little worth doing beyond the home, especially while not being fussed about joining the crowds eager to get back to shops etc as they reopen.

My life is very far from being normal for some time to come and that's very discombobulating as people I want to reconnect with are in such a diverse range of positions.

I miss the real normal when you didn't have to worry that someone might take a social invitation as a akin to a death threat. This half-life is so wearing and demotivating.

It is definitely the half measures that create a lot of the apprehension.

Having so many normal activities means that people are crowding into the few things it is possible to do.

And as so much of it revolves around ‘keeping the economy going’ all the activities that are really meaningful to people - properly seeing friends and family, doing voluntary work, education, going to free clubs and groups is shut down in favour of all the consumerist stuff.

I understand why it is being done that way, but it is creating a very odd outside world. No wonder so many people are heading to the beach as the only other option.

Yes I find this bit depressing.Just waiting to see who has a job in our house.😥 I loved the peace and quiet and no pressure to socialise.

Lockdown has been such a relief, not looking forward to going back to long commutes, and hope things change so that wfh becomes more common.

On the other hand, having the virus and dh having the virus has not been such fun, so wish I could have enjoyed the lockdown without the illness!

I can imagine that if you stayed healthy, and wfh or were furloughed, lockdown must have been great, like a long summer holiday.

Definitely second the weirdness of having nothing open on a nice day but a few shops, so you end up staying in. I have NCT friends who would probably meet me for a walk now, but National Trusts aren't open (they say they are - we have a grand total of one open here, and it's Lacock, which is a village with narrow streets and a house in a courtyard), Woodland Trust places near me have still got cordons on the car parks... the river and canal paths are too narrow. So we're just not bothering to suggest it.

I'm sure that in the future, people will look back on the long hot summer of 2020 in the same way old people look back on the Blitz, as a difficult time, yet one that has some very positive memories because people pulled together, helped their communities, got to spend quality time with their families, even as they maybe had to forego some luxuries or everyday activities.

I suspect the queues and search for loo roll will be viewed through the same nostalgic lens as rationing and having to bake cakes with dried eggs.