To think everyone needs to get a bloody grip

[crochetmonkey74]

Lighthearted -I'm so sick of everyone being so flaky after the pandemic. Last minute cancellations, emails not replied to for far too long, friends being just all a bit wet about everything. Anyone else feeling totally fed up and want to tell everyone to get a bloody grip

UABU. I had to cancel a long awaited dinner with friends a few days ago at the last minute due to worsening flu symptoms.
What was I supposed to do? Sit in a restaurant sneezing, being snotty and spread my happy germs around?

The flu would surely have kept you away from a meal out pre covid surely so again not really what is being referred to.

I think its important to distinguish between resilience and social expectations.

Many social expectations changed during pandemic restrictions and for some children they might not actually remember or understand what was expected of them pre covid. They haven't seen the two years at school above them go through similar to learn from them. My eldest DN is in her final year of school and she's not had a full proper year of school with normal mock exams etc since 2018-2019 when her A levels seemed waaay in the distance. My DC are both primary aged and can't remember what it was like pre pandemic. This "going back to normal" is actually pretty new for them and some will take longer to adjust than others.

Separately, resilience should be thought of as "bouncing back ability" not " suffering in silence ability". True resilience is being able to recover from adversity not just plough on regardless getting deeper and deeper into distress. Recovery takes time and considering we're only just out of the last phase of restrictions it seems a bit early to assume kids will instantly be able to recover. For some it will take months.

I know a couple of people who feel everything involving leaving the house is “a bit soon” to start doing again after covid. So they plan stuff and then back out, they dither over invitations and then decide against at the last minute, and people get fed up but don’t say anything to them because oh well, it’s been a scary few years, maybe they do need a bit more time.

I don’t think they’re taking the piss (there are a couple of people I know elsewhere that are - pub fine, gig fine, holiday fine, office faaaaar too scary - but these ones I think genuinely are nervous). But it has got to a point where taking their time does not seem to be helping. And I’m not sure telling them “oh of course, totally reasonable, you take all the time you need” is helping them much either.

If it was them deciding they never want to socialise again then okay, seems a bit unhealthy but at least it’s a choice, but if it’s “I can’t wait to start doing things again when I feel ready” then at some point you need to just bite the bullet and push yourself a bit, or you’ll still be at home going back and forth on invites to see people in twenty years’ time.

I'm inclined to think you have a point to some extent. Those people who did not lose a relative or develop long covid or who didn't work through the pandemic in A&E or emergency services etc really should be trying to get on with things now. How did we get through a combination of the First World War and Spanish flu? Not sure we could now.....

I wouldn’t really call loss of livelihoods, rising suicides, rising levels of domestic violence, missed education, loneliness, deaths, separation from families as nothing.

Im sure you’ll be fine getting on with your life, but a lot of people will need extra and ongoing support.

Just because you see it as “hysteria over nothing” doesn’t mean a lot of other people do.

@Howmuchwood I totally agree with your description of resilience, I said similar upthread, I am concerned the word is being misused widely now to basically bully people to cover up stress etc.

I’m glad you’re not teaching my kid.

How would you know they’re not?

Some people have leaned in to the covid culture. Every illness is a, disaster, sniffles need time to be off incase its the dreaded one. It's all so much bollocks.

The only person in my family who has tested positive was my child
He had a slightly sore throat, oh well that was like 2 years in. Nobody else tested positive yet he had to have 10 days off at the time. Believe me, his older brother tried his hardest to test positive.

It's fucking gone now, it's all fucking bollocks. Long covid my frigging arse. Psychosomatic much? Tbh I think it was all a pile of shite. So many normal everyday viruses cause the exact same symptoms. Oh right flu and pneumonia viruses have gone away, it's all covid. Chinny fucking reckon.

Sorry but this is bollocks. The people of Ukraine are dealing with worse and are showing great fortitude.

Modern people are not inherently weaker. As for WW1 - there was huge trauma after that. People just went privately mad. Beat their wives, kids. Drinking. Shell shock. PTSD.

Is that better than the 21st century version? I don't see how.

Me too. Half the time you just know they're working from home even before they start to apologise for the dog barking the background etc. With quite a few people they barely sound awake, as if they're lying horizontal in their pyjamas. Talking too informally, couldn't care less etc etc. I do think that some people working from home think they're still in the first lockdown period. They haven't gone back to normal "I am a professional working for a professional company" mode.

Why the fuck were people told at the beginning to wait until they they were hypoxic to get treatment? Surely the tried and tested treatments of steroids and antibiotics should have been deployed? It's fucking ridiculous.

I agree it is time to draw a line. some institutions and people are getting away with bad behaviour in the name of covid.

It's true, you look back now and can't believe what we did.

@Petros9

I'm interested in this. I know of 3 children who have had months / years off school due to anxiety, and a few more who are eg excused from PE because they say it makes them anxious

My theory is -

(1) kids have been encouraged to talk about mental health, but not taught the skills to deal with it

(2) feeling anxious about exams is not anxiety

(3) in many cases, staying at home is not the answer. It feeds the anxiety

(4) there's something to be said for stiff upper lip / get on with it

I totally get that some people have had life changing issues and having had covid 2 months ago it certainly wasn't what I would call 'mild' however I do think at the end of the day if you are doing a job and being paid for it then you have to be prepared to put the effort in. My H has commented on the number of people who only seem to now answer emails after 6pm when they have a full time day job or poorly staffed customer service centres still with the 'we are prioritising xxx' messages - I think covid is now being used a lot as an excuse for cost cutting and poor service-- I wish places would also admit it's not all covid related- a lot of it is other things-including Brexit in certain sectors.

I had a chest infection just before the pandemic, thankfully they gave me some penicillin and I didn't just slowly drown in my own mucous.

I think you've expressed this insensitively and you're overlooking the fact that the pandemic has had far-reaching consequences for a lot of people.

But I do think there's a germ of truth in what you say. I think the world has become far more tolerant of people being deliberately and pointedly unsociable. There's been a much greater tolerance of the professional introvert, which I am ambivalent about: on the one hand its good that people who struggle with anxiety etc are able to be more open about this but I do think its also become a bit of a stick for introverts to beat up on people who enjoy socialising. I noticed a lot of unpleasant threads on here at the tail end of the pandemic from people banging on about how much they "hate people", how they never want to see anyone again except their own husband and children and how vacuous people who enjoy having a social life are etc.

A lot of resentment has developed in our society about the sort of enforced socialising which goes with the corporate world. It's healthy in some ways to have this backlash because enforced team jollity can be horrific, but this backlash does have quite a spiteful and resentful underbelly as well which I think is partly envy directed at people who are more comfortable with socialising. There's a middle ground between being a social butterfly and a grumpy agoraphobic who only wants to see their own family and I think we've lost track of where that is.

I meant "we" as in the UK really. I agree totally that the Ukranians are showing great fortitude. I think we are particularly mollycoddled in this country and not sure we could get on with things as well as the Ukranians have.

In all honesty I lm getting ‘all peopled out’ so much quicker lately.

a morning out and about talking etc and I need to retreat into a hobbit hole alone for the afternoon.

it’s not covid related, I’ve always been this way but 2 years of minimal people contact and coping well with much of the time alone to now having to engage more regularly with strangers, yep. I’m saying No more often. I need to relearn my coping strategies and/or find new ones.

it’s not a failing, just my brain taking a while to adapt to a new situation when it was happy as it was

I'm a teacher too. I think part of it is we've just been expected to get on with it and we've had no choice but to put a brave face on, be positive, hold it together etc because we're literally the adult in the room. And whilst yes we all feel burnt out etc and we should take it easy that isn't actually possible because it just keeps ramping up. Ofsted back, exams, ever increasing workload, kids and parents more needy and comfortable to email you and expect rapid responses about every little thing and not really having any choice but to keep going no matter what.

When you're doing that for the better part of two years whilst meanwhile if you needed to nip in the chemist to pick up a prescription you'd find a queue outside in the rain because only two people were allowed into a chemist that's as big as your classroom yet the staff are on go slow mode and don't give a toss that people are outside getting wet it's a special kind of frustrating. I found lots of things frustrating because I was being made to act as if everything was normal at work whilst being made to wait, get wet, have shit service, deal with not being able to talk to a gp, see a dentist, etc because... covid. We've had to deal with really mixed messages and realities as teachers. It's fine it's just a sniffle, you'll be fine for our working lives v omg stay 2m away from me, you can't come in here without a mask, it's fine for us to let you get soaked in the rain etc in the rest of our lives.

The younger end of secondary are extremely needy and demanding and many of their parents are too, that's not to say I blame them or am slagging them off for it but, none the less it's exhausting. There's been no slack where I work. We've had ofsted, still pushing on with crazy targets, still pointless observations and book looks and so on as if covid never happened and therefore having to act like that yet I have to remember to allow slack and have compassion for everyone and everywhere else. I think I'm saying it's probably natural to feel a bit intolerant when you've had to pull your big girl pants up so many times and so far without a word of thanks and mostly just being slagged off from all corners.

People blame teen anxiety on the pandemic, and not on near-constant phone use (and consequent poor sleep/lack of physical activity).

It seems obvious to me that it's phone use and scrolling that's harming our kids' ability to cope with the real world 🙇

I think there’s a whole discussion to be had about the way in which we are psychologising absolutely everything and creating a culture of mental vulnerability instead of mental strength. Nerves before exam = “anxiety” = medicalisation.