To think many people are still dealing with the trauma of COVID, but we just don’t talk about it?

[BluntLilacGuide]

It feels like everyone wants to act as if life has completely gone back to normal, but I don’t think that’s true for a lot of people. The pandemic disrupted lives in ways we still haven’t fully processed - whether it’s grief, anxiety, financial struggles, or just a lingering sense of uncertainty.

I see people who still struggle with social anxiety, who haven’t fully recovered financially, or who feel like they lost years of their lives. But because everything has “moved on,” there’s no space to acknowledge it anymore.

AIBU to think that COVID left a lasting impact on people’s mental health and general outlook on life, even if no one really talks about it?

The response to covid was awful, not the disease for most people.
I'll be fuming about it for many years to come

Surely it depends. For myself and dh the impact was minimal. Didn’t adversely affect our income (if anything we saved more), didn’t affect our hobbies, or food choices.
It did decrease our family and friend socialization but we were not very social in the first place.
i used the home time to improve my fitness.
we did at one time test positive for Covid and experienced mild-moderate sore throats which never progressed.

There’s something odd about people who are so insistent that ‘we have to move on’, yet click on a thread about the psychological aftermath of Covid when it’s posted. How about taking your own advice and moving on by not clicking on the thread?

Because then they wouldn't be able to tell other people what to do. It's not about them not wanting to have a discussion, it's about them not wanting anyone else to have it either.

I do think society as a whole has been impacted, people are far less well mannered and really comfortable with being their truly unpleasant selves in a public setting, post Covid.

However, we do have to move forwards. We can’t continually talk over the same things, expecting a different result.

The same thing happened after The Spanish Flu pandemic. People want to forget.

I agree the impacts remain, more so for some people than others. It need not have been as much had there been prompt responses in early March and again in September 2020.

At least we are able to talk/write about this, unlike those who died, at least 20,000 of whose deaths would have been avoided with prompt action.

I think it's down to a combination of factors, COVID being definitely one, but yes, the world has changed since 2020 and there's a clear before/after and it feels like it's accelerating.
I don't think it's fair to say that people are less resilient. I think we are all being tested in new ways and our mental resilience needs to build up in response. I would suggest it's down to a collective feeling of loss of control and enduring uncertainty.

I rarely think about it anymore, I definitely don't want to talk about it.
We had just lost our home and expected the renovation to take about 3-4 months but because of sodding covid we ended up in a shitty rental house for almost a year.
I ended up on furlough, I hated every second of it. Stuck in a house I didn't like with relatively little to do. I left my job in the end to be a key worker just so I was working and 'allowed' out of the house.
I am not traumatised by it, in fact I think we use 'traumatised' too easily to describe uncomfortable feelings (obviously if you lost someone I am not talking about you!).
I think if some of us learned to look forward a little more and dwelled on the past a little less the resilience of the population would increase exponentially.

Covid to me is like a bad relationship we move on from it and leave it in the past.

Agreed.
What option do any of us have but to move on?

If you had a particular trauma - lost family member, were unable to go to their funeral, or other catastrophe, then talk about that particular thing.

If your child was a 'lockdown baby' then acknowledge that and do what you can to help them catch up.

But....generalised doom reflection is really not a help, is t? Individually or collectively?

It was a difficult time. Unless we had particular upsets we are moving forwards. We NEED to move forwards.

It significantly affected a small minority of people, I would guess. Most of us just found it annoying, and immediately shrugged it off. As mentioned above, resilience is key. Why dwell on something that is best forgotten?

Totally this! The whole concept of lockdown is outrageous.

I totally agree, I feel terribly bitter about it, sadly some have short memories of how awful it was.

It's interesting, even during the peak of the pandemic there were people who didn't want others to talk about what they felt to be the trauma and downsides. That has continued. I don't think I've ever seen a thread of any length on here on the topic that hasn't featured some posters complaining about others wanting to have the discussion.

Covid was horrible for some people. A friend lost his mother and aunt to it. Another lost two work colleagues. It was a very traumatic time for some people, and trauma isn't something people just get over.

My friend is an anaesthetist, but she worked in ICU during Covid. She said it was like a plane crash or major event every day. It was extremely disheartening that they'd do all they could, yet see the patients dying in large numbers. Then the next day was the same. It just went on and on.

The experience wasn't the same for everyone. I had a great time, but others are badly scarred from their experience.

Op most people are not over it, particularly the ones that respond aggressively. The fact is even the nation’s debt alone from this disaster is something we are all having to live with, and it will be impacting every one of us in different ways.

The children and teenagers that died from suicide will not be able to get on with their lives, nor the millions left with chronic anxiety, depression and stress disorders. And they are the lucky ones, at least there is hope for them with the right help.

Those that died alone gasping for air can’t tell you how it had ruined their lives and about their awful endings. Nor those to come.

Long covid is a thing

Get a grip. It's over.

You just contributed to it not being over by posting about it 😂

Well, I'm fine (even though I had a bit of a minor breakdown over home schooling). The DC seem absolutely fine.

But....this mass amnesia is weird. Apparently a million people in this country are suffering from Long Covid and everyone's running round going "Why are so many people not working?? Lazy, that must be it. Everyone's suddenly got lazy", and nodding sagely at each other 🤦‍♀️

I hated it at the time but am not traumatised now
I thought the lockdown was largely unnecessary

I was furloughed 14th March 2020 then made redundant. I'm a single mum and I pay school fees, so it was all pretty stressful.

I home schooled and, apart from ds, was completely isolated. Ds' dad refused to be involved. Then I was diagnosed with cancer, went through 8 months of treatment, surgery, lost my hair, coped with chemo & radiotherapy, had my immune system wiped out, all in isolation. Covid helped me, in that I was treated very fast, no waiting, no delays.

I've since found another job & sorted my finances. I've see ds through gcses since then, changed industry.

I can honestly say I don't think about covid at all. It's very old news for me. There's too much else going on.

I realise I am much luckier than those with long covid or those who lost loved ones.

Absolutely agree. I've noticed a shift in behaviour in people in the last few years, much angrier and selfish.

I can't stand talking about it as it angered me so much. I found it all really hard going mentally - the taking away of liberties and people turning on one another was what bothered me the most. I think it really brought out the absolute worst in some people and it was scary to see.

I believed then and still believe it was a pile of bollocks and that the result would've been the exact same whether we'd locked down or not. Some people would've caught it and sadly died, and no amount of social distancing was going to stop that.

Im angry that I was forced to get the jab in order to travel abroad to visit a dying relative, all for it to turn out to be a pile of old bollocks that we'd have to be regularly jabbed to save our lives.

The scary way most people went along with what they were fed by the media like a pack of zombies.

The virtue signalling and clapping for the NHS and "front line" shite.

People blindly following the 15 minutes only exercise crap and telling people they'd be arrested for sitting on a park bench.

That's what I found traumatising. I'm so angry that I have barely any memories of my kids from those years as we were unable to do anything and I've probably blocked it out as I was just trying to get through it.

It was all an utterly ridiculous overreaction.

Definitely it exacerbated my DDs already fragile MH. She’s never recovered so far. Worries me so much