Emotionally 'lost'

[TheMildManneredMilitant]

Anyone else just feel a bit emotionally untethered at the moment?

I'm starting to feel like I've been through a trauma but one that is really difficult to define and may not even be over. When I've coped with death and other trauma before I could draw from guidance and other experiences to help me name my emotions and recognise triggers but it's like there's just no reference point to draw on.

Yesterday I saw my dad for the first time in months. Instead of just being happy it was almost like it triggered some kind of grief- even though he is very much alive and there is no reason I couldn't see him every week if I wanted.

I also wonder whether there are many of us who just gritted our teeth and got on with it but who will fall apart once we start to return to normal.

Not sure what I'm after posting here but thought I may not be the only one who is a bit emotionally lost at sea.

If it helps anyone, I always knew I’d die at 33 and my cousin knew for a fact she’d die at 27.

She’s in her 40s and I’m in my 50s.

I said to DH at the weekend I feel so weird and untethered, all sort of Twilight Zone-y . Nothing terrible has happened to me/us due to covid, other than the financial impact has been pretty crap as DH is self employed.

In a strange way I prefer lockdown to this sort of half and half world, I don't really know why but it felt more certain, if that makes any sense at all?! I have absolutely no inclination to see people or go anywhere, even though we now can, and it's not because I'm scared of covid, I feel like I've been institutionalized. Everyone around me is like yay! lets go here / there / meet up and it feels like So Much Effort, I just don't have it in me.

@Pumpkyumpkyumpkin that is exactly how I feel too, I just don't have the effort in me. I just passed on booking some holiday with friends, because I don't feel safe enough with them or close to them to be able to be however I am feeling. It's just too tiring to socialise and I'd rather be at home. I don't even miss people now, which is awful as after the last two lockdowns I was desperate to see folk and so lonely. I just don't care anymore.

@Time40

Time Rhubarb sorry you feel the same. I don't want to turn the thread political, but if we went back to normal that would be fine for me. Perhaps the death thing is that I don't want to live in the future that lies ahead but it's morphed into a sense of death approaching

@LunaHeather. Thank you. Actually, I think you could be right in the above analysis. And also, because we have all been very aware of the great numbers of daily deaths, it's bound to put death into the forefront of all our minds, I think. Let's hope that our sense of doom eases off as the situation improves.

I haven't watched TV news since April 2020. I have no idea what the death figures are on a daily basis. I avoid media as much as I can.

But I can't avoid what I see when I go outside. I think I have actually been very lucky to use the Tube for work - never thought I'd say that! - because there is some sense of getting out, having a change of scene etc. But generally what I see outside, on balance, is incredibly discombobulating.

@RhubarbTea don't feel bad, a whole holiday with several people is a really big step when you're out of practice with socialising. Think we'll all need to ease ourselves in a bit and do some smaller things first.

I thought I'd be fine as I've spent a lot of time this year working out of the home, so I'm used to chatting a lot to colleagues etc. Turns out colleagues are the only people I'm used to chatting to! When it comes to everyone else it still feels like a mental effort. I'm sure it's just a matter of getting back into the habit though, and the more we do it the more normal it'll feel. Think I might try and arrange some meetups with people in threes, so it doesn't matter as much if one of us zones out occasionally.

That sums it up very well for me too Pumpkyumpkyumpkin . I hate the half way house that we're in, I think because it feels like yet another set of social rules to have to adapt to which will then change again in a few weeks.

I think it’s hard because ‘opening up’ has always been followed with a rise in cases (especially at Christmas). It’s hard to believe that this won’t happen again. I find it hard to get my head around that it might be different this time around.

Yes, I totally relate OP.

I really thrived during the first lockdown. I had lost my mother the year before and my extra marital affair had ended and I'd just come back from two months overseas, so I felt like the lockdown was the perfect opportunity to heal and go inside.

I worked out 5 days a week, finished a novel I was writing, did some freelance writing and watched TV shows I loved and read. I felt really happy.

As this has dragged on, I've started to become despondent. I feel like there is nothing to look forward to day after day. I feel often like a young child or an old woman because I don't feel as though I have any autonomy over my own life.

I am working from home and doing a course so I am still being productive (although exercise has dropped off totally.) I've also completely lost my appetite. It's like I've even become bored of eating? Whereas at first eating was one of the few distractions and pleasures I felt I had.

I know part of why I feel bad is because I had problems before hand that have been allowed to fester due to lockdown. I have some troubles in my marriage, I have things I want to do, and I feel like this has taken some time from me that I won't get back.

I find myself panicking about the future...death, whether or not to have children, what the hell to do with my life. I really am not happy living like this day after day and often feel like a trapped animal.

I'm blessed in a lot of ways...at my father's home which is beautiful, working, savings, a relationship...but I feel alone, isolated, alienated and like the momentum has been snatched out of my life.

I've been escaping into fantasy a lot which has been a huge comfort, but I also then find myself feeling jealous because it sparks desires for adventure in me that I cannot pursue.

I just feel like I live in a dystopian novel. Not every day is bad. Or every week. But as an overarching life I feel like this is not living. I'm early thirties but feel often like my best days are behind me. I look back on all the things I used to do and it feels like a 90 year old looking back on being 20. I'm terrified of frittering my 30's (supposedly one of your best decades) away on not being able to do much of anything. It feels like a waste and I feel robbed and angry which then settles into depression.

This thread has captured how I'm feeling so perfectly. I read and hear of people getting excited about things reopening and I just don't share in it. My lovely adventurous DP has had severe long covid for nearly a year now. Can't even travel in a car, can't walk, can't even hold a conversation for more than a few minutes at a time. Coming out of restrictions for me is just...lonely. Pointless. I haven't got my person to share in anything nice. And my time is divided into kids and caring and that isn't going to change. I feel very very flat. For a while I felt really quite traumatised but now I just feel like I've been lobotemised.

My past year has been an utterly vacuous existence. I'm a SAHM to school age children and my pre-Covid life revolved around busying around their activities, some of my own including a few voluntary roles and within a week all my life's structure was stripped away.

I need external stimulation, my internal drive is very weak.
DS1 has some SNs and it's a battle to get him to do much. Home-schooling was a soul destroying wasted battle of time wasting. The DCs are of that in between age of needing a parent avaliable, but not constantly involved.
DH is WFH and I constantly have his voice booming across the house on calls from the way the accoustics work.
Family and friends have either been stupidly busy or hyper-cautious.

By last June when viral rates were on the floor, I was so lonely, and peopled out and angry. I didn't believe that the measures reflected the situation. Most people seemed to have had something back and it was still like April in my life.

Sept/ Oct was a slight reprieve. The DCs were in school, they had a couple of activities, but everything was so fragile. I managed to run two races, but it felt empty, especially the second one in October when there was a tier change a few days earlier and it was so uncertain until the last moment. The race was very quiet, I was alone by mile 3 and there was just no atmosphere. I don't regret doing it, but there was just none of the ususal emotion attached to it.

The majority of my anger burned out in early November and my dominant emotion has been numb since then. I didn't want to die, just to passively not exist.

I've lost my sense of time. There is now, and some kind of generic past and future. Intellectually, I know that a lot of my life will be turned back on in the next week or two, but it's a surreal, distant concept. I'm not excited.

I just hope that getting some stimulation back will get the vast parts of my brain and emotional capacity out of stand-by mode.

I need the masks to go (they give me sensory overwhelm, and I'm a lip reader and struggle to cope being around people wearing them as they inhibit communication so much) and I need spontenaity back and there's no end date in them. I also need to trust in my plans and not feel that they can be stolen with 13 hours notice by the government.

I've resisted anti-depressants because it's a situational reaction that I hope will be settled by a good dose of normal life.

It's horrible, just had garden tea with friends, they all seemed fine, I just feel so disconnected

I don’t feel like doing anything. Previously anytime the dc have been off school or at weekends we’ve filled our time with all sorts of things, we were rarely ever in.
Now I just feel like even getting up and getting dressed to go to tesco seems like a massive mountain and it’s easier to leave the dc on devices and not bother. It feels weird out there, it’s safer in the house. I’m not worried about getting covid particularly, well, at all, but the constant backdrop of weird gets me down.
I think going back to a version of normal will be more difficult than lockdown.

📢 People!

We need to start processing our emotions and feelings, it’s a horrid cliche but find the good in the bad.

Try not to get caught up in the fantasy of everything’s going to be alright in the next few months. There is a possibility that we could have to lockdown again in the autumn or winter depending how vaccine efforts go, we have to be flexible and reactive to these scenarios.

It’s shit, it’s very shit, everything’s not how it should be but we owe to those who for whatever reason do not have the opportunity or chance to live these days no matter how tough they may be. 💪🏼

Try not to get caught up in the fantasy of everything’s going to be alright in the next few months.

Did you perhaps post on the wrong thread?

I am ok now, but I was in a bad way at the anniversary of lockdown. I think I had been bottling up how traumatic it was and the anniversary brought it back. to all

@LEMtheoriginal

Well, the vaccines are pretty much going to shit so no, i am absolutely not kidding myselc that everything is going to be fine. It really isnt. Im not sure how much more i can take.

The vaccines haven’t gone to shit.

Not the vaccines but people are going to be put off from taking AZ , the government had put all thsir eggsin that basket and that will cause delay.

But im sorry, this isnt the thread for that discussion. I shouldn't have said it.ill get it removed xx

I agree this thread is better for not being about what has happened, what will happen, but about individual responses. It has been so refreshing to get past discussing 'covid' and start hearing from people about them.

Did another LFT with teen DD yesterday. Whlle we were waiting I realised that I would cope better with a positive pregnancy test from her at the moment than a positive Covid test. Don’t think I have another 10 day isolation period in me.

@Thewiseoneincognito this is a thread for support and empathy. Your comment provides neither, and it is supremely unhelpful to speculate about future lockdowns to people struggling with the current one.

@Techno56

Just feel numb, exhausted, vague, fat, lethargic and miserable

You've succinctly summed up my current exsistance

I can only compare my current feelings to greiving after losing my Dad now over a decade ago. There were months of high anxiety when he was ill, followed by feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, numbness and emotional flatness after his death.

It's like I could run on survival mode and shelve feelings for so long, but it eventually catches up with you.

It took time to process those feelings and support from friends talking me out for coffee, nights out, weekends away where we had fun. That to me is what is different this time around. It's not just me and my immediate family struggling - most people are. We cannot see friends and there is little fun or novelty to distract. There is little to talk about.

So I've booked playdates, despite it feeling hard. I've enjoyed them but felt very tired after. My stamina for socialising needs building again.

I cycle between feeling ok and feeling what others have said. I have been very busy throughout with two young dc and working in the nhs in a full on stressful job. I don't know if that has protected me ( survival mode again) or jyst meant I'm saving up big feelings for when I have time to let them out....

For those who have lost loved ones during covid times my heart goes out to you. Having grieved in normal times I can only imagine covid and lockdowns add layers of complexity, guilt and anger

Having lost both parents shortly before this whole shitshow I was still feeling untethered (I felt more as though I had I lost my anchor and was drifting randomly through life).
Now I seem to be out of sight of land and remote. BUT every now and then I see a bird which tells me somewhere there is at least an island (bloody hell this analogy is a nightmare!).
Anyway know what you mean op. We will get through. We’ll no doubt be changed to varying degrees. We’re navigating really difficult times.
Tbh I sometimes can’t even take on board what’s happened this last year as if someone could wake me and say it had all been a bad dream - that’s odd !