HARTFORD, Conn — We’ve been dealing with this pandemic for months, now, and even though the state is getting ready to start opening back up, the challenges and the worries aren’t going away for a long time. Remember, the problems and the anxiety didn’t just start when the shutdowns did. Health-care workers had to prepare well in advance for what’s been a slow-motion disaster, which means the stress exploded in the U.S. long before the virus ever did.
“We’ve never experienced anything like this. We have providers who have been working in this field seventy years, no lie, very long time, and they’re saying they’ve never experienced anything like this, and it is absolutely that,” said Lisa Coates, the Operations Manager of the Bristol Health Counseling Center, “It is the initial fear of coming here and then once it came to the United States, now we have to prepare and it’s been this slow, daily grind and that’s been exhausting.”
The worry is that such an extended period of anxiety might lead people to get burned out, and sort of tune the anxiety, but also the danger.
“Then how do they tune it out?” she said, “That’s my fear in all of this is that people get so heightened for so long that they’re desperate to get rid of it. So that high level of anxiety, what are you going to do to get rid of it, and people will take desperate measure to get rid of it, or will not even realize that they’re teetering on some really unhealthy coping skills like suicide, thoughts of not wanting to live anymore, or substance misuse and engaging in unhealthy behaviors that could increase their harm physically.”
She said the key to finding healthy coping skills is to find people who are leading by example.
“How do we look to inspire other people and look at the really amazing things because i think human beings are so resilient and we’re seeing so many of those stories right now,” Coates said.
“That keeps me going and I think that’s very cool.”
