On our Covid-19 mental health

From someone who sent this along for anyone who might like to hear this...some of these signs might be happening or not...but be gentle with yourself if they are part of your life these days. And reach out to others to find support. That's sometimes the hardest thing to do, but nobody else may be around to know this is happening to you. There is always someone who cares about you, if you let them know you have these feelings. It's much harder for them to know what's going on without our usual contact.

Flat Creek behind Ole' Guacamole's Restaurant, Black Mountain NC 4.17.20

Mikaila Baca-Dorion, MBD's words:

I feel that it’s important for everyone to know that there are mental health related problems that some of you may be experiencing for the first time because of this collective traumatic situation and not recognizing as symptoms because you’re not typically traumatized:

-memory loss and memory issues, especially short term, and/or a distorted sense of time

-executive dysfunction. If you don’t know the term, it’s kind of like the human version of buffering. It’s when you sit there and think “I need to get up and do the dishes” and then you sit there. And sit there. And sit there. And you think over and over “get up and do the dishes” as hard as you can, but you don’t, your body just doesn’t listen to you, like a slow computer trying over and over to load a page and failing. That’s not laziness, that’s a mental health symptom.

-confusion and brain fog (and even slight dizziness and balance issues as well)

-sleeping too much or too little

-feeling nauseous all the time/not being interested in food even if you’re hungry

- “forgetting” to eat or shower or use the toilet etc. This is in quotes because what’s really happening isn’t a memory issue: instead, you’re not getting the cues from your body asking for food or water or hygiene or the bathroom. Your brain is so busy processing the fight/flight/freeze instinct that you can’t “hear” your body asking for its basic needs.

-the “bell jar” feeling, or as it’s otherwise known, dissociation, where you feel like somehow there’s glass between you and everything and everyone else in the whole world, and it takes a lot of effort to engage with anything outside yourself. It’s not a sad feeling in and of itself- it has no flavor, it’s just exhausting.

-intrusive thoughts. These are thought loops you get stuck in, usually bad ones, and they’re easy to miss the signs of in traumatic times. If you notice yourself continually cycling through a sequence of bad thoughts that you don’t want to have, that’s an intrusive thought pattern.

-inability to make decisions, even small ones (resulting in disproportionately intense distress if you try to force yourself)

-shortness of breath and heart palpitations.

-auditory processing issues- staring at someone for a good 10 seconds after they speak just trying to make your brain decipher what they said, or missing what someone said entirely multiple times, even though you could hear them perfectly well, or being unable to separate a conversation you’re having from the background noise of a television in the other room, sometimes to the point where you can’t finish your own sentences because the combination of sounds is distracting you.

-on that subject, also finding sounds, silence, and sensations more annoying and intolerable than usual- forks scraping, plastic bags rustling in the breeze from a fan, birds outside, etc. The way to identify this one is that it’s not even just annoyance, it’s an instant knee jerk reaction of distress and rage, and your brain can’t fully function. That goes for sensations as well- getting suddenly negatively overwhelmed by being touched, or having tags in your clothes or scratchy fabrics bother you to the point where you can’t think.