The Pandemic Wall – What is it and what do we do to cope?

If you are like me, you may have been hearing about the “pandemic wall” lately. A great question about this is – what the heck does that even mean? So, I thought we should chat a bit about it here and what you can do about it.

Pretty much the pandemic wall is something that many people have been experiencing (from what I have observed and experienced myself) since January or intermittently since January or even just is popping up now. And it means simply what it says – that we are collectively hitting a wall with the pandemic.
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More and more we feel exhausted by the burden of living with the fear of a deadly virus.

We feel exhausted by having to think about safety and sanitizing things all the time.

We feel just so sick of all of this that we are more worn out, weary, anxious, apathetic even.

We are lonely deep in our souls. So lonely.

I have to say that after a year of doing this life, many of us expect to be adjusted or that it will get easier. I can’t emphasize enough that this is not how this works (unfortunately). We are an inherently social species and the isolation, anxiety, pressure, and just heaviness of the past year is taking a toll on all of us, even those who seem fine. All in all, it makes sense that as we reach a milestone in this journey and come up on a year, or enter a new year where we can no longer say, oh well that’s just 2020, that things are increasingly difficult.

When we are trying to force ourselves to adjust to an unsustainable way of living our lives, we are not going to actually adjust. We can cope, we can survive, but actual adjustment is unlikely because it is by definition not sustainable.

Good question. Unfortunately, I don’t have any magic here. No wands, no magic to make this easier for all of us. Believe me, if I did, I would be using it!

I think the hard truth is that we keep going as best we can. We take it one day at a time and do the next right thing for ourselves and our families. There are a few things that might help that process and that is this… we need to be compassionate with ourselves, allow ourselves our emotions and inner temper tantrums, and continue letting rules be relaxed when we need them to be. We can also focus on the small things that help us cope or are enjoyable, like a snuggle with a pet or child, a great cup of coffee, or doing something outside again. The little things will help us get from day to day but might not change just how over it we all are. That’s okay. We don’t need to change that part as much as we might want to. We just need to accept and acknowledge that this is still a hard path to walk. But we will keep going and try to find some hope when we can that this will be over someday.

Hang in there world!