Why was August so awful for so many people?

While the past 5-6 months of living through a pandemic have certainly not been enjoyable for most of us, it seems like August was a TOUGH month for many people. In the beginning of this crisis, it seemed like different people were struggling with different things. Single or young people were struggling with the social isolation and boredom of staying home so much. Parents were struggling with the sheer magnitude of tasks facing them with having their kids all home. Working parents were just frantically trying to get anything done at any time of the day.

August though was different and as someone who works with and talks to people in so many different situations, it was interesting that my clients, friends, colleagues, family, and even myself were having such a universal parallel experience of August being an extremely difficult month to get through. It seems that most of us hit a “pandemic wall” and just had some period of time where we just couldn’t face our reality. The reality being that it became super clear that we are going to be in this for a LONG TIME. Especially here in San Diego, once schools started announcing the change to all virtual learning in the fall, it was like a domino effect of families sharing just how hard this is for them.

I think that while many of us, myself included, saw the writing on the wall a while ago and realized that this situation is not ending anytime soon – it didn’t become truly real until these announcements and the ripple effect of realizing we are going into fall and flu season with a barely controlled virus already circulating. For me at least, it was like the cumulative pressure, stress, sadness, despair, grief, frustration, and every other feeling I have had for the past 5 months just bubbled up all at once and overwhelmed me and led to a feeling of deep weariness. There was even a day or two where it just felt kind of hopeless. I remember thinking, if this is how I feel, as a therapist who can usually manage my emotions pretty well at this point, how is everyone going to get through this!

I also remember then seeing my pain mirrored in everyone’s faces for weeks and noticing that almost everyone I talk to had at least one period of time in August that was a significant low or change from their usual. This led me to think… What happened in August? Here are some of my thoughts and a few ideas of how we can cope.

• The adrenaline ran out.. I think we collectively just kind of ran out of gas. I think the initial few months of the pandemic were just pure panic mode for many people and then summer was a bit more relaxed. Now, we have just run out of speed to do any of the things fall might require particularly online learning and school for families and kids. For those where it did not go well in the Spring with online learning, families seemed to start feeling just one big sense of dread and anxiety waiting for this to start again.
  • How can we cope? I’ve been encouraging families in this situation to work on coming up with a plan together as a family to work on the things that were tough before to make them better. If your family struggled to reduce screen time, come up with realistic goals and other activities together now so that it might be an easier sell for all of you when it gets tough in the fall.

• Grief…? I think that summer gave some people a bit of a reprieve from their usual challenges. Whether it’s because of time off, vacations they managed to still take, or just enjoying the weather and beach days – summer gave a sense of relief and normalcy for some. I think that sadly though, this also brings up grief related to the fall and what we would “usually” be doing. Preparing for school in person, picking out clothes, preparing for holiday trips, etc. And due to the severity of the pandemic, a lot of this feels uncertain and difficult to plan around.
  • How can we cope? What we can do is allow ourselves to feel our grief and to notice that we are grieving our usual routines and rituals that come up during different times of the year. It’s okay to notice that we are sad that our lives have changed so much. In that, none of us are alone as this is something everyone is feeling right now.

• We are missing a future to look forward to… While it is smart not to plan too much right now in a world where so much has changed so quickly, this leaves us all without much to look forward to. I think many people are often working towards future goals or fun vacations and spending so much of our lives on pause has been difficult. While I am a believer in learning how to enjoy the moments and the small things in life, it is easier said than done!
  • How can we cope? I know one way we are coping with this is by having a family plan about what we want to do when it is safe to do things again. For us, it’s definitely going to be some sort of vacation. Another way I personally cope with this is by making a gratitude list every day of 10 things. I list 10 because that way I have to come up with more than just a few and it takes me a bit more time reflecting to do so. This hopefully helps shift my mindset towards gratitude and away from belaboring my challenges.

Just like any hard thing in life, this pandemic feels like it is challenging all of us to learn more about ourselves, our worlds, our families, and how we get through hard things. I believe that the more we can try to lean in to the discomfort and find some kind of learning or positive experience in this mess, the better we will all be when we come out of this! Hopefully this blog helped some of you consider ways to take our struggles and cope a bit more effectively with them. While the pandemic will go away (it really will!), our struggles as humans will not. So coping is our only path forward!