Lockdowns, restrictions, and uncertainty about what happens next, coupled with confusion (and conspiracy theories) about the pandemic’s long-term effects, along with vaccinations and travel bans, have left many people feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and very uncertain about the future, as well as physically exhausted.
Why do so many people feel much more stressed now than they can recall feeling in the past?
Firstly, what is happening in our body and brain when we’re feeling stressed?
Ancient stress system overload
The brain copes well with a survival threat. For example, within split seconds of being alerted to the possibility of a tiger’s presence, one of three things happen:
We realise we’re mistaken, or
We escape, or
We’re eaten.
This all happens within 30 – 60 seconds.
There was no need for our stress response to continue past the 30 – 60 second time limit.
However, the past 18+ months have kept this survival response ‘on,’ which the body and brain experience as unnatural.
High levels of anxiety, exhaustion, and overwhelm, along with sleeplessness, and for many people depression, have been the results.
Studies are confirming that pharmaceutical use to manage feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as sleep medication, have all been rising since the pandemic arrived. For example, at June 2020 anti-anxiety medication prescriptions had increased by up to 31% among Australians, while antidepressants (ADs) were up by double figures (13 to 22%) over 2019, for each of the eight weeks ending the first week of June 2020.
In The United Kingdom, a 6% increase in ADs prescriptions between October and December 2020 over the same three months in 2019 has been noted.
But first, How DOES the brain deal with stress?
The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the ancient stress system that our body and brain use to get us away from physical survival threats.
The amygdala which is the ‘be careful – you may be in danger’ center - and the hippocampus, the ‘remember anything similar?’ (memory) center, communicate with each other to try and figure out what danger the stress poses.
The adrenal glands are then called upon to supply a jolt of energy in the form of glucose to muscles, to help us fight or flee.
When a tiger chased us this system worked extremely well. However, today, the things that stress us, no longer kill us OR allow us to escape. Stressful thoughts and feelings leave us feeling overwhelmed and uncertain.
Covid Stress and its biggest challenges: UNCERTAINTY and UNPREDICATBILITY!
Not only has the stress response been ongoing for most people, there is also a level of unpredictability and uncertainty around so many practical aspects of living with the pandemic.
These include – but aren’t limited to - the difference of opinion that many people have around its origins, how it’s being managed via lockdowns, and whether vaccinations are necessary or safe.
The pandemic and its fallout have left most people living with levels of uncertainty and unpredictability they’ve never experienced before.
Our feelings of uncertainty and unpredictability continue because a lot of the information we consume via the media seems to be conflicting, or, we are consuming information that conflicts with what others are consuming.
Depending on what news channel we watch, or who we follow on Social Media, our feelings of confusion, frustration and uncertainty can fluctuate daily.
This can easily lead to conflict between family members, between strangers in public, and between people in positions of authority who are advising the public on rules that may not seem to be applied consistently or that are perceived as being unreasonable.
The human brain experiences uncertainty and unpredictability as particularly unpleasant kinds of stress. The brain is designed to deal with stress in a very specific way and manages feelings around uncertainty and unpredictability poorly.
Feelings of overwhelm and chronic stress lead to insidious shifts in the way our body and brain function and a lack of perceived control about the situation adds more stress.
Unfortunately, the feelings of isolation that many people have experienced during the pandemic have also had negative effects on the brain. Isolation during our senior years has a number of negative effects, despite isolation having been used during the pandemic for protection.
Our brain is doing its best to make sense of this new world
Although it doesn’t feel like it, our brain is trying its best - in its problem-solving capacity - to help us feel better by looking for solutions that may reduce feelings of stress and overwhelm.
It does this by trying to imagine every possible outcome of the stressful experience in the form of a dialogue between the HPA, the prefrontal cortex (PFC - the brains CEO), and the hippocampus.
The PFC is looking for patterns, solutions, and a way to cope with the uncertainty and unpredictability we find ourselves in, but the hippocampus doesn’t have any previous memories to rely on to assist with this process. There is no plan to follow, no checklist to tick off, and too many opinions about what the future looks like.
Our brain becomes a time machine, which transports us right back to where the challenge started, and then instantly, to the future where anything could happen.
We are now very seldom in the ever-present now and we experience this ongoing problem-solving strategy as our brains inability to switch off.
This ongoing dialogue in the brain leads to a lack of clear, concise thinking, or perspective, and an inability to solve the stressful situation or find a solution, even if it’s only a temporary solution in which we can feel calm and in control again.
The PFC needs focus and attention, as well as a sense of calm, to yield optimal solutions.
This situation prevents our body and brain, our physiology, from returning to homeostasis (balance).
The body is still being exposed to stress hormones because the adrenals haven’t been advised that everything is fine because the brain doesn't think things are fine.
It’s no surprise that many people therefore feel anxious and feel a lack of control in their lives right now.
The brain now lives in the murky world of ‘past-and-future’ possible outcomes and brain function shifts into a downward trajectory because we haven’t died and we haven’t escaped.
Rumination
Even if the initial stress does taper off slightly, we may still find thoughts running around our minds.
This cognitive process is called rumination and is defined as ‘the engagement of negative and unwanted past-centered, repetitive thoughts.’
Rumination can prevent the optimal cognitive processing of ANY event and leaves no opportunity to learn from similar experiences and apply what was learned to similar, future scenarios.
Even though we don’t have memories to access about a similar pandemic situation, when we ruminate we also fail to access any wisdom or coping skills that have been useful in other challenging and stressful situations.
Rumination increases poor problem solving and inflexible thinking. We lose the ability to respond adaptively to stress because our PFC stays off-line, so our higher-order cognitive processes can’t be accessed, AND we’re experiencing negative, repetitive, and unhelpful thoughts.
The ability to return to a calm state of mind, where stress-hormone production tapers off, is significantly hindered when rumination is excessive.
In addition, the brain, in its ability to respond adaptively to experience, can lay down neural pathways in relation to these stressful experiences, coupled with rumination, which lead to habitual, negative responses to stress going forwards.
These structural changes also leave us vulnerable to developing anxiety and depression. This is why many researchers are concerned about the mental health of many people going forwards.
Rumination, coupled with chronic stress makes it harder and harder to reach or maintain emotional equilibrium. We’re stuck feeling the situation isn’t under our control, we feel uncertain about the future, and everything feels unpredictable.
In Part II we examine some solutions to this modern response to stress.