The Pandemic Ruined My Mental Health
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- Опубликовано: 15 мар 2023
- Allison shares how Covid affected her OCD.
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When we were quarantined my anxiety was so much better. Then things opened back up and it's worse than ever.
SAME. It feels like my whole lifes worth of progress was completely wiped out in a couple years 😭
Oh my gosh same. Once things started opening up in 2021, I had the worst anxiety of my life.
Unrelated but I love how much jbu content we are getting right now 😁
I’ve never met another person with a contamination compulsion. Thank you for making me feel seen and understood. You both change lives.
i have it too, you're not alone❤
Me neither. It’s not really talked about either.. or maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Idk. I felt seen in this episode.
As a disabled immoncomprimsed person, i am still in survival mode...the pandemic is still very real and scary and I and my caregivers still have to do all the social distance and masking protocols just to keep safe. So many people and the government act like it's over and done with and no one wears masks and it's frustrating that people can act like it won't affect them and got fatigued of doing their best to keep themselves and the public safe. I can't stop yet, when will it truly be safe?
Yeah, the really scary thing is how most people (and governments) are no longer taking any precautions (and also how many people took little to no precautions even when covid was being treated more seriously). It sucks being disabled and seeing the world just collectively shrug and adopt the lie that the pandemic is over. But I also completely get how the experience would worsen some people's OCD, anxiety, etc. Not trying to undermine that. It just sucks that most people are okay with allowing/contributing to mass death and disability just out of convenience.
I don’t even have OCD and I still feel the need to sanitize after touching most things outside of my house. It makes so much sense that you would feel this way tenfold!
The pandemic has had such a brutal affect on my mental health. I've always had serious social anxiety but since lockdown my ability to go out and interact with people and even just leave my house has gone down the toilet. Like you're saying, my tendencies to isolate and avoid social interactions were encouraged during quarantine and now I can't shake those bad habits.
Lord, I feel this so much. I was diagnosed with contamination-based OCD a decade and a half ago and got a lot better with therapy and meds. I actually lived abroad for a bit, and regularly using the public transit there desensitized me enough that being in public and touching things in public became so much easier for me. And then when Covid hit and there was the emphasis on washing hands and distancing, I felt myself shift drastically backward. I kept hand sanitizer on me everywhere I went anyway, but now I find myself using it far more frequently. And I also feel like I have to shower anytime I come back home from being in public! I have the advantage/disadvantage of working from home most of the time, so I barely leave my house. But whenever I do, I am VERY aware of the things I am touching and I always need to change or shower after I get home.
I just want to say that you have inspired me to take a harm reduction approach to my social anxiety, Allison. Even working within the addiction/recovery space, it had never occured to me to apply it to my own mental health. Thank you!!
i have social anxiety too but i'm not entirely familiar with the term "harm reduction". what does it mean for you in terms of social anxiety?
I remember full news articles in reputable sources about covid-related deaths saying full scale tragedies were “tracked down” to a single elevator button. In retrospect it was probably not the button, but people being together in the elevator while sick. It’s very trippy to think about reading those things and how scary they felt, vs how it is now.
I have severe OCD but not contamination OCD. I've really wondered how people with it have been coping so it was nice to hear this perspective!
My health anxiety is absolutely off the charts still. I’m so glad you’re doing better Allison, you are so awesome and hearing this all really makes me feel better and not as alone
Thank you for talking about this. I always considered the lockdown “good” because I could let the ocd and anxiety take the reins and it was accepted; the way you talked about it helps me realize that was not exactly a good thing, and helps me recognize patterns developed. Also the ocd contamination things sounded an awful lot like what I deal with, and gave me a way to talk about it better with my therapist.
I have GAD with some OCD tendencies, and my experience of the pandemic has been so similar. My anxiety got so much worse in so many ways, and found new things to latch onto that it have been difficult to let go of. I feel like it's only been relatively recently, with the help of new anxiety meds, that I've gotten to the point where I don't feel quiet as anxious just leaving my house. I feel like it's been such a long process for me. I appreciate you sharing your experience, Allison, because sometimes I feel like the only person I know who's still worried about this stuff, lol.
I'm just so thankful that Allison is so open, I always feel so seen. I also only buy/use washable purses (big fan of Baggu canvas bags, simple but not ugly!), and am working on hanging clothes back in my closet after wearing them to work once vs. immediately washing them all (like coats and pants) after years of not going into an office.
Thank you so much for sharing more of your experience, Allison. I can unfortunately totally relate to this. I have health anxiety, like you mentioned, and I already disliked being in crowds or even getting together with friends because of my Autism. The pandemic has unfortunately exacerbated my tendencies.
I have been wondering how Allison has been dealing with the ongoing pandemic. I have a lot of health anxiety that is justified because I have chronic health conditions and pain that I cannot address because I do not have health insurance and cannot afford to go to doctors. Covid could completely ruin me. Not to mention how they are dropping mask mandates in healthcare facilities so we can't even access safe healthcare anymore. I am so glad that Allison still wears a mask when in public spaces because that is also protecting others, and something that so few people are doing even though the pandemic is still killing hundreds of people daily in this country. I hope that Gabe wears masks still as well. We need trans and disabled solidarity because this country is trying to destroy us both right now.
Personally, I don't have compulsions but I do engage in a lot of cleaning behaviors I never would have otherwise. I do wipe down some things from some stores. I wear a mask everywhere and often double mask if I will have to be in a building for an extended period of time, especially if it will be a small or crowded space. High quality masks with good seals. I wear "Stoggles" which are protective glasses, even though I do not need prescription lenses, because statistically glasses help reduce transmission. And I probably sanitize my hands too much, wash my hands when I get home, avoid touching my face (which is really hard because wearing stuff on my face makes me itchy and is bothersome), and usually change clothes when I get home too. Showers are hard for me sensory-wise so I don't usually shower when I return home, but right now I work from home and don't go out much or for long periods of time. I pick up everything that I can curbside. I am looking into enrolling into a university program in another country right now and if I manage to get into that program I very likely will begin showering after spending several hours at school because I will worry about covid particles getting in my hair, etc.
To me, this is all rational and justified because I am working to avoid getting sick and further disablement. I cannot afford to risk my health, which I barely have as it is. I cannot afford to risk not being able to work. And since few are still wearing masks, and many aren't keeping up with their vaccinations either, it is imperative that I do everything I can to protect myself.
!!! HARD agree on this one!
Thank you so much for sharing this with us ❤ I don’t have OCD or health anxiety, but I have social anxiety and it has gotten so so much worse since the pandemic. Before I felt like life was a bit of “exposure therapy” bc I HAD to go to work, to get groceries, etc. and socializing was so much a part of my day-to-day. Removing those obligations to leave the house at first felt nice (like a burden was taken off)… but now three years on I still have to wind myself up to just to get out of the house & go to the store. Ive only JUST been able to stop spending time rehearsing what I’m going to say to the cashier and focusing on keeping myself calm with my breathing the whole time I’m out. I’m getting out there, but it can be exhausting. To everyone else who has been struggling, I feel you!!
I was undiagnosed and "coping" before the pandemic.
With quarantine, my ADHD symptoms got so much worse. I stopped brushing my teeth, showering, picking up after myself, I kept forgetting to eat and drink water. It was rough. I started therapy. That's when I found out they were in fact symptoms and not everyone was struggling like I had or needed the coping mechanisms I had naturally implemented to deal with what I didn't know were symptoms before. Brains are so weird.
Now out of quarantine, I'm trying my best to re-learn those coping systems that I lost during the pandemic. Also, knowing what the issue is now, I've been able to figure out new coping skills through other people with ADHD! Like body doubling! I'm now actually going out of the house to go write in a library and I'm actually able to focus on the task.
I lived with my now-ex partner with severe untreated contamination OCD during the first three years of the pandemic and whooooboy this conversation is really relatable to me 🙃
I felt so validated during the pandemic. It felt like the whole world suddenly realized that everything might be gross. But my experience of it was like I'd been training for this my whole life and I felt equipped to handle it. Others were overwhelmed with the stress of it but my life hadn't really changed. Although it did become intolerable to have strangers within 6ft of me. I wish that it was still the norm to socially distance.
Thank you so much for posting this, I relate to this deeply
I have some of the issues Alison has but dumbed down to a level where I can handle it, I stopped showering so much because my skin was getting so dry and it's been really hard to just mentally manage it, trying to shower on days where I'm more likely to be doing something, as well as making sure my hair doesn't get too greasy or too dry, and managing stinkiness and feeling grimy, and also trying to manage when to change my bedsheets because I don't want to go to bed in clean sheets when I also haven't had a shower, it's so weird. It's like I've divided my life into "clean" and "dirty".
I feel you on the "I can't be clean in dirty sheets" one. That's a weird compulsion I've developed recently.
Exactly the same here.
"It felt like permission to give in to my worst impulses". Most important line of the whole vid.
i love the realism of waiting to work on goals until schedules clear up and other goals get accomplished. i feel like all the popular "healthy routine" videos make fitting as many habits as possible into every day seem the only way to live and I much prefer the former.
yes that's very true, a lotta people on social media make it out like we gotta constantly be working on ourselves n constantly working on becoming our "higher selves", but it's exhausting!! there's time n a place for "self improvement", but man, sometimes i'm just trying to exist n chill (n that's not wrong or bad or negative or unproductive)
I Loved that. I have way more anxiety now. I felt like everybody could switch after the pandemic, but I could not. I think I am getting those compulsions too, before pandemic it was not as visible as it ist now. But I love that compassion as a strategie. It makes me feel at peace with myself thinking Like this.
Love you two beautiful souls💖 thx for sharing
The title is so real. My social anxiety has been at its worst since the pandemic, to the point where I’ve been isolating myself for months on end… being around people makes me feel so paranoid that I end up staying home all day. To be fair, though, the pandemic is how I ended up getting the motivation to see a psychiatrist. Gabe and I are bipolar twinsies now!
Shoutout Phantom, a real G
im so thankful for you two
We wish you all the best in your lives. God bless you all.
I used to wear gloves till the middle of last year when I just got fed up with buying them and I never stopped wiping down my groceries or really anything that enters my home with Lysol. I still don’t eat at restaurants, order in or go into other people’s homes and I wear my mask in public but I don’t have OCD, I do have a heart condition though and it would be very bad if I got Covid.
from someone with health anxiety, thank you so much for this
Soooo relatable. I went through the same thing with my contamination OCD. I had to force myself to break those compulsion rituals with help from my family, so I'm doing better than I was but it's still here.
Also, I haven't watched many videos on this channel in a long time. I notice a change to the hosts and therefore I want to say...Nice to meet you, Gabe!
😂😂😂 Gabe is Gaby, they are just trans now.
@@jclyntoledo I was acknowledging Gabe's identity in a way that did not deadname them or potentially trigger trauma memories of life before transition. Gabe is not Gaby. Gabe is Gabe.
Whenever I see old vids in the suggested I read Gaby as Gabe-y automatically without fail and I love this new accidental trait
Thank you for making this ❤
Thank you for sharing this! I can relate deeply. I was diagnosed with contamination OCD and hypochondria about a year before covid happened. I had therapy and was finally thriving. Then boom. The pandemic came and it was horrible. Lockdown happened and I was so happy to be home. But the threat of leaving the house was always approaching. Then summer hit and I had to go back to work. It was horrible. Now, I still wipe things down. I stopped washing groceries. Small wins but I still wear masks. I just like that barrier between my mouth and other people's breath lol.
me and my family still do most things we used to at the start of the pandemic, even things that have been said to not be effective or needed, simply because its easier to just do these things we got used to than to deal with the anxiety and consequential fights that stopping could lead to.
I thought of everyone with OCD during Covid. I was so aware of staying safe and well for my clients as a Support Worker
As someone who battled through agoraphobia and panic disorder in 2018 and by 2019 had gotten to a point where I felt safe and comfortable going out at short notice, the pandemic really fucked me over. Don't leave my house?? OF COURSE. That's why my anxiety has been saying for years. It really set me back a long way and I felt like I had to do all my CBT work all over again...
the pandemic exacerbated my intense anxiety around death. i never had health anxiety, in particular, before the pandemic, but i sure do now. i am so aware of other people, contaminated objects. i still mask in public, as well. i haven't been to an indoor restaurant in 3 years. it's honestly been such a shit time. i can't even properly describe it. thank you for talking about this.
I love Gabe's scaffolding in conversation. I do the same thing and it annoys some people lol
Right before/ during the beginning of the pandemic my parents decided to sell my childhood home and that was super triggering for my OCD because every time i wondered what happened to something they would tell me it was in the basement at that house and now that place is gone and all the memories and objects attached to it and it was super traumatizing for me being an overly attached anxious autistic person and now i have hoarding OCD and can’t let anything go.
The pandemic also exacerbated my social anxiety and isolated me from all my friends and extended family to the point where i have almost no relationships left except for the few people i live with. 😢
Of course! Makes so much sense that the pandemic would affect people's mental health and issues related to health/cleaning/etc.
Wishing you all the best
The couch show coming back has been great for my mental health
Its felt validating to have Allison explain her OCD. As someone with contamination OCD. It made me feel not totally crazy to listen to her describe it the same way, since it confuses everyone who doesn’t have it. Also no one understands the motivation element. This meant a lot.
I appreciate you still wearing a mask. I have long covid so want to avoid getting it again. I wear a mask around everyone I see. I wish covid never happened, I didn't know how lucky I had it.
Anyway you are doing the best you can do ❤
I also developed new compulsions during the pandemic. And I also have stopped compulsively wiping down my proper groceries but extensively wipe down anything I get from a corner store, drug store, gas station.
My mum had breast cancer through the beginning of the pandemic. Cancer-wise she's nearly 2 years cancer-free, but health anxiety, she's worse than ever. Anxious to leave the house, eat in restaurants, be around people who are at higher covid risk (like elderly family members who live in care homes or people who were very quick to go back to "normal"), etc. Thankfully through the cancer agency, she was able to get some actual psychiatric care and therapy but it's definitely had a way more lasting impact on her mental health than her physical health. And I think covid and covid protection measures definitely made that "worse" or enabled her anxiety to let her stay home etc.
I don’t have ocd, but I’ve always just been a neurotic person and I still wipe down my groceries bc I think about all the gross people touching them now. Everyone’s attitude to contamination definitely changed
Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve been watching you guys since the beginning and I have contamination ocd too and it’s great to have others to relate with
So I have autism and ADHD, no OCD. I might have slight OCD tendencies but nothing to write home about. I do experience anxiety within "dirty" environments now much more though. The pandemic made a lot of the vague concepts I much more concrete so it really was hard for everybody.
Everyone reading this title: Same
Man, my OCD is primarily morality/ harm based, but during the pandemic it developed a contamination element… I mean, it doesn’t help that I’m disabled and several of my loved ones are severely immunocompromised, but yeah
Early Covid was so surreal because it was like the whole world was suddenly at my level.
health anxiety haver here!!! hit the nail on the head!
feeling seen with this topic
Commenting for engagement boost and the Phantom Phlop was TOO MUCH
Is health anxiety also a type of OCD? Would appreciate an explanation of it. :) I feel like health tracking wearables would make me feel so much more reassured regarding my constant worries about my health (am I about to have a heart attack? Is my blood pressure too low, do I have a fever and I haven't noticed it, am I getting sick, yadayada) , but then I also wonder whether like OCD that would also count as 'indulging' a bad habit instead. I never used to think about all this stuff until the pandemic also, and it's like with all the extra time cooped up in quarantines and lockdowns I became obsessed with being as healthy as possible, and I didn't have much else to do but optimise the supplements I was taking, and the exercise I was doing, and the times I was eating... I used to to think listening to podcasts like Huberman were a sign that I was being actively engaged, but now I can't help but wonder whether a compulsive need to optimise everything with your body is actually not healthy at all.
Yup... my life has basically been on hold for the last 2+ years.
My hand washing has gotten out of control since covid
When my insurance called and asked if I was washing my hands for at least twenty seconds it really spun me out bc of course I was and it just made my compulsion that much more important to me.😭
Phantom Blakesley - I’m stealing that for my first born
I'd like to see an ocd video while having pets would be interesting and helpful 😊
I didn't know you still posted this stuff, I thought it was podcasts 😅
It's mainly podcasts but sporadically they will do these.
My favorite crime fighting team!
i wonder if some microbiology understanding and experience could help ppl with cleanliness ocd... like knowing that we live in symbiosis with microorganisms and absolute cleanliness is neither possible nor desirable for survival. we have more microorganisms in us than somatic cells of our own.
OCD sadly is really strong against facts an science, you just FEEL dirty and sick.
Yeah that's not how anxiety disorders or mh illnesses work though. You can't logic your way out of mh issues.
@@jclyntoledo therapy is logic
I realized I had OCD because of the pandemic. All of a sudden everyone started doing these things that I’ve been doing forever… but I thought everyone was doing them forever too. Turns out, they weren’t. 🤷🏻♀️
would you ever talk about ocd and having a dog a little more? I don’t even have have ocd but I genuinely don’t think I’d let an animal into my house bc even touching one makes me feel so dirty (love animals and am a vegetarian lol just like feeling clean)
It ruined my life. At least for the last 3 years. I'm so sick.
I’ve had contamination OCD since LONG before covid ever started. To a large extent, I feel like people are just disgusting and have no awareness of basic germ theory. People LOVE to pathologize staying safe from a debilitating disease, when it’s very much still a risk to our healths to catch covid. The government & corporations (and in turn, society in general) are still minimizing the fact that we’re CURRENTLY in a pandemic where hundreds are dying daily in the US alone. My immunocompromised friends and I still treat it like March 2020, not going anywhere unnecessarily and NEVER unmasking in public, because we’re aware of the very real threat that exists. A lot of people think covid is “flu-like”, when it’s a *vascular* disease that can cause lifelong damage such as long covid, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer, and people are just like lalala 🙉 because they want to deny reality. Not enough people realize the collective avoidance trauma people are doing by not paying attention to epidemiologists who are still warning of the dangers. Pretending everything is “fine” now is arguably MORE of a “mental illness” than anyone who is still taking precautions. The desperation people feel to go back to 2019 (as if it was perfect then, which it SUPER wasn’t) is really harmful to society as a whole.
Nobody cares about their bodies’ longevity, the dangers of covid, and the risk to their qualities of life. If I’m gonna be judged for publicly masking, spraying down groceries, or still limiting where I go (no restaurants, crowds, cons, etc) then so be it, because I have SEEN what happens to people’s qualities of life once they’re disabled by the very things covid can cause. It’s really bad out there, but the vast majority of people don’t like to be debbie downers, even if it means keeping themselves and others safe. I deeply believe there’s a damaging future for a lot of people 5-10 years down the line because they didn’t protect themselves from the very real danger of covid, and getting repeat infections is going to cost them BIG time.
BTW I ha e followed for a while, but your channel/life is so vegan.
I also find uni to be dirty. Also I don’t follow any mental health advocates other than JBU, I just think in what can be a crazy space full of judgement and wacky takes, Alison and Gabe have such common sense
I feo very related
you can't judge anyone!😠
I got out of the closet and started hormones on the pandemic. It was awesome, I became as a girl and I went out as a boy
The pandemic ruined a lot of things.
Darwin
You need a powerful all consuming experience to get over your neuroses
you need a powerful kick up the backside to get over being a dick
My pronouns are Fahq/you
Trying to stay in the lane of your channel. Monetize. Lame. Nice Stache Gabriel?
I didn’t realize there were two dogs till the end of this video