When I returned to America after carbon monoxide poisoning, I couldn’t think clearly enough to work on most days.
For the first few weeks after I got to safety I kept thinking, “I’ll just rest here for a few more days and then fly back overseas and get to work.” I would try to do a yoga pose or pedal on a stationary bike. After 30-60 seconds (I timed it each day) I would collapse against the wall, dizzy and overwhelmed. But I “knew” that if I just kept at it, I was about to be “back.”
As the weeks went by I grudgingly made a small adjustment, a little token offering to reality. I decided that my return to life as usual might be, “a month from now.” Month after month. Every month. My recovery took more than a year.
As I began to let go, at least temporarily, of being able to do the old work in the same ways, I began to take on smaller, flexible projects and coaching and leadership trainings that let me schedule my own time. On days when my brain wouldn’t respond, I could wait it out.
The changes to my experience of the world were significant. Instead of being fueled and enlivened by human contact, I would get drained and have to mumble an excuse to leave and recover. Instead of raving about projects, I was quieter and leaning into meditation and personal growth. During this time I found myself repeating often a line that expressed how it all felt: “this is a strange time in my life.”
Six years later I found myself deep into my journey of developing myself and supporting others. I was also going from training to training and swimming between tech work and sitting on the floor with groups of people in tears. I was in yet another new city (San Francisco) where people came and went as it hollowed out and gyrated to the industrial jams of tech excitement and cost of living. I had no certainty about what was next for any given week and sometimes any given day. I was having to make it all up as I went along. Nothing felt solid. There was nowhere to stand. And I continued to tell everyone I met the words that best reflected the temporary and rapidly evolving feeling of the experience, the excuse for it all and the promise of a more grounded future: “This is a strange time in my life.”
Until one day. One day I woke up and heard myself saying those words to someone yet again. And I realized something. After more than six years this wasn’t a strange time in my life. This was now my life.
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I recently worked with a client who struggled with social connection. When we listed her friends and she could only count two, she wryly observed that it wasn’t a very, “fault tolerant system.”
In a side conversation about her history she began describing the elaborate events she used to throw and all of the people that used to come; of birthday parties filled with support and excitement. Stunned, I asked the obvious question. “What changed?” She didn’t know. It didn’t make any sense given how certain she was that she was an awkward loner. She hadn’t even been aware of how shockingly different this story was until we went through it together.
“When did this change,” I asked. The moment she said it, we both knew. Two and a half years ago. And what happened two and a half years ago – was a global pandemic. Her identity had begun to form about not knowing how to make connections with people. About being isolated. That it was her fault. That this is how, and who, she was. Like the carbon monoxide slowly and silently worked it’s way into my system and began to twist the knobs of my personality, she, like so many others, didn’t even notice the change.
She is not alone.
By mid 2020, 14 percent of Americans were experiencing serious psychological distress, more than triple the rate in 2018.
According to CDC and NHIS data, in 2019 10.8% of adults 18 and over had symptoms of either anxiety disorder or depressive disorder or both. By November 2021 it was 42.6%.
…
When the pandemic began tech companies responded. They began dumping coaching and L&D programs like sandbags off a hot air balloon as the basket skimmed a hilltop. Six to eight months later, my practice was full again. People whose lives had been put on pause were asking big questions about what they had been doing for so many years. And why. Many came with feelings of anxiety that they couldn’t manage. Some could name the loneliness. Even introverts were whispering that lockdown was perfect at first, but soon they were craving contact. Many couldn’t name the source of their struggles and, instead, blamed themselves.
Many of our challenges today are normal reactions to stress and isolation. As one biological marker, the APA notes that weight change commonly correlates with mental health challenges. By 2021 a majority of adults (61%) reported experiencing undesired weight changes.
It is not your fault. When we can all see this we can allow ourselves, and support each other, to shake the dust off and share some awkward conversations. We can allow each other to make a few grating sounds as we get the gears turning again. We’re going to need practice and support to recover. And we’re going to need each other as the stresses continue in our ever unfolding, ever evolving, never quite landing, never quite “normal,” world.
Twelve years after my experience my brain is back in action. But the capacity I was forced into, my ability to ride the waves of life with adjustments instead of trying to force them into rigid shapes; to accept loss and uncertainty; to start with what is instead of pretending for what I wish: these have been gifts.
The ability to be comfortable in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) is an essential leadership skill in the best of times. (More in a future post.) Can we use the opportunity of these extreme circumstances to finally, while still feeling the terror of it, let go of our grip on normal? To fall into not knowing? To stop pretending? To embrace where we are and each other? From my experience, so far, it makes for a much smoother ride.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. Anxiety and Depression Household Pulse Survey Data. Retrieved February 15, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/mental-health.htm
American Psychological Association. (2021, March 11). One year later, a new wave of pandemic health concerns. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2021/one-year-pandemic-stress
American Psychological Association. (2021, March 11). Slightly More Than 6 in 10 U.S. Adults (61%) Report Undesired Weight Change Since Start of Pandemic. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2021/march-weight-change
Kira M. Newman. (2020, August 11). Seven Ways the Pandemic Is Affecting Our Mental Health. Greater Good Magazine. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_the_pandemic_is_affecting_our_mental_health
