I’m so tired of EVERYTHING! My COVID fatigue seriously set in a few weekends ago. I’m tired but can’t sleep; I’m grumpy but don’t want anyone to help me; and all I want to do is listen to Alanis Morissette at max volume while I stare at the Dark Side of the Moon poster on my bedroom wall. In other words, I have become a teenager again.
Maybe the never-ending stress and uncertainty of COVID has retroactively activated my pituitary gland mimicking the experience of the amazing changes of the teen brain? (Read Dan Seigal’s book, Brainstorm if you want to learn more about these changes).
Here’s the thing: It’s not just COVID fatigue — it’s as if COVID fatigue is making me re-experience my early-teen anxieties and uncertainties. But because of this, I find that I have so much more empathy for my own preteen and teen. Like, I remember thinking, “Everyone has plans but me. I am, like totally, the only highschooler home alone watching Saturday Night Live…again.” Now my kids have social media to confirm all of those crazy irrational thoughts that went through ALL our heads. And I see my own fears in them, magnified.
This newfound empathy has helped me warm up to my horrifically and fantastically teenage kids, and for that I am thankful. But how can I make it better for myself? I am so tired of being tired! The only answer I can come up with is the one my grandma told me when my best friend snitched to the principal that I was the one who broke the hand dryer in the girl’s bathroom: “I know this feels so hard right now but it will not feel this way forever.”
The idea that COVID won’t last forever — that a vaccine is on the way and that we will eventually move past this — offers the most important things of all: HOPE.
No, COVID won’t feel this way forever. In the future, it will feel better. That is my HOPE. I need to find ways every day to help my family and myself remember to look for rays of hope. It’s not always easy. I know it’s not easy for you, either. So let’s look for HOPE together. I know it’s still there if we look hard enough.
Dr. Pikiewicz earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA. She completed pre-doctoral training at the Nan Tolbert Nurturing Center in Ojai, CA, and her post-doctoral internship at the Boulder Institute for Psychotherapy and Research. At both sites, Dr. Pikiewicz worked with a range of adult, adolescent and child clients in individual, couple, family and group settings. She also holds a B.S. in environmental science from Allegheny College and a teaching credential from Western Washington University.
