By Charlotte Fox Weber
As we enter lockdown 3.0, we are experiencing a kind of chronophobia, which is when we dread time passing but also want it to pass so we can get to the other side of this time period. It’s a kind of unease with time itself, and the condition affects prisoners very often, where they feel their lives passing them by while behind bars. We aren’t in jail, but we do feel restricted; anxious thoughts and rumination creep in. In this dark time period, we are finding sticks to beat ourselves with. Here are some pesky emotional traps to watch out for:
Beware of creeping nostalgia. Trapped and stuck, many of us are second guessing the big choices we’ve made, looking back as far as we can see, and fixating over our decisions. I’m seeing this in my therapy clients frequently — intense self-rebuke for any past choices that now feel suboptimal. If only we’d married someone better, richer, more beautiful, taken that trip when we could, gone on that adventure, pursued a different career, lived somewhere better, enjoyed our youth more fully. This kind of painful nostalgia comes with feeling so unfree now, with so few choices available to us presently. So we are tilted backwards, blaming ourselves for where we went wrong so we can make sense of why our lives aren’t exactly as we imagine they could be. It’s our way of wrestling with how much control we have over our destinies; to what extent we design our lives.
Beware of exaggerating! Nostalgia distorts and amplifies. The rose tinted glasses keep us convinced that our glory days are behind us, that an ex was the love of our life, that everything was sublime and sweet on a particular occasion, that the past is where the magic and beauty happened. If only we had done this better, savoured something more, noticed an opportunity, life would be magically better now. We can’t verify past hypothetical scenarios since they are no longer available to us, so we hoard certain moments and construct fantasies we believe are true. Watch out for how imaginative and convincing your nostalgia can be…
Beware of jealous assumptions. Jealousy and envy are on the rise, possibly because we are understandably self-pitying, so we look at others and believe life is easier or better. It’s important to accept that no one’s life is exactly as it should be at the moment. We are all feeling obstructed from doing what we want, at least to some degree. If you start feeling jealous of other lives, and imagining better situations, assume that life is challenging for just about everyone, no matter what.
Beware of ageing feeling even harsher. People are particularly pissed off by the ageing process these days, and ageing is already a source of sorrow and struggle for most of us anyway. We are hyper aware of getting older in response to the odd way time has played out during the pandemic. We feel stuck and frozen, but time marches on, and we are growing older by the day, feeling impeded from living as fully and joyously as we’d like.
All of the above can lead to us feeling more resentful about getting older and not having as much fun as we’d like. Also to re-imagining being young – a period associated with feeling full of freedom and potential – because in this very restricted period we want to feel free again. Ageing is hard, and elderly people feel understandably hard done by the pandemic. So recognise that ageing feels even more insulting to the ego right now, in so many ways. Not that young people are flourishing right now either. They’re being ripped off by the pandemic hugely. So there is loss aplenty. And yet this is a moment to renew enthusiasm for all that is still possible. Joie de vivre keeps the spirit fresh. Rather than falling into any of the rumination rabbit holes described above, insist on looking for joy and fun wherever possible. And they are still possible!
