You may be wondering how much longer the relative quarantine we’ve been under for most of the past year will continue.  You may also be wondering what effect it’s having on your mental health.  The answer is not positive, especially if you’ve been experiencing more isolation than usual.  You may also be experiencing social anxiety, so read on to find out more.

Quarantine-Related Social Anxiety Is Increasing   

Even if you were someone who didn’t struggle with social anxiety in the past, the quarantine has probably made this at least somewhat of a problem for you.  If you go out and see people in public, you at least may feel apprehensive if you or they aren’t wearing a mask.  You may be concerned about not being socially distanced, as well as freaked out that they aren’t in a rectangle like you are used to seeing for many of your social interactions.  These can all be seen as aspects of social anxiety related to the pandemic and can present real problems when we start to come out from this in the foreseeable future. 

Everyone is Experiencing Some Effects From the Quarantine

Whether you go by the latest recommendations from public health authorities or you deliberately ignore them, you can’t keep from feeling the effects of quarantining, social distancing, and other pandemic related considerations.  The world simply is not the same as it was before, and even if you consciously rail against taking precautions yourself you are still dealing with how at least most other people tend to behave.  You may have even railed against mask-wearing laws or ordinances, only to have to deal with your own sense of shame for violating their sense of safety later on.  I’ve even found myself getting irritated when others don’t observe social distancing or wear masks, and this could partly stem from the anxiety of contracting disease.  That anxiety is partly social in nature, because we can’t get Covid unless we’re exposed to it from other people.

Other People Aren’t to Blame for Your Quarantine-Related Social Anxiety

So you wall yourself up in your home and keep yourself from being exposed to other people’s germs, but you may still feel very anxious.  One of the important things to understand is that it is Covid you’re trying to avoid, not other people.  There are ways of connecting with others that don’t involve a risk of getting Covid, but your primitive mind may not distinguish between the two.  The primitive mind is the one that tends to seek the familiar and shun that which is unfamiliar to you.  The problem these days is that we’ve gotten all too familiar with the relative isolation of Covid, and working against this takes conscious effort. 

Suggestions for Coping With Quarantine Social Anxiety

1.  Make some effort to contact others deliberately for face-to-face interaction.  Schedule a Zoom meeting with friends or family members on a weekly basis to keep in touch. You may have to initiate this, but tell yourself others need this as much as you do. If you can’t do Zoom then talk on the phone or exchange texts, but visual contact is generally best.

2. Practice some form of relaxation on a daily basis.  Use deep breathing, mindfulness, or meditation to help decrease your baseline level of stress and anxiety.  This will make it less unnerving when you are about to interact with others.

3. Get regular exercise to keep anxiety from building up in you.  Especially exercise that gets you outdoors and in nature or around other living beings will help you keep your overall anxiety level down.

4. Return phone calls, texts, emails to keep from isolating.  The tendency is to want to avoid others and not interact with them during quarantine, so try to at least be accountable and conscientious about getting back to others when they reach out to you.  You would want them to do the same for you.

5. Get creative about how to connect with others.  I have a cousin and her husband who will engage in activities like playing darts with friends by setting up a dart board and focusing their webcam on it to play darts with them on their own dart boards.  You can schedule baking or other recipe-making with friends and family using interactive technology as well, which can take the onus off of having to find things to talk about with them.  

What if You Need More Help with Quarantine-Related Social Anxiety

It may very well be that all of the above suggestions help you to decrease anxiety, but you still feel the need to get professional help.  I’ve been helping people overcome anxiety for my entire 12-year career as a therapist.  While the past year has been a challenge for most everyone, I can assure you that you will be able to come out of this overcome the social anxiety that may accompany it for you.  If you would like to talk to me to find out if I might be a fit for helping you with this problem, please feel call me at the number at the top of this page or fill out the form below.  Whether or not you feel I’m the right person to help you out of the situation you’re in or not, you only stand to gain from reaching out for help and support.  That can go a long way towards getting you out of the anxiety hole the quarantine has put you in.  

Visit our specialty page on anxiety therapy to learn more about how Scott can help you overcome social anxiety.

About the author:  Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland.  He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin.  He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His new book is entitled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.