Anyone know how to regain emotional wellness post-isolation?

Post date: 2020-08-07 14:53:11

I know a lot of people must be feeling this. . .

I'm a rather sensitive person who lives alone and is single but is normally fine with it. I'm usually really active with hobbies and sports and so in a normal week I would see all my friends and hobby-buddies at least 3 times. . I've had to work to maintain mental health my whole life (depression and anxiety run in my family plus a parent died suddenly when I was very young), but in the time before pandemic I was doing pretty good.

l feel like the 3-4 months of total social isolation changed my brain and I can't seem to get back on track emotionally. Even though my city is opening up and I've been able to see some friends and family, I sort of feel traumatized but what felt like months of solitary confinement. During the isolation I felt lots of intense emotions that seem to have permanently affected me, such as :

- Mortal terror (fear of dying - I've never felt that before)
- Fear of abandonment / dying alone in my apartment
- Realizing that my family doesn't care about me anymore now that I'm no longer a cute kid. ( My family members tend to be needy and self-absorbed and only contact me when they want something)
- Alienation from society / feeling of being a freak / rejected from society
- Realizing that actually no one on earth cares whether I live or die

I know these are pretty extreme and catastrophizing but at the time they felt very real. I've noticed weird emotional after effects these days, such as:

- Starting to have feelings for one of my close friends that I was never interested in before
- Suddenly being certain I want to get married and have kids (before I was just going with the flow)
- This is going to sound super weird but I bought a new dishwasher and swear to god I'm so happy to have it that at first I'm pretty sure I was sexually attracted to it and had an emotional attachment to it.
- Leaning heavily towards libertarianism / not giving a fuck about other people anymore / heavy cynicism towards authorities, rules, government etc (even though intellectually I'm a socialist.... emotionally I can't manage to give any fucks about anything)
- I've beeen drinking a lot and addicted to my phone.

I know what I've been through is not the same as the stress of parenting during a pandemic, working on the front lines and seeing people sick and dying while watching powerlessly, becoming ill myself, or watching loved ones get sick and die. But, I happen to be psychologically pretty fragile due to my genes and past experiences so these hard things affect me pretty badly. Does anyone feel the same or know how to figure out any ways to recover myself so that I don't become an emotional mess and alienate my friends?

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