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I hope everyone is keeping well and safe. I know we are all doing our best.

These are exceptional times with very strange circumstances. To say that is to repeat what is obvious. I have been in social isolation for two weeks. I had flu symptoms and was awaiting results of the COVID-19 test with considerable anxiety – they came back negative. Needless to say, I am relieved and so is everyone around (virtually) me.

Thankfully, there are different media on the internet, offering information on how to stay safe, how to flatten the curve, etc. There is also plenty of advice for issues related to anxiety, stress and worry.
If you have trouble finding any of these, please let me or anyone at ACCESS Open Minds central office know.

While I have my concerns related to my own personal and social context, I wanted to also reflect on ‘if I were young’ what I would be thinking about, what my concerns would be and how I would deal with them. I cannot pretend to know what is best for people, especially our youth, but I can reflect on it by putting myself in the position of being young and wonder what their concerns might be.

Like most people, I have continued to work from home but have had sufficient time to reflect on what is currently happening to all of us. I would like to share these reflections with you, especially, on being young during this time. 

What qualifies me to say anything about the subject, you wonder? Well: 

1) I was once young and, despite the difference across generations and cultures, I believe some fundamental human emotions and behaviour are pretty universal (otherwise neither the ancient philosophers nor Shakespeare would be relevant today);

2) I have children who are all grown up now, but not that long ago were adolescents and young adults (under 25);

3) I have worked with some wonderful young people over the past 35 years and have learned a lot from them.

Here are two things that come to my mind, that would be especially important to me:

Friends and Peers

The most natural thing for us humans is to want to be with one another, be connected with others. This is what we do with our families, friends, colleagues and even acquaintances. That may be so for all of us, throughout all our lives but, at no other time in life are one’s friends and peers more important than in adolescence and young adulthood. When we are young, indeed our families are important, but they are there and we can take them for granted. They can even get on one’s nerves from time to time. I will always remember itching to get out of the house to be with my friends. I observed the same with my own children. This is all natural.

In my experience as a psychiatrist, when families were concerned that their young son or daughter seemed to be withdrawing from them, my question was always ‘Is it just from you or from their friends as well?‘. If it was not from their friends and peers, I would tell them to feel at ease. When you are young, being aloof from one’s parents for a while is not necessarily worrisome and may even be part of growing up. A psychologist once expressed it on behalf of a young person as ‘When I was 14, I thought my parents were stupid; by the time I was 21, I thought they were beginning to grow up‘. But if the young person stops seeing his or her friends and peers, then it is a real sign to be worried. This is all when life was ‘normal’!

In the present context, however, the situation is very strange indeed. The natural instinct to be with friends and peers is being blocked (even ordered), and we are asked to voluntarily do the blocking. While we all understand it is necessary for our global and community safety as much as our own, it cannot be easy. In being confined to our homes, it is not the limit of the shared space that would have been my concern, but the fact that going out, seeing friends is no longer possible. That would seem to me a big loss and a source of stress. I am sure young people are very creative in using social media to stay connected with each other. I wonder how much harder it would have been without that (prior to 2005?). Although virtual interaction may not replace real face-to-face time, it must provide some relief. Three cheers for social media! Having said that social media for social connection is fantastic, I would still be mindful of the constant scrolling and comparing to others. Hence, my attempt at connecting personally.

I am also thinking of youth whose personal circumstances are such that the everyday space they live in, where they sleep and eat, is not highly desirable. For them, getting out of that space, every single day, is part of their coping with difficulties in their lives, because the space they live in or the people they share their space with, do not make a healthy environment for them. Places and services where they would normally find relief and company as well as activities (art, music, conversations, schooling, sport etc.) are now not accessible. If I were in that position, I would find that a major loss and a source of stress. I understand that some of these organizations are trying their best to find innovative ways to stay connected with the youth they normally would see and interact with regularly. So, please have a look in your community of what is being made available. If you need help in locating them let me know. I will see what I can find.

Time

Time normally passes quickly. Mostly, we do not have enough time to do all we would like to do in a day. We are usually not conscious of ‘time’ passing. In the current situation, however, ‘time’ acquires a totally new perspective. It is as if the passing of time has slowed down. There is suddenly a lot of it. I do remember times during my late adolescence, when I experienced that sense of time slowing after being confined to the house for some reason or the other. Those reasons for me ranged from mundane things like bad weather or, more often and more seriously, political conflict resulting in curfews that lasted days and at times weeks. I sat at the window and watched the police stroll across the bridge back and forth. I thought they too must be bored but they were doing their job, whether I agreed with the reason or not. None of that was anything like what we are faced with today nor was it as prolonged as this might end up being.

Such a state of perception of time leads to what we quickly call ‘boredom’ and then, creeps in a sense of restlessness. In my professional work, many years ago we asked young people, who were recovering from a mental health problem, about their sources of stress. They reported their biggest source of stress was ‘too much time and too little to do’. So, slowing of time can be a source of stress indeed in a variety of circumstances.

In the current circumstances, having a lot of time and its passing having slowed down could be a source of stress. What does one do with that stress? My guess is there are many things people are doing to cope with this sense of boredom and restlessness. One thing may be to take longer to do things one normally would rush through. Other ways of coping may vary from finding new activities that can be done without creating physical proximity with others (reading, writing, letting one’s hidden creative energies come out, art, listening to music, playing video games and even, dare I suggest, old fashioned board games etc.). Some of these could still engage friends. I did not know (I am not tech savvy!) that you could play scrabble or other board games through smart phones. My daughters just told me that is what they were doing across town in Toronto. I would love to know what young people are doing to make use of the extra time. I may learn something from that and that could help me in slowing me down to get into harmony with the new perception of time. I too am faced with this situation right now! Also, sharing different ideas of how each of us is dealing with time could help others.

Needless to say, I am doing my best to acknowledge how hard this situation must be for young people. I am finding it hard as it is and am trying to imagine how I would perceive this if I were young. Please (everyone, young and old) share your thoughts on this and other things happening currently with all of us.

Stay in touch, if you feel like it.

– Ashok