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Seattle Now: But what if I want to stay in quarantine?

caption: Cleo, a first-grade student at Villa Academy, learns about vowels in teacher Kate Ford's classroom on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Seattle.
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Cleo, a first-grade student at Villa Academy, learns about vowels in teacher Kate Ford's classroom on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Seattle.
KUOW Photo/Megan Farmer

When the lockdown first started, it was super stressful. I'm already an introverted person. For me and my family, it's been so great to be together and to be home and to not be so busy. And I'm really not looking forward to re-entry. I don't want things to go back to the way they were. –Seattle Mom

Dr. Ronnie Cunningham: I am hearing this from clients and colleagues as well. I have a colleague that I meet with on a weekly basis. One of her assertions early on was, “Hey, this is an opportunity for me and my husband to spend more time with our children.”

Think about it before COVID: What were the things that you used to do that you don't do anymore? There was a sense of trauma, having to adjust to that. Having someone suddenly say, “You can't go outside anymore. You can't send your children to school anymore. You have to figure out how to work from home.”

People are scared about starting over again, and what life is going to look like now that we have learned how to live with this pandemic, even as we have a vaccine, not everybody's taking it. It makes sense to me that there's a lot of fear.

I'll recall my own transition. I was vaccinated in February, and even prior to February, I would see one client once a week. We had a whole routine set up where we would spray everything down. Everybody wore masks, and I was really scared to come back, even after I got the vaccine.

I've been practicing little by little getting back to what my life used to look like. That's what I would definitely say to anybody who is considering getting back out into the life. Give yourself the opportunity to go slowly. The sooner you get started, the better it'll be.

I am practicing because CDC guidelines tell us. My daughter had a softball tournament this weekend, and I made sure I didn't wear a mask. At first it was very uncomfortable. Adding more people to your social circle should increase stress.

Give yourself a chance to recover from your attempts to re-enter. Have a plan for what that's going to look like and how you're going to take care of yourself. If you and I were going to run a marathon, I couldn’t run 26 miles right now. I could run a couple of miles. I'm going to go just far enough past that until it's challenging. When that gets easy, I'll add on a bit more.

Now that vaccines are coming into play, there is double pressure now to get back out there. I wonder, how do you manage that sense of obligation and pressure when you really want to say no? I don't think you have to give up isolation or solitude, if that's what you enjoy. And you can find ways to go back to work and socialize so that you can find more balance.

For a lot of people, we've discovered some things that we didn't know about what home life and work life could be, and that's been healthy.

I'm asking my clients:

“What's the thing that you miss the most about what life used to be like?”

“What's the thing that you appreciate about your life now?”

Dr. Ronnie Cunningham is a psychologist in Seattle. This transcript with Seattle Now host Patricia Murphy was edited for length and clarity.


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