Emotional Ups And Downs Are Very Common During The Isolation Period

Emotional ups and downs during home isolation are common and recurring. Many people experience mood swings throughout the day. They go from being motivated to feeling desperate. They go from feeling calm to experiencing a form of nausea that brings with it all kinds of negative thoughts.

This is perfectly normal. However, you should not feed all this negativity by starting to ask yourself if you suffer from some kind of disorder, such as bipolar disorder.  This psychological state goes far beyond these emotional changes.

What is happening to almost all of us right now is that we have been exposed to a completely unknown situation. This is an unforeseen scenario where both our brain, body and emotions react at the same time. Thus, we can naturally expect some of these emotional reactions.

While this may surprise you, not all of it is new to any of us. Ask an astronaut and they will tell you what insulation is. There are also inmates who spend several months or years imprisoned.

Some children with immune disorders also live a good part of their lives trapped at home. Finally, let’s not forget scientists who can spend months trapped in stations in places like Antarctica.

Lawrence Palinkas at the University of Southern California is an expert who researches issues like this. His studies  on psychosocial adaptation in extreme environments give us relevant data to understand what we are experiencing right now.

Isolation has a great psychological impact on people and it begins to become especially noticeable after 15 to 20 days. This is when we suffer the most from emotional ups and downs. Below we will analyze this.

Emotional ups and downs during home isolation

It’s easy to get up in the morning and start to feel discouraged. As soon as you open your eyes to a new day, you may experience temporary disorientation. For a few seconds you do not know what day it is, and then, bang! You remember everything… the pandemic, the physical and social isolation, and the uncertainty of when your life will return to normal.

When you eat breakfast, you usually exchange the first words of the day with family and friends. You are thinking about what to do today, which gives you some much needed energy and motivation.

After a few hours, and for no particular reason, however, it seems that a fog appears that makes everything dark and cloudy. Your motivation begins to fade  and the sadness makes everything unclear. Why is this happening to you? Are you in the process of developing a mental health problem?

Let’s dive a little deeper into this to find out why these emotional ups and downs occur during home isolation.

Even if you feel like it, you will not feel OK all the time

It does not matter if you have stimulating activities in your daily routine. It does not matter if you are one of the optimistic people who always have encouraging words for both yourself and others.

All of us, without exception, are going to experience some emotional ups and downs during this time. Trying to feel good and be positive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is an illusion. Therefore, even if this sounds daunting, you need to take care of your negative feelings for a while. They will be like unpleasant and unwanted roommates who will visit you from time to time and who you will have to accept and understand.

Do not try to impose other emotions on yourself

When you feel discouraged or frustrated, do not avoid these feelings. Do not get obsessed with getting rid of them and try to be cheerful. Our emotional world does not work this way. The emotional ups and downs we go through during home isolation are also an “escape valve” for the brain, as this social organ needs the everyday life it used to have.

When you perceive a change that is as drastic as the one we are all experiencing right now, a warning pops up in your brain. This turns into stress and fear – emotions regulated by the amygdala. Therefore, when these feelings arise, it is impossible to exchange them with others.

What should you do then? First of all, you have to accept them, and above all, say to yourself: “ Feeling this way is normal, this is a new and unexpected situation. The only thing I have to try to do is make sure that this negative feeling does not take control. I accept it, I understand it, and I let it go ”.

Look for “channels” to achieve mental peace

Everyone experiences emotional ups and downs during home isolation. However, some are much more vulnerable to these emotional processes than others.

Anyone who has experienced depression  or who suffers from another type of psychological disorder or mental health problem will have greater difficulty trying to regulate these conditions. Precisely because of this, it is important that these people have access to psychological, medical and social support.

If we put these more exceptional situations aside, emotional ups and downs are in most cases, as we have pointed out, completely normal, and you are able to deal with them.

Steps to take to deal with emotional ups and downs

• You need to understand that, instead of classifying them as either negative or positive emotions, or as right or wrong, you should know what to do with those emotions. It is clear that you can not feel good and productive 100% of the time, but you can stay calm through it all.
• One way to achieve this is to find channels where you can connect with yourself. Metaphorically, it is about having your feet on the ground, being focused on the mind and keeping your heart balanced.
• Thus, activities such as talking to family or friends that can help you “vent” your feelings are always useful. The same goes for spending your time on creative tasks that allow you to relax, such as cooking, painting, crafts and writing.

You should not be overly concerned with being productive at this time. Remember that it is time to take care of yourself, and to some extent be in survival mode. To achieve this, you need to understand the wide range of emotions you may experience during the day. If you do, you will be able to overcome this difficult situation!