On the menu today: A new survey of therapists affirms that a dramatically increasing number of Americans are burned out, stressed, anxious, and depressed — further evidence that the far-reaching efforts to counter Covid-19 are inflicting their own damage on public health; after insisting all year that inflation wasn’t real or wasn’t a cause for panic, Paul Krugman declares “the current bout of inflation came on suddenly” (it was particularly sudden for those who read his columns); a Catholic high school demonstrates particularly un-Christian ingratitude; and evidence that ABC News can’t count.
It’s Time to Let Americans Relax
A New York Times survey of therapists affirms what you may have already suspected: A dramatically increasing number of Americans are burned out, stressed, anxious, depressed, lonely, isolated, and mentally and emotionally at the end of their rope:
Nine out of 10 therapists say the number of clients seeking care is on the rise, and most are experiencing a significant surge in calls for appointments, longer waiting lists and difficulty meeting patient demand. . . . Respondents said the higher demand was coming from both former patients who had returned for care and from new clients seeking therapy for the first time for anxiety, financial stress, substance use, job worries and other issues that have surfaced during the upheaval of the past 18 months. Many therapists say they are counseling health care workers who have been traumatized by caring for Covid-19 patients.
The Times reported that “75 percent of respondents reported an increase in wait times. Nearly one in three clinicians said that it could take at least three months to get an appointment or that they didn’t have room for new patients at all.”
Regardless of what you think of the self-help author and motivational speaker Tony Robbins, I think you’ll find some truth in his diagnosis of the six basic human needs. The pandemic, and its continuing aftereffects, really took a wrecking ball to people’s ability to meet the first four needs. (Robbins observes that the first four are two pairs of seemingly contradictory needs.)
The first human need is certainty and stability. We have undoubtedly dealt with a lot of uncertainty in our lives in recent years — the pandemic, schools closing, businesses closing, riots in certain areas, businesses reopening, crime surges in certain areas, prices rising across the economy. It’s hard to make any plans because it’s hard to know for sure what your life is going to be like down the road. We just don’t know what will be happening a week from now, a month from now, or six months from now.
The second human need is uncertainty or variety — because as much as we need stability and reliability, we also need change and new stimuli. Certainty gets boring, and we are refreshed by good surprises and new experiences.
If you’re stuck at home, or afraid to interact too closely with others, you’re not going to experience much novelty or variety. Vacations, parties, holiday celebrations, big gatherings, festivals, conferences — these have gradually come back into our lives over the course of 2021, but they’re at nowhere near the frequency and ubiquitousness of pre-pandemic life, and we’re surrounded by this constant debate about whether they’re safe or not.
The third human need is significance — feeling unique, important, special, or needed. When a virus from some far-off corner of the world forces you to cancel all your plans and stay at home, you do not feel significant. When you are told you are not an “essential worker,” you do not feel significant. Most of us found it a little irritating when celebrities sent us those allegedly inspirational messages from their luxurious homes telling us, “We’re all in this together.” But if we really are “all in this together,” it means we’re as helpless and powerless as everybody else. It turns out that we are not the masters of our fates or the captains of our soul. What we can do with our lives is set by Xi Jinping, the WHO, Anthony Fauci, and Kathy Hochul.
The fourth human need is connection with others and love. We both want to stand out from others and to be special, but we also want to be connected to others and feel like part of group or community. Robbins observes that celebrities spend their whole lives trying to become famous, and then once they do, they feel like no one around them understands them anymore — that no one truly relates or can empathize to what they’re experiencing because a celebrity’s life is so different from everyone else’s.
When you are isolated from people, either because of a quarantine or personal choice to avoid others to minimize the risk of infection, you’re both physically and emotionally not as connected to them. It’s why Zoom holiday gatherings are such a poor substitute for the real thing. We need the hugs. We need the high-fives. We need to read the body language and the facial expressions of the people we’re interacting with. (Masks don’t help with this!) It is very difficult to cultivate a strong connection to others when you haven’t seen their faces in person for the better part of two years.
The other thing the pandemic did is it gave everyone the opportunity and the mental permission slip to instantly judge another person based upon their behavior, exhibiting their personal tolerance for risk. “Can you believe she’s trying to put a mask on her two-year-old?” “Can you believe that idiot is walking around the grocery store with his mask beneath his nose?” “You’re not six feet apart!” “Karen!” “You’re the reason the pandemic isn’t over!” Over the course of this pandemic, a lot of people have grown extremely comfortable confronting strangers. But that person who isn’t wearing a mask might have a health condition that makes breathing difficult, and wearing a mask potentially dangerous. Or that person who is wearing a mask when it doesn’t seem needed might be immunocompromised or live with someone who is. We never know what circumstances that stranger is trying to address or overcome. But boy oh boy, a bunch of us feel comfortable making assumptions about those circumstances and causing a public scene calling them out.
What’s the answer to this? Well, if we didn’t feel so burned out, stressed, anxious, depressed, lonely, and isolated before the pandemic, then it seems reasonable to conclude that the closer our lives approach that pre-pandemic “normal,” the less we will feel this way. The Times article notes that not all of the problems that are sending people to therapists are driven by the pandemic. One couples’ counselor tells the Times, “I’m already watching marriages crumble. None of the problems that they’re presenting with are new. It’s just their capacity to have resilience and compassion, and everyone is just so worn down.” The pandemic didn’t create all the problems in our lives, but it exacerbated a lot of them.
It would be nice to snap our fingers and say, “Okay, that’s it, everything’s back to pre-pandemic normal.” With nearly 79 percent of all eligible Americans having gotten at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 is now much more like a virulent version of the flu — particularly dangerous to the elderly, immunocompromised, or those with other serious health issues, but mostly an annoyance to those who are younger and healthier. We didn’t shut down our society every winter for the flu, so we should be able to get back to pre-Covid-19 normal.
Omicron is complicating this — we’re now dealing with a variant that so far seems super-contagious but, so far, milder. It is conceivable that this will eventually be seen as something of a blessing — everybody gets the Omicron version of Covid-19, the symptoms are mild, everyone builds up antibodies, and we end up with something akin to herd immunity. The problem is that about 15 percent of American adults aren’t vaccinated at all, and some of them will succumb to Covid-19. (The U.S. is now averaging 1,288 Covid-19 deaths per day, a 23 percent increase from two weeks ago.)
The skyrocketing rate of mental-health and emotional problems across the country — among all ages, in red states and blue states alike — should reaffirm for us that human beings are not meant to live on a constant state of high alert with all kinds of frequently changing rules and restrictions on whether they must wear a mask, how many people can gather in one place, whether they can eat indoors, whether school is in session, and so on. Yes, Covid-19 is a risk, but suppressing normal human activity has its own risks to public health as well.
Loosen the reins and tell people it is okay to take action to meet those human needs for stability, novelty, significance, and connection.
Now He Tells Us
After insisting all year long that inflation was overstated, or a “blip,” or the cause of a needless panic, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes that, “The current bout of inflation came on suddenly.” He concludes, “Like everyone who’s taking this debate seriously, I’m hanging on the data and wonder every day whether I’m wrong.”
Is he, now?
You Can’t Go Home Again . . .
You may have read stories about people who go back to their high schools and colleges and find those institutions almost unrecognizable, taken over by woke ideology. But I doubt you’ve ever read anything like Robert Agostinelli’s account of his return to his high-school alma mater, the Aquinas Institute. It is heartbreaking, enraging, jaw-dropping, and vividly illustrative about how hard-left progressivism cultivates a philosophy of touchy, prickly, intolerant ingratitude within its adherents.
ADDENDUM: In a tweet, ABC News warns about Joe Manchin, “A single senator is about to seriously set back an entire presidential agenda.”
It’s as if Republican senators don’t exist; obviously they don’t count in the minds of ABC News. Otherwise, the tweet would read, “A mere 51 senators — just barely a majority of the chamber! — are about to seriously set back an entire presidential agenda.”