How has lockdown affected your mental health? For many, lockdown has created much anxiety and fear. People are, quite naturally, concerned about their physical health—not just for themselves but for their family too. There are worries about work—will their job still be secure? Will there be a job to go back to?
Some have embraced the quiet time gratefully—using furlough to rest, recharge their batteries and finish off long neglected jobs around the house. They are finding that they’re enjoying the slower pace of life. That the world seems to be taking a much-needed break. Nature is having a chance to breathe. The air is less polluted due to reduced planes, trains and automobiles.
But for many, the real challenge comes in the form of having to stay indoors every day. Sure, we are allowed one daily walk and we can go to the shop for essentials but long periods of time indoors can be a huge struggle for many people. Most of us had been used to a busy day—a commute to the office, surrounded by co-workers all day, perhaps a quick drink after work or a sociable trip to a show; life was full and busy. How are people adjusting to being indoors, all day? Many have struggled with a lack of routine; sleeping in too long, drinking too much, getting to bed too late.
For me, I feel like I experienced lockdown about 5 years before it happened. After many years of working in an office in town, I was offered the opportunity to work from home. I grabbed it with both hands. I had no idea how it would affect my mental health.
Initially, I loved it. I’d wake in the morning and look out at the pouring rain, rejoicing in the fact that I didn’t have to do the daily commute. I noticed that I was saving a fortune on takeaway coffees and daily lunches. I could roll out of bed and onto the work chair with zero effort and several hits of the snooze button.
But a friend told me differently. He said that it was obvious that working from home was affecting my mental health. I had become more introverted, less eager to socialize, more entrenched in my safe cocoon.
I found that the more I isolated, the more I wanted to isolate. The more I enjoyed the peace and quiet of my own space, the less likely I was willing to make the effort to socialize.
My friend told me I should structure my day. I should get up in the morning and shower and dress at the same time as I had done for my office job. I should go out for a walk before 9am, in the same way that I would have walked from the bus-stop through town to work. I should get a bit of fresh air before starting my working day. He said that I should get out at lunchtime, get a coffee somewhere and watch the world go by. I should get a walk at 5pm, to break up the day between work and evening relaxation time.
But I wasn’t that motivated. It was too easy to roll out of bed and sit at the desk in my pyjamas. After all, who would see me? It didn’t matter. It felt like too much effort to get out of bed and get a walk before work, especially when I didn’t have a bus to catch and I could hit the snooze button as many times as I liked. I found that the less I exercised, the less I wanted to exercise.
I didn’t realize how all those little walks had added up when I worked in an office in town. The walk around town at lunchtime, the walk from the office to the bus-stop; the walk from the bus-stop home.
I didn’t realize how much all the little daily social interactions added up; the chat with the barista in the coffee shop whilst waiting for my latte; the small talk in the canteen with colleagues; the chat about how their weekend went or what they watched on TV last night.
Suddenly, it was just me.
The days began to merge into one another. The boundary between work time and home time was blurred. An apathy began to settle into my bones, leaving me feeling disorientated and unmotivated. Depression set in.
They say that “energy begets energy.” The more energy you expend, the more energy you will have. I felt like I had no energy to do anything.
It wasn’t until I sought help for the depression and I started to climb out of it, that I began to think about Hannah. Hannah was an imaginary character in my mind. She was trapped indoors. But she was genuinely trapped by someone else. She hadn’t been trapped there by her own lack of motivation; her own self-imposed prison. She was actually imprisoned. Why was she imprisoned? Who put her there?
By the second chapter of my novel Under Your Skin, we know that Hannah is trapped in a basement but we have no idea why. We know that her husband Kyle has made a frantic call to the police reporting her missing but we are in the dark as to the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
I doubt if I could have written that story when I was in the midst of the depression. Depression saps the sufferer of any drive or focus. However, I was able to use the experience later to try to empathize with Hannah.
How does Hannah cope with being trapped indoors all day? She certainly can’t take a daily walk or nip to the shop for essentials. And she has no idea when (or if) her imprisonment will end.
I really wanted to capture the claustrophobic feel of Hannah being trapped in a basement. But I knew that this scenario wouldn’t sustain a full novel. Which is why I introduced other characters and other points of view. It is the friendly banter between the two detectives which balances out Hannah’s introversion. And it is the wide-eyed Julia who is eager to help Kyle who provides some questions and some tension.
Hannah’s way of coping was to self-medicate by taking painkillers. Something ‘he’ promised to supply her with to ‘keep her quiet’. I wanted to look at the link between depression and addiction. How that many sufferers of mental health turn to drugs as a means of self-medicating and coping with their negative thoughts.
By the time the actual lockdown came around, I was able to handle it much better. I had learned tools and I had coping mechanisms. I set out a schedule for my day and I stuck to it. In the evening, I had social interaction with a support group via Zoom. This was a great way to feel connected and prevent feelings of isolation.
And of course, my book has just been released. My day is always full of things to do. There is always some marketing that can be done. Or another book to read. Or another book to write. Even in lockdown, life feels calm and content.
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