Beyond the warnings of the experts, in the segment of the population that is between 30 and 50 years old, something common is perceived: everyone suffers in some way due to this uncertain time. First person stories.
Juliet Roffo
08/23/2020 - 17:03
- Clarín.com
- Society
"Anguish has a lot to do with uncertainty and not being able to plan for the future. That is very distressing for the individual." María Teresa Calabrese is a psychoanalyst and endocrinologist. It puts into words one of the emotions and sensations that thousands of Argentines go through in the middle of a pandemic and, depending on the geographical point of the country that is inhabited, mandatory isolation.
When the quarantine had been in the AMBA for seventy days, the Observatory of Applied Social Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology of the UBA revealed a report that determined that, precisely, "uncertainty" was the word most used by the inhabitants of the metropolitan region to describe your mood. Within one hundred days of this isolation determined by the State, "deeper and more serious" negative emotions had grown , as defined by the observatory: anguish, sadness and depression had spread among the population.
At the beginning of August, the results of a study led by Ineco were revealed: 8 out of 10 young Argentines presented some symptoms of depression, something that during the first week of isolation reached 33% of this population. At the same time, 55% of the population presented some symptom related to anxiety.
"My state of mind was and is in an up and down. I had anguish, I was calm, I was afraid, uncertainty, I was calm again, I became anxious again," says Mariana, who is 31 years old and lives in Villa Urquiza. "The most distressing thing is not knowing when all this will end. I wonder when we will return to normality, if we will return to normality, and above all it distresses me to think about how this affects my three children, each one in their
"I cry a lot and talk about this anguish with my husband and with friends, especially with mother friends. I see what comes to mind, what they think, how they are. It would be important that the stages and phases with dates are clearer, to know what will happen with going back to school. I try to be a positive person, so I start from what anguishes me and worries me to take care of myself. I mainly take care of the boys, who maintain their socialization, and I try not to think too much because when I think about it I I lock and throw myself on the bed or it generates a bad mood that combines with the bad mood of others in the house and that generates disorganization, like chaos, "defines Mariana.
"I cry a lot and talk about this anguish with my husband and with friends. I see what comes to mind, what they think, how they are. It would be important if the stages and phases with dates were clearer"
Mariana, 31 years old, Villa UrquizaEsteban is 42 years old, he is a bank employee and lives in Lanús with his wife and two children: one is 5 years old, the other one has been in quarantine. His wife works 14 days at the bank and another 14 at home. He does home-office every day. "I would define my state of mind as 'off or overwhelmed'. At first I don't know if it came to fear but there was a lot of caution. Our little boy's pediatrician had told us that when the virus began to arrive here we were all going to have to do an isolation, a quarantine so that it does not spread. We came mentally prepared to do it. But being so extensive there are things that in the day to day were weighing on me too much. Not being able to do normal things, get together, miss going to the office Not being able to do sports. It is not the same to do a home office once or twice a week with the children in the garden than with the children here, screaming. That is the definition of being overwhelmed, "he describes.
"I would define my state of mind as 'off or overwhelmed'. As it became so extensive, there are things that in my day to day weighed on me too much"
Esteban, 41 years old, LanúsHe feels something similar to what happens to Mariana: "What is most anguish in relation to children. Anguish that grandparents miss a lot of moments. Seeing them suffer that lack. That is heavy. Anguish also seeing that the biggest when he was able to start dating, perhaps because of putting the virus issue too much into his head, washing his hands, he told us that he did not want to go to the street. As time went by, we could begin to try to change him. But it causes me anguish not knowing what traits in their personality or in their lives having gone through this quarantine at this age is going to leave them ", he highlights.
"I try to take it as best as possible as a family. We do the housework that were pending, some arrangement, things that one can do to feel a little useful. I think we are not prepared as a family or as a couple to be 24 hours a day. day, with the children and everything. It is really difficult, it gets heavy. But at the same time I focus on the positive side and I think that I did not miss the first steps of the youngest, I did not lose myself when the first tooth fell out. That takes me a little out of anguish and feeling overwhelmed. When my meetings, my wife's and my baby's classes coincide, that anguish, that heaviness, that feeling of chaos explodes a little there. There I try to cut, take a little sun, air, take a block walk. Don't get to extreme exhaustion so as not to react. Because maybe there is an extra cry, an extra challenge to the children, and when you cool down you realize that you are surpassed ", adds Esteban.
"Anguish is the product of an alarm in the face of a danger that threatens the self. During the quarantine it was modified: at first it was before an unknown disease that, according to European accounts of the pandemic, implied a huge mortality. Later it was seen that it was not so deadly, that doctors learned to identify and treat the virus, and the anguish was mutating: concern arose for loved ones who did not see each other, for the economy, for the tension in living together in closed spaces ", he describes the psychiatrist Harry Campos Cervera, member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association.
"Government policy has always focused on something paternalistic and top-down, with prohibitions and little emphasis on individual responsibility for care. As the State takes care of me, I take care of myself less. That settled in some people. But the Health is a state of bio-psycho-social and economic well-being, and the State's policy focused only on the biological. Only now some psychologists and a psychiatrist have incorporated, but the mental aspect of citizenship was not taken into account ", he emphasizes Campos Cervera, and adds: "The idea that as a planet we have a vulnerability that we had not experienced in the last hundred years will remain as a mark. And the anguish of thinking when the next epidemic is going to be and if we are going to be prepared."
"My mood varies according to the days I have to go to work and the days I don't. The night before I have to go, I find it hard to fall asleep and I get up many times. It has to do with going by bus: before they took distance and had fewer people on the street. Now people are more attached, they respect each other much less ", says Laura, who is 31 years old, lives in Olivos, and works in the public service area of a private clinic.
"There are people who take off their chinstraps in front of you and that makes me very nervous, it makes me feel very exposed. At one point a psychologist would come to talk to us to see how they could help us, to modify things so that that would do us good, but not now it is being done. That was good, "he says. To counteract this anguish, try to walk one hour a day: "To clear my head and not think about how difficult it is not to be able to see my family," he explains.
"My mood varies according to the days I have to go to work and the days I don't. The night before I find it difficult to sleep. It has to do with going by bus: before there was distance, now people are more attached, they respect each other less"
Laura, 31 years old, Olivos"The first two months I was good, the second two I was bad, at this moment I am better. The two bad months were of a very strong emotional instability, crying practically every day, with that anguish that beats you, uncontrollable, that you cannot clarify why it is invading you. In my case it manifests as crying and blocking and feeling overwhelmed. Everything is dark and has no solution. Now I cry less, but I see how others are returning to activities of their life that were habitual, for example medical check-ups, or buying clothes, or doing sports, and I can't incorporate it. I know I need it but I don't see it as viable. It earns me a blockade, "says Malena. She is 36 years old, lives in Barracas and is a graphic designer.
"I still think that I am privileged, I am healthy, I am young, my family is fine. I have relatives and close friends who had coronavirus but they went through it well, and we all continue to have a roof, food, even though we all have salary problems. surfing the crisis. And during the first months I was able to live it like that, focus on that ", describes Malena. "I am very attached to the rules, it is difficult for me to adapt to the schedules in which physical activity is allowed, and it distresses me a lot to think about how I am going to regain habits, customs, circuits. There are also.
"I feel a permanent demand for productivity. Life not isolated allowed you to escape on a collective trip, an outing with friends, a visit to a relative. That forced us to cut productivity, and that is not there now and today productivity is everything that happens in the day. The routine is to get up, have breakfast, work, work, work, see what is for lunch, work, work, work, see what is for dinner, work, and even so, the objectives that are not reached they are in demand ", reflects the graphic designer.
"It is clear that humans are social beings and all the necessary measures to defend ourselves from contagion have made us have to give up socialization. Isolating themselves is distressing. In times of social networks and applications, we must try to continue with socialization even at a distance. It is not the same but it is better than nothing: it helps a lot ", emphasizes Calabrese.
For the specialist, the pandemic and the quarantine put in a state of question how the feeling of helplessness is resolved for each person. "Humans are born with the need for another assistant, if we do not have one we do not survive, we die. That leaves us a mark of helplessness that this pandemic rekindled. This is a new situation that touches those childhood traces of despair in the face of helplessness. Fortunately, humans are a very resilient species. It is a species that lived with other species that have become extinct. I am not so optimistic that it will bring changes in politics or ecology. I think rather that in a few years this will be enough forgotten, and probably in a hundred years there will be another pandemic and that of 2020 will be remembered, "he highlights. And she ends: "First you have to take care of the body, because if the body deteriorates and dies, there is no mind, there is no mental health to preserve."
"I am not so afraid of the contagion of coronavirus but I am very concerned about how our mental health will be. What harm is all this going to do to us, if we are going to be afraid, not feel capable of something. Because it is not that we are doing home office: we are trying to work and live in one of the most serious pandemics of the last 200 years. I try to tell myself a lot, and to tell each other with my family and friends, that in this scenario we are doing what we can ".
GS