Why This Stage of the Pandemic Makes Us So Anxious

With the threat from the delta variant bearing down across the United States, it’s almost hard to remember the heady days earlier this summer when many of us were experiencing relief, joy, even euphoria as we began to resurface from the pandemic. Barbecues with friends, dinners out, live music, connecting with people face-to-face — all of the antidotes to isolation we’d been craving became tangible realities.

During the week of June 14, as vaccinations were becoming widespread and public life seemed to be returning to normal, Gallup classified 59.2 percent of Americans as “thriving” based on their responses to a survey that asked them to evaluate their lives, the highest average score on that measure in 13 years. Optimism was through the roof.

But now, many people are experiencing a starkly different set of feelings — blunted emotions, spikes in anxiety and depression, and a desire to drastically change something about their lives. If this sounds familiar, you might be one of the many people experiencing what we’ve begun to refer to as “pandemic flux syndrome.” It’s admittedly not a clinical term, but it seems to capture something about the moment we’re living through.

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