How to Soothe Your 'Re-Entry Anxiety' As COVID-19 Lockdowns Lift

When COVID-19 began spreading in the U.S., Dan Kerber was drawn to the data. The 48-year-old from Plano, Texas read about case counts and projections every day, keeping his team at the telecommunications company Ericsson up to date on the latest news. So in May, when states including Texas began to reopen before the data showed it was time to do so, Kerber began to get nervous.

Lily Brown, director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says there are two distinct types of re-entry anxiety. Some people are anxious because they have a “lurking fear” of catching or spreading COVID-19, she says, while others have fallen out of practice socializing and are finding it difficult to resume.

Take baby steps“Exposure therapy“—or safely confronting sources of fear—is the gold-standard treatment for many fear and anxiety disorders. The same tactic may help with re-entry anxiety, says Dr. Ryan Sultan, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center in New York City.

That does not mean you should rush out and socialize just like you did before coronavirus. But think about what you can do safely right now—perhaps sitting with a friend in your backyard while wearing masks and staying six feet apart—and take steps to do it sooner rather than later. Be honest about how these safety behaviors are affecting you. If wiping down your groceries “takes you five minutes and it really helps you,” it’s probably not a big deal, even if it’s not strictly recommended, Brown says. But if you’re spending hours a day cleaning your home, that could be a bigger issue. “It’s never really up to me to decide, ‘Is this behavior a problem?’” Brown says.

Sheeeet!

Go see a shrink.

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