“Every disruption is a point of potential growth,” says associate professor Terry Bowles of the University of Melbourne. And we have experienced quite a period of disruption.
Unprecedented change overwhelmed us in 2020 and 2021. Enduring the Covid pandemic has meant living through drastic adjustments to social and professional environments, an intense restriction of movement and choice, and prolonged bouts of social distancing and isolation.
“What this disruption does is pressure us to make decisions we otherwise wouldn’t make,” Bowles says. Covid has “literally made us step up” to make changes in our lives that are “quite radical”.
“Covid, for a lot of people, will be a new opportunity.”
Guardian Australia asked readers to share how the pandemic made them rethink their life. Alongside more than 100 reader responses, leading experts on mental health and wellbeing say Covid has transformed people’s sense of self, and the way wellbeing, priorities and identity are being though about.
Experiencing major change that makes us reassess our sense of self is “part of normal life”, says Dr Amy Dawel, a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at the Australian National University’s College of Health and Medicine.
“From divorce to a major move, having children or starting a new job – they are usually personal disruptions that make you reassess parts of your life and identity,” Dawel says.
What is unusual about the disruption of the past two years, she says, is that it has been “forced upon us” on a mass scale.
“There is less autonomy, and a much greater sense of uncertainty.”
At first, Australians felt “distant” from and “unaffected” by the Covid pandemic, Bowles says. “Unfortunately, that slowly changed”
Now, almost two years on, a widespread social disruption caused by Covid still permeates with “elements of distress at a universal level”. Skewing lives socially, professionally and financially, adapting with Covid “grinds people down to fatigue and distress”, Bowles says.
“And it has prompted changes that have altered entire identities.”
Such involuntary change and loss of control has a “massive impact” on wellbeing, says Prof Nicolas Cherbuin, head of the Australian National University’s Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing. “When a person has a sense they can control their lives, they tend to flourish more. And what we experienced with Covid was a generalised loss of control.
“We were told to go home, to change the way you socialise, change the way you work.”
Simultaneously, “the way a person defines themselves” with markers of identity – such as roles in a family, workplace or community group – were upended. Some academics have observed this as “social role disruption”, alongside the more general disruption in society.
“This all has a major impact on our agency, and who we think we are,” Cherbuin says.
Suddenly, one’s perception of self is very different, Dawel says. “Changing dramatically the context we are living in changes the way we fit in it.”
Bowles says that while some adjust quickly, others will need “serious support”. However, amid the disruption has come the potential for personal development. In an attempt to regain agency, Bowles says, “people have been adapting”, albeit at varying rates.
‘A mass redirection of priorities’
A discontent during Covid times has encouraged people to “reflect on what they want out of life, study, retirement”, Bowles says. “People will ask themselves a lot of questions about values. We will ask ourselves why we do things.”
Cherbuin calls it a mass redirection of priorities.
Many responses from Guardian Australia readers reflected Cherbuin’s observation that people are quitting jobs and reassessing work, “because they realise their work habits are unsustainable”.
Various other themes emerged as well. Popularly, realisations about relationships.
Some readers wrote of new appreciation for social connections. “I don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy, but I do need connection to people,” one said.
Others wrote of “reassessing” whether certain relationships are “worth it”. Many shared the experience of ending a long-term relationship or marriage in the midst of Covid. For one reader, following the end of their marriage, “lockdowns actually gave me pace to process this, reclaim my home and heal”.
Cherbuin says that, similarly, lifestyles have been reassessed and “people have taken up new activities”. Many respondents wrote of learning to bake, growing a vegetable garden, starting yoga and and getting into running.
For many, during the last years of disruption, personal health became a bigger focus. Studies by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, for instance, suggest 23% of Australians started to exercise more and 25% fit in more hours sleep. As well, 13.9% of people said they increased alcohol consumption during lockdowns in 2020, while slightly more (14.7%) said they were drinking less.
Readers reflected this mix but shared healthier habits, such as reducing alcohol consumption or stopping smoking during Covid, with one respondent writing: “I no longer want to go to events where drinking alcohol is the main activity.”
The rethinking of priorities, and the logistical opportunity for white-collar workers in particular to not need to live near their workplaces, prompted the biggest migration from cities to the regions in Australia’s history. Considering relocation, particularly to areas outside the boundaries of a city, was another lifestyle change considered by some readers for whom cities had begun to lose appeal.
“I would like to leave Melbourne and live in a more rural environment,” one respondent wrote. “I moved to Melbourne for the music scene and arts culture but now it’s not as important to me as it was before the pandemic.”
With lockdowns, disconnection from friends and loved ones and generalised anxiety during the pandemic, psychological distress increased overall. So too did attention to one’s own mental health, and that of others around us. Mental health and wellbeing has emerged as an important priority for readers, with multiple respondents sharing that, during the pandemic, they reached out to mental health professionals for the first time.
While self-harm among teenagers increased, the feared increase in suicides in society as a whole did not come to pass as individuals were encouraged to take care of their mental health by everyone from the prime minister to kindergarten classroom teachers.
“Covid has given people a reason to say: it is OK to feel not OK,” Dawel says. “It has legitimised seeking help for mental health reasons.”
Cherbuin echoes this: “Now, more people are going to see mental health as not just a distant problem some people have. What Covid has done is prompt this broader realisation of what mental health and wellbeing means to anyone and everyone, including myself.”
“I think it is one of the really positive things to come out of Covid,” Dawel says.
Into the future
Across every facet of people’s lives, both major and minor changes have been assessed and adopted. Underlying them are important shifts in mindset.
One reader, who left her job, ended a long-term relationship, adopted animals and plans to start a company in 2022, writes: “I changed nearly everything.”
For Brian Mulquiney, 70, from Queensland’s Gold Coast,“the pandemic created the catalyst to reassess what is important in life”.
Bowles says it comes down to a simple explanation: “We have all become closer to death. Out of Covid, the next most obvious thing to think is: what to do with what we have left of a finite life?”
While Bowles says Covid has given some people a “platform from which you’d leap when you otherwise wouldn’t”, others will just be “breaking even” and “trying to sustain themselves”.
Universally, however, he says Covid has “supercharged” disruptive experiences. “We all went through the changes. Everyone can identify with it.”
In the past, world wars have prompted structural changes, such as introducing women to the workforce. Dawel says she is interested to see what sticks post-pandemic, particularly when it comes to people “figuring out who they are, and their perception of how the world works”.
Cherbuin thinks it is less likely people will “click back into old ways”.
“I think there will be positive health and social consequences in the long term.”
From structural changes in the workplace to personal changes to lifestyle and habits, “all these changes have been demonstrated to be possible”, Cherbuin says.
“It means that now things that couldn’t be done before can be done.”
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