Has the pandemic left you with FOGO?
What to do if you’re feeling anxious about resuming normal life
Over the last three months or so, you’ve gone through a period of immense change. We all have.
So now, as the world starts to emerge from a slower pace of life where so many activities were curtailed, it’s only natural that you might be feeling anxious about what going out might mean.
So, what do you do if you used to suffer fear of missing out (FOMO) but now find that has been replaced with a fear of going out (FOGO)?
Acknowledge the changes
The first step to dealing with any change is acceptance.
You need to make your peace with the changes that have happened since March 2020 and recognise that feelings of fear, unease, uncertainty or anxiety are all perfectly normal.
Almost out of the blue, your day to day liberties were stripped away. You may have lost your income, been isolated from loved ones, have worked harder than ever in a key worker position, suffered a bereavement.
By contrast, you may feel that because you didn’t experience any of those major upheavals, that you have no ‘right’ to feel concerned about the next raft of changes upon us.
The important thing here is to acknowledge how you feel and allow yourself to accept those feelings.
There is no right or wrong. You feel how you feel and that’s OK.
Take control
Understanding the facts of a situation allow you to feel more control over what is happening to you. If you feel like things are being ‘done to you’, you are more likely to experience negative emotions or thought patterns.
The extent to which you are able to assert control over what is happening to you is likely to vary. For example, you have no control over the decisions made by the government whilst you will have control over what happens within your own home.
Try not to let yourself feel responsible for things outside your control – for example the way in which other people follow the guidelines.
Feel the fear
When you feel anxiety or fear rising, try to resist the fight or flight response.
Fighting it will probably result in you suppressing a natural response to an unnatural situation. On the other hand, a flight response may cause you to shut out the news of things you are allowed to resume and continue to live with the restrictions that have become part of your life over the last three months.
In reality, whilst both responses are normal, neither are going to prove helpful in the long term. Just as you have become accustomed to the loss of freedoms, so you need to give yourself time to reacquaint yourself with them now.
Allow yourself time to sit with your emotions. This allows you to become comfortable with them and work at overcoming them.
In a recent article about mindfulness I talked about ways to use that technique to quell concerns about life after the pandemic. Mindfulness is a useful technique to employ when you feel your mind is running away with you and triggering a stress response as it brings you back to the present. If you missed it, you can read it here.
What if you just can’t fight the FOGO?
For some people, fighting FOGO will be a fairly simple process. Others will find it more of a challenge and only you will know the truth about how you are affected.
You may even feel conflicted on an hourly, daily or weekly basis, switching between feeling quite happy to visit friends or families but a jangling bag of nerves about going shopping or booking a holiday.
If that’s you, don’t panic. It doesn’t mean you’ll never move forward. It just means you might need a bit more time or support to feel comfortable.
The power of hypnotherapy
The most wonderful thing about your brain is its single-minded focus on keeping you safe.
Another wonderful thing about it is its ability to accept new ideas or suggestions once it understands that it is still keeping you safe.
Hypnotherapy works to reframe fear and anxiety – the brain’s way of keeping you from harm – to create positive thought patterns that empower you to implement manageable activities to keep you safe (and therefore your mind happy).