Six months ago from July, the U.S. saw its first case of COVID-19. Now, six months later, the country is in a pandemic.
Experts said that as people try to stay healthy and prevent the spread of COVID-19, they're getting another kind of illness: pandemic fatigue. They said it's when people are exhausted from constantly being in a state of crisis, and Catherine Hallam with Life Connections Counseling said she's seeing many people deal with it.
She said that to overcome it, people should try to be kinder to themselves and allow themselves to feel their own emotions. It's okay not to be okay, she said. Accepting that is the first step towards feeling better.
She also said that it helps if people try to shift their mindset away from hoping to return to normal and instead try to accept that things have changed to a new normal. That way, they can find ways to adjust to their new environments.
"I think a lot of people their anxiety started to rise because the pandemic doesn't seem to be going away, so they were shifting from thinking, 'okay one more week,' to 'two more weeks,'" she Hallam said. "Just accepting reality for what it is right now can help."