The COVID lockdowns have affected everyone differently. For me, it’s my relationship with the outdoors which changes with each passing month. Initially, being kept indoors for most of the day made me appreciate being outside in the way I did when I was a child: I admired every flower, deeply inhaled the fresh air, and tried to take in every inch of my surroundings. Now, the thought of leaving the safety of my home churns my stomach and fills me with dread. Anxiety chokes me and I don’t know why.
When my mother was a few years older than I am now, she suffered from agoraphobia. For three years she was unable to leave the house without someone accompanying her, and even then it was not a pleasant experience. I was only a child at the time and have faint memories of my mother’s inability to leave our home. My mother frantically darting through a crowd to get home, having to hold her shaking hand to calm her at the supermarket, playing alone in the front garden while she watched on from the bedroom window.
Since I was a teenager, I’ve had periods of overwhelming anxiety at the thought of being unable to promptly retreat to the comfort of my room. I thought that being forced to spend more time indoors due to lockdown would cause me to resent my home, but the longer I spend inside the harder it is to leave. It feels silly to say it aloud, which is why it took me a while to open up to my mother about it.
‘You can’t become like me,’ was my mother’s response. ‘You have to make sure you don’t get as bad as I did.’
Our mental health journeys have followed similar timelines. I have made my mother’s coping mechanisms my own. When the world becomes too overwhelming, we hide under the covers until we feel strong enough to emerge. Our bedrooms become safe places where we can block out the constant buzzing of anxiety. We have learnt to think of our bedrooms and homes as places where the outside world cannot touch us. Inside, we are safe.
With little to do in lockdown besides overanalyse my thoughts, I’ve begun trying to figure out why I’m following the same path as my mother. Research shows that your risk of developing depression is greater if you have a relative who was diagnosed with depression early on in their life, compared to the risk level if that relative was diagnosed at an older age. Genetic factors contribute to the susceptibility of having certain mental health conditions and can influence the severity and progression of mental illness. Perhaps this contributed to why I developed anxiety and depression at an early age, or perhaps I came to perceive the world as a scary place because I was raised by someone who tried to battle her own perception of the world.
Attempting to discover why I’ve been afflicted with the same mental illnesses as my mother and the generations of women in our maternal line has enabled me to rationalise my own irrational thoughts. Regardless of whether it’s due to environmental or biological factors, I tell myself that my brain has been wired to perceive and react in a certain way that I need to actively rebel against. The outbreak of COVID-19 has made it easy to neglect this rebellion.
In a recent survey led by Associate Professor Jill Newby, it was discovered that 78 per cent of respondents experienced a worsened state of mental health since the COVID pandemic outbreak. Two thirds of those with prior mental health issues reported a significant increase in effects of their mental health conditions when compared to those without. Living during a pandemic is difficult for most people, but it can be paralysing for those with health-related anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, and myriad other mental illnesses that make it difficult to go outside. The lines between agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorder and COVID anxiety can blur and overlap. It is normal to be concerned about your health and to take safety precautions but I am prone to using my concern about COVID to rationalise the overwhelming anxiety I feel when moving beyond my front doorstep.
A benefit of sharing the same mental health path as my mother is the education and awareness I received as a child. I could name different SSRIs and SNRIs and explain the differences between these drugs before I began my own medication journey. I am acutely aware of what could happen if I neglect my mental health. While it can be irrationally scary at times to venture beyond my front doorstep, I know that I need to push myself now before my world of comfort becomes smaller and smaller.
Maddison Moore is a freelance writer and editor currently studying a Master of Publishing and Communications. She is passionate about social justice, body positivity, and mental health awareness.