Howie P on 21 November 2020
Question thumbnail
Q. How has COVID-19 impacted your mental health?
Great question. I am hanging in there. It is really challenging. I feel many people are on the edge. Work is tricky. I am self employed and it is more complicated to run my sessions, other people who do the same freelance work as me have just stopped because it's too stressful to keep adapting and changing what we do and how we do it for lockdown etc. I have found ways to continue but it is harder work and means longer hours, other areas of my life are suffering as a result of extra work pressure. I have accepted extra work due to income anxieties that I cant really fit in but I am, as I am worried that if rules later mean I cant work that I will have no money. Self employed people have not been well looked after. There are also 100's of small pandemic stress hangovers that are affecting me and my family. More financial stress from school with needing extra equipment, stress of bubbles and infections at school and college, mechanics being over booked and not being able to get my cheap vehicle fixed, people I work with being stressed and anxious about covid complications. Christmas is looming and usually that's a real nice treat but I just don't even know if I should buy presents! Brexit is worrying me as I am worried that on top of all of the other stress on Jan 1st the situation for poor people will get so much worse and we may not be able to get some food supplies etc. The political landscape actually is really stressful. I know I am at the bottom of a pile and not being supported politically or systemically and so as a single mum of three kids I feel the most enormous pressure, almost in a survival scenario. As I say, I am hanging in there but I am super stressed and so tired and can't see when it will end.
Contributors featured in
More media logos
Menu