How To Deal With Mounting Anxiety Over COVID-19 Getting Bad Again

While COVID-19 infections are nowhere near their peak of a quarter-million per day in January 2021 , there are still plenty of reasons to feel unsettled.

The delta variant first identified in India is spreading widely in the United States, accounting for more than half of all new COVID-19 infections (which are overwhelmingly affecting unvaccinated individuals). Meanwhile, the lambda variant, or C.37, has also caught public health officials attention as a variant of interest.

People arent rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated at the rates we need to get back to normal (or normal-ish, as it were.) Because of that, deaths from the virus are also rising, with an average of 239 per day over the last week . Thats a near-48% rise from the week prior, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this week.

And to add a little extra stress to the moment, there have been reports of people experiencing breakthrough coronavirus infections after getting vaccinated. Meanwhile, vaccine misinformation continues to spread like wildfire on TV and on social media, and theres little doubt that the return of mask ordinances in some places will be hotly contested by the mask-averse.

These new developments can leave even the most optimistic among us feeling a little unmoored. Thats especially true if you had just begun to feel as though we were out of the woods a few months back as Americans rushed to get vaccination appointments.

If youre experiencing a mounting sense of dread that things could potentially get bad again, youre not the only one, said Amelia Aldao, a psychologist and anxiety specialist in New York City.

Just because there is a new variant does not necessarily mean we will end up exactly as we did one year ago.
- Sheva Rajaee, therapist and director of The Center for Anxiety and OCD

This back-and-forth has been so unpredictable, she told HuffPost. It makes many people feel anxious or like were going backwards. Our minds race to all kinds of scenarios: Are we going to be able to go to that wedding in the fall? What about indoor dining? What will happen with schools? Theres a sense that theres some anxious times ahead.

Akua K. Boateng , a psychotherapist in south Philadelphia, has seen anxieties about new variants rise among her patients, too.

We all remember how emotionally taxing life became during the pandemic, she said. Now people may experience hyper-vigilance around the new variants status or new health phobias.

As always, though, there are ways to manage and cope with your anxiety. Below is therapists best advice for dealing with uncertainty about the future.

Stop yourself before you start catastrophizing.

Watch out for catastrophizing , a cognitive distortion where we plunge into a spiral of what if scenarios and usually assume that the worst will happen, said Sheva Rajaee , a therapist and the director of The Center for Anxiety and OCD.

Remind yourself that just because there is a new variant does not necessarily mean we will end up exactly as we did one year ago, and that no matter what this new wave may bring, that we have the strength to cope, one day at a time, she explained.

When you start gaming out those worst-case scenarios (Were entering another year-long lockdown! Life will never return to normal!), try to nip it in the bud, Rajaee said. Plus, in spite of what your nagging glass-half-empty frame of mind may be telling you, positive developments are just as likely to happen.