April 2, 2021 • 13 mins
The rules of social interaction have been turned upside down by Covid. Dr. Saltz answers listener questions about how to behave around others who may, or may not, be masked. And how to deal with concerns about re-starting social activity after a long, isolated year.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
These are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to how can I Help? I'm Dr
Gail Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:27):
hopefully with understanding, insight, and advice. We've all been stuck
inside and socially distanced an unprecedented amount of time this
entire year. Today I'll be answering questions about a new
issue with social anxiety occurring in the setting of people
(00:48):
coming out of the pandemic and finding themselves uncomfortable about
socializing after a full year of being inside, self imposing
all these antisocial behavior, years of social distancing and just
being apart from others has in large part been driven
by fear and anxiety about getting sick, spreading disease, and
(01:12):
even about dying. The changes people all across the country
made for an entire year in their loss of being
together with all people has been against the backdrop of
feeling scared and lonely and needing social support, which only
made the social distancing even harder to do and maintain.
(01:35):
Kids have been out of school for huge swaths of time,
adults home from work, both away and social time, and
it has all been necessary to save lives. But with
the vaccine rollout and the possibility of being able to
go back to school, back to work and socializing, I'm
(01:56):
hearing from people who, in contemplating going back to school
and work and social settings, feel anxiety. They find themselves
thinking this is weird, because of course I want this
pandemic to be over and to go back to my
pre pandemic life. So why does the idea of going
(02:17):
back into work, are going to a party, or even
just meeting new people make me nervous? And working hard
to use our fear to make all the changes we
have this year, even though the threat may be substantially
gone at some point, we have so adapted to being
afraid that it can be hard to get rid of.
(02:41):
Rather like a habit, many of us may continue to
have the same knee jerk response to someone standing very
close to us, touching us, coughing near us. As we
worked to develop all year, we feel this feeling of dikes.
It will take some readaptation to get comfortable again and
(03:05):
see you are okay. But in addition, all of our
anxieties have been so heightened to this year that essentially
our sympathetic nervous system is on overdrive. It's a revving
up of our fight or flight response, feeling always on
(03:25):
the line and doing things that feel new, which feel
like a change, and feel like exposure. May be especially
affected by the chronically anxious state of our minds and
therefore being back in the social world and dredge up
social anxiety. So let's get to it and see how
(03:48):
can I help. Here's question one, dear doctor Salts. In
the past year, I have only social lies with my
household unit and a few close friends. I haven't met
anyone new in a while. I'm about to start a
(04:08):
new job and I'm nervous about meeting new people again.
How do I approach this? You are in good company.
After an entire year of not going into work. It
is actually pretty predictable that individuals would develop a comfort
in not having much social and certainly not new social interactions.
(04:35):
The flip side of comfort in the known and few
social interactions is the knowledge that new social interactions means
stretching yourself. It means being a little vulnerable to the
uncertainty of how it will go. Will you click with
someone well they like you, will you like them? Will
(04:57):
there be moments of awkwardness of judgment? For people with
social anxiety, the anxiety is often related to fears of
self judgment regarding the social interaction, thoughts of having been
judged harshly when in fact it is you who is
doing the judging of yourself. Social anxiety is the anticipation
(05:22):
of a terrible interaction and then a replaying of the
imagined terrible interaction afterwards. The main symptom of social anxiety
is imagining being judged and harshly. When you don't have
social anxiety, the possible awkward moments and less than perfect
(05:45):
meeting of the mind still happens, but it doesn't bother
you all that much. You're able to just move on
in contemplating new meetings and how they will go. Now,
after so much time of not practicing this at all,
you have likely built up some anticipatory anxiety of imagining
(06:06):
without any real evidence that it will be a struggle
because you're out of practice, and if things don't go swimmingly,
it will be uncomfortable, possibly embarrassing, and maybe you'll be
judged by others. This is kind of what social anxiety
feels like for those who even pre pandemic suffered. It
(06:29):
is not that, in reality it's going badly, but it's
that your anxiety makes you full of self criticism. Some
of the reason is you have withdrawn from socializing for
quite some time, but part of the reason is that
this year has been filled with so much anxiety and
(06:50):
fear of being social with others and catching COVID that
it created anxiety specifically around being social. In order to
achieve all your social distancing, you had to allow yourself
to fear being with other people. This can be hard
(07:11):
to undo and it may take some time and practice.
The best way to decrease anxiety about almost anything is
really to expose yourself to it and see in the
end that you are okay. In psychotherapy, we use exposure
(07:31):
as a form of treatment, but you can actually expose
yourself at home by pushing yourself to simply do it
while having some methods at the same time of relaxing yourself,
such as deep breathing or muscle relaxation in the moment,
so that you can tolerate doing whatever you're nervous about
(07:54):
over time doing the thing, whatever it is. But in
this case, as you bring up going into work or
meeting new people while calming down will allow the overall
anxiety about it to diminish over time. So you can,
for example, put yourself in a social but safe situation
(08:16):
with a new person or maybe a few people leading
up to your time at work as practice to start
your exposure and work on beginning to decrease your anxiety.
Then you can continue to do this as you begin work.
How can I help with Dr Gayl Salts will be
(08:38):
back after the short break? Question two? Dear Doctor Saltz,
When seeing a friend for the first time in the
age of COVID, I never know what to expect. Do
(09:01):
I hug them? Do I wear a mask outside? What
are they willing to do? It often can feel super
awkward to navigate those small moments. Do you have any
advice I do? Indeed, the reality is we are not
mind readers, and many people are in differing states of
(09:24):
mind about what's safe for them. This is because risk
does differ based on age, race, pre existing condition, smoking history,
who you're living with, and all their risk factors, and
in addition to that, some people feel more comfortable with
risk and others just do not. If you think about
(09:48):
it right, individuals have very specific risk reward balances that
they feel comfortable with. Generally, the best course is to
allow for these individual risk factors and feelings and simply ask.
In fact, by asking up front, you really avoid the
(10:11):
awkward moments when you start doing something where they start
doing something that turns out to be unwanted. If you
plan to me, say can you tell me what you
feel comfortable with visa v mask wearing, distancing inside versus outside,
and I'm going to do the same, and then let's
(10:33):
make a plan based on our mutual most cautious specifics.
Going to the most conservative approach keeps anyone from feeling
really anxious and afraid, and therefore allows both of you
to feel mutually respected, cared for, and protected. It may
(10:55):
not be as fun to you or to them, but
in the setting of a pandemic with lots of uncertainty,
feeling safe has had to trump feeling fun. Mutual caring
allows you to preserve and nurture the relationship and builds
well for the future. When at some point. We won't
(11:17):
have to do all these things, but you will know
that each of you cared about the other enough to
not make the other person feel at risk. We're scared.
It also doesn't mean you have to do the same
thing with every person unless you want to. This will
increasingly become an issue as the divide of risks grows
(11:39):
wider due to some people being vaccinated and others not.
When this all ends one day, you will have more
emotional money in the bank with the person you helped
feel comfortable compared to the person you push to do
something they felt anxious doing, and while the risk may
(12:00):
then be gone, the feeling they have about your care
will linger. I hope that was helpful. This has been
a traumatic time for many, and trauma revs up the
mind's danger signal system. In general, anxiety can come out
(12:24):
in all sorts of ways. Socializing is a huge and
important arena for human gratification, so it's not surprising that
someone with big anxiety overall will have that anxiety target
all things social. For children, this may mean a backslide
(12:46):
in social anxiety and in going to school. For adults,
it may mean that social anxiety related to work and
returning to a wider social circle that they had, making
new friends, and even just the social nous of chatting
with the barista of the coffee house where the person
checking out your groceries. All these human interactions enrich our lives.
(13:13):
So it is worth it to push yourself when the
world is more safe from COVID to resume your social life,
even if you have to, as I say, push yourself
or your child to do it. An active social life
is good for both mental and physical health in the
long run. Do you have a problem I can help with?
(13:36):
If so, email me at how can I Help? At
Seneca women dot com. All senders remain anonymous and listen
every Friday to how can I help with me? Doctor
Gale Salts
These are challenging times, but you don't have to navigate
them alone. Welcome to how can I Help? I'm Dr
Gail Saltz. I'm a clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at
the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a psychoanalyst, and best selling author,
and I'm here every week to answer your most pressing questions,
(00:27):
hopefully with understanding, insight, and advice. We've all been stuck
inside and socially distanced an unprecedented amount of time this
entire year. Today I'll be answering questions about a new
issue with social anxiety occurring in the setting of people
(00:48):
coming out of the pandemic and finding themselves uncomfortable about
socializing after a full year of being inside, self imposing
all these antisocial behavior, years of social distancing and just
being apart from others has in large part been driven
by fear and anxiety about getting sick, spreading disease, and
(01:12):
even about dying. The changes people all across the country
made for an entire year in their loss of being
together with all people has been against the backdrop of
feeling scared and lonely and needing social support, which only
made the social distancing even harder to do and maintain.
(01:35):
Kids have been out of school for huge swaths of time,
adults home from work, both away and social time, and
it has all been necessary to save lives. But with
the vaccine rollout and the possibility of being able to
go back to school, back to work and socializing, I'm
(01:56):
hearing from people who, in contemplating going back to school
and work and social settings, feel anxiety. They find themselves
thinking this is weird, because of course I want this
pandemic to be over and to go back to my
pre pandemic life. So why does the idea of going
(02:17):
back into work, are going to a party, or even
just meeting new people make me nervous? And working hard
to use our fear to make all the changes we
have this year, even though the threat may be substantially
gone at some point, we have so adapted to being
afraid that it can be hard to get rid of.
(02:41):
Rather like a habit, many of us may continue to
have the same knee jerk response to someone standing very
close to us, touching us, coughing near us. As we
worked to develop all year, we feel this feeling of dikes.
It will take some readaptation to get comfortable again and
(03:05):
see you are okay. But in addition, all of our
anxieties have been so heightened to this year that essentially
our sympathetic nervous system is on overdrive. It's a revving
up of our fight or flight response, feeling always on
(03:25):
the line and doing things that feel new, which feel
like a change, and feel like exposure. May be especially
affected by the chronically anxious state of our minds and
therefore being back in the social world and dredge up
social anxiety. So let's get to it and see how
(03:48):
can I help. Here's question one, dear doctor Salts. In
the past year, I have only social lies with my
household unit and a few close friends. I haven't met
anyone new in a while. I'm about to start a
(04:08):
new job and I'm nervous about meeting new people again.
How do I approach this? You are in good company.
After an entire year of not going into work. It
is actually pretty predictable that individuals would develop a comfort
in not having much social and certainly not new social interactions.
(04:35):
The flip side of comfort in the known and few
social interactions is the knowledge that new social interactions means
stretching yourself. It means being a little vulnerable to the
uncertainty of how it will go. Will you click with
someone well they like you, will you like them? Will
(04:57):
there be moments of awkwardness of judgment? For people with
social anxiety, the anxiety is often related to fears of
self judgment regarding the social interaction, thoughts of having been
judged harshly when in fact it is you who is
doing the judging of yourself. Social anxiety is the anticipation
(05:22):
of a terrible interaction and then a replaying of the
imagined terrible interaction afterwards. The main symptom of social anxiety
is imagining being judged and harshly. When you don't have
social anxiety, the possible awkward moments and less than perfect
(05:45):
meeting of the mind still happens, but it doesn't bother
you all that much. You're able to just move on
in contemplating new meetings and how they will go. Now,
after so much time of not practicing this at all,
you have likely built up some anticipatory anxiety of imagining
(06:06):
without any real evidence that it will be a struggle
because you're out of practice, and if things don't go swimmingly,
it will be uncomfortable, possibly embarrassing, and maybe you'll be
judged by others. This is kind of what social anxiety
feels like for those who even pre pandemic suffered. It
(06:29):
is not that, in reality it's going badly, but it's
that your anxiety makes you full of self criticism. Some
of the reason is you have withdrawn from socializing for
quite some time, but part of the reason is that
this year has been filled with so much anxiety and
(06:50):
fear of being social with others and catching COVID that
it created anxiety specifically around being social. In order to
achieve all your social distancing, you had to allow yourself
to fear being with other people. This can be hard
(07:11):
to undo and it may take some time and practice.
The best way to decrease anxiety about almost anything is
really to expose yourself to it and see in the
end that you are okay. In psychotherapy, we use exposure
(07:31):
as a form of treatment, but you can actually expose
yourself at home by pushing yourself to simply do it
while having some methods at the same time of relaxing yourself,
such as deep breathing or muscle relaxation in the moment,
so that you can tolerate doing whatever you're nervous about
(07:54):
over time doing the thing, whatever it is. But in
this case, as you bring up going into work or
meeting new people while calming down will allow the overall
anxiety about it to diminish over time. So you can,
for example, put yourself in a social but safe situation
(08:16):
with a new person or maybe a few people leading
up to your time at work as practice to start
your exposure and work on beginning to decrease your anxiety.
Then you can continue to do this as you begin work.
How can I help with Dr Gayl Salts will be
(08:38):
back after the short break? Question two? Dear Doctor Saltz,
When seeing a friend for the first time in the
age of COVID, I never know what to expect. Do
(09:01):
I hug them? Do I wear a mask outside? What
are they willing to do? It often can feel super
awkward to navigate those small moments. Do you have any
advice I do? Indeed, the reality is we are not
mind readers, and many people are in differing states of
(09:24):
mind about what's safe for them. This is because risk
does differ based on age, race, pre existing condition, smoking history,
who you're living with, and all their risk factors, and
in addition to that, some people feel more comfortable with
risk and others just do not. If you think about
(09:48):
it right, individuals have very specific risk reward balances that
they feel comfortable with. Generally, the best course is to
allow for these individual risk factors and feelings and simply ask.
In fact, by asking up front, you really avoid the
(10:11):
awkward moments when you start doing something where they start
doing something that turns out to be unwanted. If you
plan to me, say can you tell me what you
feel comfortable with visa v mask wearing, distancing inside versus outside,
and I'm going to do the same, and then let's
(10:33):
make a plan based on our mutual most cautious specifics.
Going to the most conservative approach keeps anyone from feeling
really anxious and afraid, and therefore allows both of you
to feel mutually respected, cared for, and protected. It may
(10:55):
not be as fun to you or to them, but
in the setting of a pandemic with lots of uncertainty,
feeling safe has had to trump feeling fun. Mutual caring
allows you to preserve and nurture the relationship and builds
well for the future. When at some point. We won't
(11:17):
have to do all these things, but you will know
that each of you cared about the other enough to
not make the other person feel at risk. We're scared.
It also doesn't mean you have to do the same
thing with every person unless you want to. This will
increasingly become an issue as the divide of risks grows
(11:39):
wider due to some people being vaccinated and others not.
When this all ends one day, you will have more
emotional money in the bank with the person you helped
feel comfortable compared to the person you push to do
something they felt anxious doing, and while the risk may
(12:00):
then be gone, the feeling they have about your care
will linger. I hope that was helpful. This has been
a traumatic time for many, and trauma revs up the
mind's danger signal system. In general, anxiety can come out
(12:24):
in all sorts of ways. Socializing is a huge and
important arena for human gratification, so it's not surprising that
someone with big anxiety overall will have that anxiety target
all things social. For children, this may mean a backslide
(12:46):
in social anxiety and in going to school. For adults,
it may mean that social anxiety related to work and
returning to a wider social circle that they had, making
new friends, and even just the social nous of chatting
with the barista of the coffee house where the person
checking out your groceries. All these human interactions enrich our lives.
(13:13):
So it is worth it to push yourself when the
world is more safe from COVID to resume your social life,
even if you have to, as I say, push yourself
or your child to do it. An active social life
is good for both mental and physical health in the
long run. Do you have a problem I can help with?
(13:36):
If so, email me at how can I Help? At
Seneca women dot com. All senders remain anonymous and listen
every Friday to how can I help with me? Doctor
Gale Salts
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