Great Minds: Hamish and Kyle - On the anxiety of being around people again

Kyle and Hamish talk about anxiety and how to re-calibrate as people adjust to new public health settings. Video / NZ Herald

In this web series, psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald and Nutters Club co-host Hamish Williams look at mental health and how to navigate some of the more challenging parts of modern life. Today they talk about anxiety.

I reckon we all deserve a coffee mug that reads "I survived the pandemic". Let's celebrate the fact that we rose to the challenge of learning how to live during one of the most challenging times in modern history. We can all stride around our offices clinking our mugs and exchanging congratulatory winks at each other.

Only issue is that office might be a little empty still. A very real and prevalent reason for this could be the high level of anxiety that people feel towards personal interactions outside their immediate bubbles and it's easy to understand why.

But just as fast as Covid requirements arrived, they've lessened and some altogether disappeared. That level of effort to accommodate all of this change at an incredible speed doesn't come without a knock-on effect, one of the most common being a rise in anxiety.

"Anxiety is hard-wired to be sensitive, it's what keeps us alive" says psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald. "It comes about as a feeling when we perceive a situation as threat to our safety or wellbeing."

With Covid-19 having been that threat, it's easy to see how many of us found our anxiety rising as we heeded advice to contain and avoid the invisible enemy. So now, as the levels lower, how easy is it to recalibrate our anxiety levels after having been on high alert for so long?

"The way to do that is through your behaviour," MacDonald says.

"Go easy on yourself and others. This can take time and may even feel unpleasant. Start by pushing your comfort boundaries little by little."

After having social distancing be part of self-preservation, the concept of shaking hands, standing maskless in a lift or my least favourite - the dreaded hug - can cause anxiety for some by just reading these words.

"It's okay, it doesn't mean you have anxiety, it means you're going through a change process. It's up to all of us to be aware that each of us might be in different places," assures MacDonald.

"Where we know anxiety crosses over from being a feeling that we all have on a day-to-day basis to something that's a problem is when it gets in the way of doing things that otherwise we would have done, in other words avoidance."

In practical terms we all need to apply an easy does it approach. If you don't feel up to being back in the office full-time, then just try a couple of hours for a start and take it from there.

On the other side of it all it's important to be accommodating as we all get back into the swing of things at our own pace. Don't expect too much too soon, the coffee cup will still be there on your desk because, at the end of the day, you survived a pandemic. Well done.