The 5 Stages of Quarantine — How I’m Coping During COVID-19 Isolation
4 weeks into this “physical distancing, self-isolation, quarantine, stay-home, flatten the curve” nation-wide effort and I must tell you, the emotional ups and downs feel just as severe as watching the global statistics daily on the news. Looking back on this past month and assessing my behaviour and feelings over the course of that time, I have observed 5 phases for which I’m dubbing “THE 5 STAGES OF QUARANTINE”. And yes, just like the 5 Stages of Grief one experiences after the passing of a loved one, I too feel I have truly grieved during this time. I have grieved for my old routine, grieved the loss of physical connectedness with friends and family and ultimately, grieved all that once was.
STAGE 1 — DENIAL
Monday, March 16th marks what would be my last day at the office. After gathering around the TV at a “safe distance” from one another, to hear the Prime Minister speak, my team recognized that no amount of elbow taping and hand sanitizer would suffice and we would all have to hunker down at our respective homes for what, I assumed, would be 2 weeks, 3 tops. On my way home that afternoon, I stopped off at the grocery store, picked up a few days (yes that’s right, just a few days) worth of groceries and a couple bottles of wine. That night over dinner, my husband and I reminisced how this felt similarly to the time the Province of Ontario lost all its power and many of us, including myself, weren’t allowed to go into work for 2 weeks. I hardly felt reason to panic; in fact, it seemed kind of fun, like a little vacation that I wasn’t expecting. I figured I now had time to catch up on some household chores, perhaps do a puzzle and spend more time with my family, which includes my husband of almost 6 years and my baby boy Rudy, a 5-year-old Labrador Retriever who thinks this home isolation stuff is the best thing ever. Regardless of what I was hearing on the news, I refused to believe that this whole thing would last; I was living in ignorant bliss and quite frankly, enjoyed it.
STAGE 2 — ANGER
After only 5 days cooped up inside, having eaten all of the fun snacks, consumed all of the “must see” Netflix series and after 5 dinners with my husband having no answer to “what did you do today” because well, the answer was still the same “nothing”, the anger started setting in. The news was still bleak, and the statistics were showing that so far, the curve had not flattened. My dishwasher broke, the electricity on half of the house stopped working, Amazon told me my puzzle wouldn’t be delivered for 3 weeks, and we were being told that we would not be receiving a full refund from our trip that we had to cancel. Add this to the news of layoffs and the many stories of people no longer being able to receive care for their pre-COVID ailments made this interesting little vacation suddenly seem like a nightmare, and I became irate. “Who eats bats anyway?”, I found myself yelling out on multiple occasions and completely unprompted. After all, wasn’t it someone else’s fault that I was being locked away in my house with no purpose! I would wake up irritable, turn on the news, only to see that people were still gathering and more shutdowns and lockdowns were imminent. All of this only further aggravated me. I was spiraling, becoming bitter and in some sick way, it all felt like a personal attack on me.
STAGE 3 — BARGAINING
Week 2 began and realizing that I had in effect lost complete control over the life I had known, I felt a sense of helplessness. In a desperate attempt to regain normalcy, I would start my days off hoping, you may consider it praying, that over night everything had taken a turn for the better. I diligently compared yesterday’s statistics of the newly infected with today’s, in hope that I could predict that we were on the tail end of this. I started making “what if?” statements. What if Canada enforced stricter lockdowns as soon as we had our first case, what if people who had travelled abroad been more diligent at self-isolating, what if our provincial health care systems worked in better congruence? Ironically during my denial phase, I felt like everyone was overreacting to this whole situation, so my hypocrisy is not lost on me. Regardless, all of this behaviour was a classic case of bargaining.
STAGE 4 — DEPRESSION
News outlets were reporting that we might be in isolation for months, a far cry from my original prediction of 2 weeks, and with no end in sight, by the end of week 2, I had succumbed to my depressed state. Life was not going back to normal and all I felt was despondency. I had gone from a person used to working 10 hour days 5 or 6 days a week to barely being able to shower and brush my hair. I found myself sleeping more than usual, hoping I could somehow sleep until all of this was over. Out of nowhere, I would break out in tears. No Zoom party, food, movie, meme, or motivational phrase seemed to spark any joy and no number of creative ideas from well-intentioned loved ones felt like proper solutions to my problems; their help almost further exacerbating the problem. I felt ashamed of my feelings because cognitively I understood there were many people suffering far greater than I was, but my guilt compounded my depression. I felt too weak to do anything to help myself and I believed I was alone in my sorrow; I could hardly see the light at the end of the tunnel.
STAGE 5 — ACCEPTANCE
Week 4 began with some less than exciting news; my dad had been admitted to the hospital with what they suspected was a potential heart attack. It’s truly amazing how a loved one’s health scare can snap you right out of your own self-loathing. Thankfully it turned out to be just a bug, but regardless, the whole situation forced me to realize how strong I really am. Over the next few days, I would build ever so slightly on that strength; I had created a new schedule for myself which included time for walks, time for work and time to cook. My team had created Virtual Office time, where we could in essence be working on our own tasks but together and this togetherness made it all seem more achievable. By no means do I feel at any given moment I wont find myself in any of the previous stages, but I am tryin got be gentle with the expectations of myself. I have started a free online course called “The Science of Well-Being” (https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being), have renewed my daily gratitude journal and have found joy in the many mundane things that I have previously taken for granted, like actually eating at my dinner table with another human being (most nights I eat at work or on the couch and many times alone). At times, I feel I am accepting my new normal and hope to build on this for however long isolation lasts and that’s all I can hope for and expect of myself for right now.
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