The Psychology of Time During the Pandemic

“Time is one of the most powerful influences on our thoughts, feelings, and actions, yet we are usually totally unaware of the effect of time in our lives.” - Philip Zimbardo, Psychologist + Author

I think that for most of us, this is the first time our lives are being impacted to such an extent, and at such a global scale by something largely out of our control.

This is naturally shifting our perspective of TIME in many different ways.

I wanted to share five shifts around the notion of TIME that might be helpful to work with during this particular time we are living through.

This is based on a Facebook Live I did - if you prefer you can also watch the recording at the bottom of this post.

Before the pandemic, many of us had a sort of naive arrogance or what the ancient Greeks might have called hubris that we could plan things and that it was quite certain they would happen. 

We had plans. We had booked things in advance.

It is possible that in the Western world, we lived under the assumption that time is in my control more than in any other time in history. 

Now we are learning in a very potent way that this is not always the case. 

We can work really hard, plan things, do everything in our power to make them happen…and then something completely out of our control strikes and we are left staying at home and obsessively washing our hands.

With this new reality, it is really, really, really important to allow ourselves to GRIEVE what will not happen, the plans we have had to let go of, at least for the foreseeable future. 

It doesn’t matter how big or small the plans were. It doesn’t matter if others are more affected than you. And you won’t get stuck in the sadness or grief. Emotions tend to flow through us when we allow ourselves to feel them completely and without resistance. What we resist, persists.

And perhaps the learning here is that while time was actually never fully in our control, the way we respond to ourselves still is. We can still, and always, choose kindness and allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling without resisting it.

It’s OK to feel what you are feeling.

Check out this great podcast episode with Brené Brown grief expert David Kessler or this article by David Kessler.

Nobody knows when this will end, and that sense of the unknown for our old-school human mind = DANGER. No end in sight is really disconcerting. 

Yet when we look back on history, we have experienced pandemics before, and we have come out of them. Not having a clear end date does not mean this will go on forever.

An emotion that often accompanies the unknown is ANXIETY.

—> Anxiety as an emotion is about helping us prepare for a perceived threat - usually by imagining all the things that could go horribly wrong so we can take action to avoid this from happening.

If you can, take action - do what you can to help yourself prepare as this can help with anxiety.

Yet at other times, there is no action we can take in the moment.

So for example, anxiety might be telling you your parents who live in another country might be affected. What action can you take? Can you do online shopping for them? Check in with them regularly?

For the stuff we can’t control, acceptance of the limits of what we can do, is often helpful. Perhaps even feeling the vulnerability and caring underneath the anxiety.

As anxiety tends to get caught up in imagining future worst case scenarios, when working with anxiety, it can be helpful to keep coming back to the present moment.

Right now things are mostly OK. I am feeling this anxiety because I care.

I am also finding it helpful to take one day at a time right now. We can get through one day - and the reality is that we have no idea what the future holds.

This is probably the first time for many of us that we are being confronted with the utter vulnerability of being human - the first time we are being confronted with illness, with death, with not feeling safe in the world in this way.

Time is our most precious resource and yet the way we go about our lives does not always reflect this. We tend to live our lives as if our time here was unlimited.

What we do with our time right now can still be a choice - even if we have less freedom than before.

We may not have the RESPONSIBILITY for our time that we thought we had before the global rug was pulled out from under our feet, but we still have RESPONSE-ABILITY - the ability to choose how we respond to the current circumstances, who and what we say YES and NO to during this time.

TIME is still our most precious resource, and perhaps some questions worth asking ourselves are:

—> How would I like to show up during this time for myself and others? 

—> Looking back at this time, how would I like it to have changed me? 

It’s also OK if the only thing you can think of is: I survived. I made it through one day at a time. There is no need for lofty ambitions or self-improvement if that doesn’t feel right or possible for you at the moment.

Time feels frozen in a way - not because it has stopped or is waiting for us - nature continues just fine and is even thriving and regenerating without us. The seasonal cycles continue and time keeps going.

Yet on an individual level we can see this time as a sort of musical chairs where the music has stopped and we have had to ‘sit down’ and really be confronted with our lives and the choices we made the last few years.

What if we took a look around at our lives with kindness and curiosity and asked ourselves: 

Is this the life I want to be living?  

—> Do I like the work I am doing? 

—> Do I like the relationships I am in?

—> Do I like how I show up with family and friends?

—> Do I like where I live? 

—> How can I tread more gently in the world - through the choices I make right now, for example by buying local products and supporting small businesses if I can?

Allow this time to shape you, to strip life to the essentials. What actually really matters? 

We can see this as a time to gather information without needing to do anything more about it at this stage - simply a time to take stock and notice with kindness and curiosity towards ourselves, the aspects of our lives that are working, and the ones that are not.

I don’t think it is healthy to only stay with what is happening in the present - to only talk about the pandemic.

We still have an identity beyond this pandemic. We are still humans with a past and a future.

We can draw on the past: memories, photos, videos that give us energy and help us to reconnect with who we are. We can share this and connect with others on this level, too, instead of only talking about the pandemic.

It also feels important to me that we still have dreams - that we can dream, envision, even take tiny steps towards a future self - even if we can’t yet put a timeline on this.

So maybe during this particular time, allowing ourselves to dance flexibly between our past, present and future selves, without getting stuck anywhere - is something we can explore and be aware of.

Facebook Live Recording: