Because if it happens, well, it's going to be it's going to be a living hell maybe. All right. But if it hasn't happened, which it hasn't, by projecting ourselves into that living hell, we're already suffering the consequences Welcome to Week at the Wheel. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the psychological and social impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic. So there's so much to cover here. But in general, what we're going to be speaking about are the educational impacts across the different grades and education levels, the impact on relationships in addition to the impact on various professions. So often, where should we start with this? What about the, let's say, the social impacts and not the relationships, but more about connectedness with friends, family and so on? Let's go with that. Okay. So as far as the social impacts and we'll talk a lot, I think, about marriages and then just the the weirdness that came about from the pandemic, but in particular with isolation, I think that that's a really huge one that really impacted the way in which people are communicating with each other, not communicating with each other and socially as well. I noticed and I think there's some research that supports it, that that's when the beginning of this, I suppose excessive divisiveness in opinions really was highlighted. Well, yeah, there was. There's so many factors that are intersecting, it's hard to isolate them. But I would say the the isolation itself, no pun intended. We know we know for a fact that as social animals, one of the worst things that you can do is keep us from somebody, a solitary confinement is a form of torture. It's been banned in any civilized country right after service at a time because of the impacts can do. It can truly either exacerbate, let's say, precarious mental health or cause poor mental health. And even if people say, well, you have the Internet, you can communicate that way still, because we're social animals, because our brains don't change that quickly with technology that it's a good, let's say, simulation of connectedness, but it's not the same. It's not like having somebody there feeling your oxytocin levels rise when you connect with them eye to eye doesn't happen over the screen, doesn't same as when you're in person. So yes, that and by doing that and by making even more like we've been going in this direction anyway of building more and more and more communicating electronically, virtually more so than in, you know, face to face in many cases. Yeah, but this sped it up even more. And as you were saying, that it led to more divisiveness because if I say something that's hurtful or offensive to your face, I see the impact it has on you. Yeah, but if it's all online or some anonymous stranger, I don't see that. So I act with impunity and I don't have that natural inclination that humans have to go, Whoa, whoa, I got to slow down. Or to be more compassionate around. These natural pieces of social interaction were missing. Exactly. So I think that was a huge part of it. And I mean, that's just like that's on a biological level, basically. Yeah. But then on the social, psychological level, you know, in the last number of years, FOMO, Fear of Missing out has been such a huge concern for many people. In this case, it's kind of like fear, not even fear is recognition that society is missing out. Yeah. So, so many young people feel that they've been robbed and they were robbed, you know, for over a year of of being able to engage in these social activities that, you know, up until you know, COVID, those in modern times. Yeah, we just took for granted. Yeah. It was part of our natural development. Absolutely. And things that stand out to me are things like graduations and proms and these these really important milestones that people just completely missed out on. But to talk about, you know, socially and I do want to get into relationships and you know, what's changed in that respect or what's happened in that respect you mentioned I think the word acceleration just moments ago. And that reminds me of crisis and disaster are the great accelerators of relationships. So if there was a problem brewing in that relationship, being in confinement with one another, being around each other, 24 seven is going to accelerate that. Conversely, I think that if a relationship had a good, solid foundation, although there were certainly, you know, difficulty and turmoil to work through in what was this this pandemic and isolation and so on, I feel that it would have accelerated those good qualities as well and and really forced people to work together. It forced people to work together. And it also showed them the value of being together, of having dinners together, having game nights together, whether it's two people, whether it's a family, because we took all of this for granted. And. Right. And especially in today's world it is. But with families where kids have like 20 different activities in the week and so on, and parents are like ordering out and like having them all sit down, it helps people shift their perspective. Right? A lot of people's values changed, some for the good, some for the bad. In a previous podcast, we talked about how a lot of people are losing the work ethic. So, you know, which will probably touch upon today as well. But the fact is we couldn't. It happened regardless of how you think your government handled it or the, you know, the media, whatever, those are outside of our control. Absolutely right. We were subjected to things. Some of them well, most of I would hope would be what we're supposed to be in our best interest, even if it didn't play out that way. The reason I'm saying that is we can control how we react to these situations. Yes. And if we feel, well, this is the government just, you know, the authoritarian boot of tyranny, stepping down our rights, everything that might have some merit and truth to it. Right. But ultimately, we have no control over that. We have no control over it. And if we say, okay, I have no control over that, but let me see what I do have control. Yes. How am I going to adapt to this? How am I going to try to strengthen relationships either virtually or with this by my circle of, you know, likes close circle, what I call the before those bubbles or whatever, right? Yeah. So. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Right. And unfortunately, those bubbles, especially online people's bubbles, became even more deeply and they became more deeply entrenched in those bubbles where it became more of a us versus them. And again, that's because instead of adapting to the situation in a healthy way, a lot of people were over reactionary. They were looking for their quote unquote tribes. They wanted to find like minded people. They wanted to either shit on somebody because that person is wearing a mask or shit on them because they're not about their was all there, all these factors that were happening in other contexts. But COVID was a perfect storm. It just again, as it accelerated. Yes. Yes. And with respect to families, my gosh, the triple duty, if not more in that that people were doing, you know, working from home, helping their children with online school, being home 24 seven, you know, that surely did a lot to people psychologically, socially, emotionally and so on. But specifically, I know that there's a lot of research emerging right now about what this did to marriages, specifically with regard to intimacy and and sex in general. Some found that early in the pandemic it was it was great. And, you know, back to what disaster does, disaster and the fear of loss can often bring people close together and energize them and so on. But as it persisted, I think that kind of dwindled down and people got tired of it and frankly, tired of each other. Right. They habituated to each other, which is just kind of the side note there. The greatest myth that people have. I think when we're dating, we can only see each other once a week or maybe if we're lucky, when we move in together, all things are going to be different. We're going to be having sex all the time, right? It's like, no, you, you can you habituate to each other. So that drive reduces. And again, you're forced together 24 seven. And it's not just forced together, but as you say, adapting to all these other work responsibilities, losing friends and so on. It's a lot of stress. And the person that you're closest to, they are like they're there during the worst times and they can be the recipient of your inability to handle the property, so on. And so yeah, it did have a huge impact on a lot of relationships, whether it's, you know, romantic relationship or family and family can also include with, let's say, elderly parents where an elderly parent, for example, would say don't like don't come over because, you know, and there's half of the family says we're okay. We trust each other, the other half like, no, no, we're not going to do this. And people took it personally. Most people, I would say, and I don't have stats for this, but I would argue with what I've seen, I think most people did not handle it as well as they could have, and I wouldn't expect them to. This was, well, there. Is no road map for. This road. Thing. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not criticizing anybody for that. I'm just pointing out this fact that people a lot of people had a hard time handling it. And now months later, a lot of people are still having a hard time and they're still harboring resentments. I've told so many patients, I've said I said it during the pandemic or during the lockdowns when I was still meeting with people virtually, or I said, I'm giving everybody and I'm telling people to give everyone a pass, whether they're they're, you know, paranoid about paranoia, about COVID sorry, or whether they're on the opposite end or they think everyone else is too paranoid. You know, I said we need to give everyone a pass with exceptions, of course. Because some grace and some grace. Yeah, a bit of grace and benefit of the doubt. And but I said, the fact is, I can't say that everyone else is doing that as well. So I said to people, you know, if this is someone that you value, try to see how they acted or what they said through the lens of poor adapting to this, you know, unprecedented situation and, you know, reach out, don't expect them to be, you know, be have some self agency, be proactive, reach out and see if it's possible to mend it. I said there are going to be many people who over that course of period because of all the factors you just mentioned and others, they shifted their perspectives, changed the person, has their priorities changed? And maybe you're not that priority, or maybe they see you in a different light or whatever and be prepared to lose, you know, friends, family or whatever? Unfortunately, yeah, but that's about adaptability. If that's a reality, don't fantasize, don't rely on wishful thinking, don't avoid it. See what's there, See which relationships are still intact, see which ones can be mended and improved. Then in the ones that can't be, jettison them, get rid of them in a tactful high road way and focus on what you can salvage or strengthen. And in a more negative light. I think what happened with a lot of friendships too, is that people saw things in their friends that maybe they weren't aware of before. So their opinions or their political views or, you know, you name it when it comes to COVID, it it kind of went across the spectrum of different issues. But I think a lot of friendships were lost in that respect, too, because people didn't really know how their friends were or thought or whatever the case may be. Right. And you said a few minutes ago, I think there was an absence of grace. People just were not willing to give them and they were willing to make the worst interpretations or to hear one thing from their friend about COVID and then assume they suddenly had a prototype of a certain person. If you act this way, it must mean that ABCD and are true of you as well. Yeah, they get no grace. Yeah. Yeah. So to shift gears a bit to, you know, education and the way that things vastly change in post-secondary, as I'm sure you saw with the way that you, you taught and delivered your lectures, but also with little kids and little ones. And emerging research now is showing that the stark impact it's had specifically on math skills and writing skills and how far behind kids are. On a more positive note, though, on that topic, what we're seeing in the clinics, though, is a lot of parents actually had the opportunity to observe the real deficits in their children's learning, that they weren't aware of the school wasn't making them aware of before. So fortunately, they were able to observe this and kind of catch it earlier on than maybe it would have otherwise. Right. And when we see it talk about deficits, I don't this is a whole other topic which we have touched upon, but also not just what they're not learning, but what they are learning or what, you know, what they're being inculcated with or the attitudes of some of the teachers and so on. And look, I have a one period of time I had the highest proportion of my patients were teachers, the good teachers, right? I didn't get any bad teachers. I don't think bad teachers, this is great. They didn't care. They don't care. This bare minimum. Okay. It didn't affect them. But the teachers who really wanted their students to learn and they saw. It was they really care. They want to improve and. Right. And they want to do right by their students. And they were stymied by, you know, their superiors, the systems that were in place. And so I feel really bad for them. But having said all that, there are also a number of teachers who, again, they were exposed. We saw what they were doing. Yeah. And and a lot of them and still to the state. Here's the problem after spending a year and a half or however long, depending on jurisdiction that they were not in the classrooms, some of them just they lost their motivation. Yeah, right. There's like, you know, so now now they're in the class and they're barely you know, they're they're checked out, they're barely doing anything. So we're not seeing a return to previous ways of teaching. We're not seeing a return to trying to really encourage students to learn and to grow. And that's that's a failure on those individual teachers. And yes, you suffered through COVID, but so did everybody else. There's a police officers are going, well, you know what? You know, like all the police officers have to work the entire they weren't all doing work right. But right. But if there was anybody had a really high even our situation. Right. If we thought, oh, you know what? Yeah, it's COVID, wipe me out, I'm going to go and have acid or something like that. Society can't function that way. Yeah, we need people to step up and students need to step up as well. But students especially as children, they're not the vast majority of them are not going to automatically step up. They need to have teachers and parents to put the expectations on them with compassion and to say, Yeah, we know that this was unprecedented. We didn't have to go through this again, take this unprecedented. I gotta think of a better word. Yeah, sorry, I'm tired, but. But the fact is, you know, with compassion and balancing that out and just letting kids know that, yeah, it really was bad. And as, say, you missed out on graduation, so that. Okay, but there'll be other opportunities. And that's the thing. If you dwell, the successful people don't dwell. They look forward, they look ahead. Yeah. And parents have to do their best to teach that to children, to say, look ahead to see what's next. Well, I don't feel prepared for this. Well, everybody's in the same boat as you are. And, you know, so what you're going into, we hope that it will adapt if if you're not prepared for, let's say, grade 11 French or something like that, if your previous couple of years, you know, sold you short, well, you'll hope that the whole system is is going to adapt to that. And if not, then as parents take responsibility. I don't think your kids are lazy or dumb or whatever you find out if. But you have to also find out, is it because of the COVID and the teaching or as your child, you know, just the youth is using this as an excuse. We need you. We need nuance as we always talk, right? I can't treat every situation the same. Yeah. At the university level. What are you seeing? Oh, boy. It's so at the university level, whether it's because of COVID, the COVID also happened at the time that there was a huge, bunch like a huge amount of social upheaval. And so I don't know which one it was. I think it's a confluence of these two factors or several factors. But what I'm seeing is a lot of students far more than before who are ill prepared for school. Yeah. Now, over the last many years I've seen a decline in students, let's say respect for the system and students expectation of hard work for themselves. They've been catered to and I don't blame them necessarily because as we've talked about in other podcasts for the last number of decades, schools, parents, whatever, I think have been failing in their jobs to raise independent, hardworking, ambitious students. Right? So I saw that decline anyway. But since COVID, I've seen a much greater decline. Like it's significant, and I said this in a previous podcast where before I know it, my distribution of grades looked like right. And I'm just seeing it get worse and worse and worse and all within a two year or three year period now. So and everyone went through COVID, but I'm still seeing, like with the newest batch of students, far more students on the lower end than I had ever seen before. Now, is it because schools are passing them too easily? Is it because universities are accepting students on off on criteria that don't equate with merit and abilities? Right. Is it that students were shell shocked from school and they just don't try as hard or. As the perfect storm. Or as the perfect storm? Yeah, or they expect special consideration because of what they went through. And some people are saying, okay, well, some people are not realizing, okay, that was before, but now we have to start getting on our own feet again. It's a perfect storm of all these factors I'm seeing that. But and having said all that, though, the fact is, like in my classes, I teach there online still, but I, I do a live lecture and then I give the video to people. It's up there. They can watch it. But I'll tell you, I mean, the fact is some students, their mode of of learning is not conducive to, you know, to doing it online or vice versa. Okay. I get that. And I'm not going to besmirch them and I'm not going to begrudge them. It's I feel bad for them. Yeah, right. So again, anyone who looks for a simple solution or a one sided solution is not doing justice, Right? Yeah. So you talked a bit about the profession of teaching. So I think it's important for us to look at some other professions and by no means I want to exclude any, but the ones that stand out the most to me are, of course, our profession as therapists, the health care profession and first responders is one that this hit in an interesting way. But I think there's there's a similarity in these three that I'm mentioning during the pandemic. And I, I recognize that I guess we're still on the tail end of it. But during the thick of it, first responders, health care professionals and even therapists, we had to keep the game face on and keep going. Right. We were going through it, too. The world was upside down for us. But there's people relying upon people in these professions. And I'm Amy here, and what we're seeing, interestingly, at the clinics now is now that things are settling down and now that people can take a deep breath, we're seeing the true consequence the pandemic had on nurses, on EMS, on police officers, because they had to push through, push through, push through, and now it's hitting them. And I recall actually, during the pandemic, you and I spoke a little bit about what I was experiencing, you know, providing leadership to our team, being there for our clients, having to pivot our entire business from mostly in-person to to online while going through all of it. And I was starting to feel burnt out there and feel really overwhelmed with the knowledge of I just had to keep pushing through. So it's almost like there is this delayed response or delayed reaction to the catastrophe everybody else was responding to in that moment. Right? A delayed response, accumulated responses like, Yeah, yeah. And as you said, not only did they have to put their game face on, but they were living with a kind of stress. Anyone who had to still deal with the public. Yeah. When we didn't know what I mean. Some people said they knew how long COVID was not that bad or whatever, but hey, we don't know how bad it really was. And certain people have vulnerabilities, Right. And see what they're hearing in the media of these, you know, these horror stories. Yeah. So when you're every day, it's like saying to somebody, you're working it out in a room full of asbestos every day. Yeah, you might not necessarily see it, but it might be eating away at your lungs or something like that. So caring, that stress and it's insidious. You're not even aware of it necessarily, but your body feels it. Yeah. And so yeah. So now afterward they it was, it was that plus also the public perception of each each profession that you mentioned, especially the first responders and nurses and doctors. Right. Some saw them as heroes and they love that that that fueled them. Others saw them in a negative light. Yeah. Like how dare you demand us to wear masks or things like that? So all of these things, it's again, we this has never happened before, at least in modern history. And I from a professional perspective, but also a personal perspective, I really hope that people can step back and say we shouldn't expect, you know, heroics from people. Yeah, right. That's what I said about, you know, giving benefit of the doubt and so on. Because this once again, it was a perfect storm, but this was one of several factors that started tearing society apart. You want to talk about stress, you want to talk about hopelessness and distress and so on. Nothing does that than the sense of my land around me. Right. Being torn apart like an earthquake, Right? Yeah. And to that point, natural disasters like earthquakes and disasters in general aren't a new phenomenon. But I think the difference here was it was global. It it impacted pretty much everybody on our planet. So I think, again, there was no roadmap per se. And the way in which we psychologically deal with disaster didn't necessarily apply in this situation. Right. And it's a tough sell about say, but I mean, it's the research is clear on this. And if you do it poorly, it doesn't help. But if you do it the right way, which is gratitude, it's hard to have gratitude when you're watching your business. And by the way, I would not try to say that to somebody if they just lost their business, their life savings or a loved one, I'd say, well, be grateful for no bad timing. Not going to work. Not helpful. Not helpful. But if in the moments where it wasn't that tragic, if you can find a little bit of gratitude, maybe in Canada, for example, we did much better than many other countries. You know, supply chain problems weren't that bad for us, whereas it was in other places. You know, natural disasters don't normally occur here like another. So the point is this even in the darkest of times, if you can try to find a little bit of gratitude, but not for anybody else but for yourself, because the research shows that when you have that gratitude, if you can embrace it again, even if just words at first it doesn't really work. But you the more you say it, the more you focus on things that you can be grateful for it. It buffers against any negative feelings. It may not negate it completely, but it mitigates it or mitigates them. So that's one approach I've tried to help people take. But again, I say it with such compassion, but I even tell them I know it's a tough sell. I know it's just words right now, but I hope you'll be able to internalize it at some point. Yeah, And you know, you're not just saying words because we see it all the time in the work that we do and these little micro disasters that people see in their lives, Right? So their lives are turned upside down. And I find that the truest healing in therapy begins when people are able to actually pull out those pieces of, you know, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me. But here's something positive that happened as a result that wouldn't have otherwise. Right? And even if there's not a positive, that's obvious to see. Yeah, I made it through. Yeah, that's a positive. Number one, I survived. Yeah, I survived it. And the number two, if you shift your perspective again, it may not be so obvious, but you might find a positive here or there or you might commit to saying, I'm going to make a positive something. The funny thing you remember at the very beginning, and I remember seeing this on TV, whereas an interview when it just started, we had no idea how long it was going to be. Okay. Where do you what what the one thing where people are locked in their homes or whatever, almost everybody said this is the one thing I'm going to work on. Any idea. One thing? In a word, yeah. Most people didn't do it and they walked out with the opposite. Or they maybe being organized. They'd be pretty good. Yeah. And no, they're talking about, like, their health. Okay, that would be me. My second guess was. Was fitness. Fitness? Yeah. Let me do all this. And then we talk about the Covid-10, the covid-15. Right. So you know, again, but it's nothing technically stop people if they were sick right. You don't need weights you don't need, you know, a treadmill. There are other ways that you could take care of yourself. Yeah. And if you missed it, if you missed out on doing that during COVID, then again, the perspective shift to say, okay, well, you know, I didn't do as much as I could have now, but I'm going to now commit to not missing out, whether it's about fitness, whether it's about work, hobbies, connecting with people. Yeah, right. And again, as you and I always talk about, I'm sort of taking all year, but what can you do about. Yeah, right. Yeah. When something is so far out of your control and you're powerless to do anything about it, find the things around you that you do have control or healthy control over. Yeah, Yeah. And hopefully we as a society, at least in this lifetime, don't find ourselves in this situation. You know, there's there's debate that maybe there will be another. But I think, you know, what can we do about it in the future is focus on what we can control, change our perspective and have gratitude. Exactly. And yeah, and again, we don't want this to happen again. It something's going to happen again. Yeah, most likely. Right. And and by the way, here's one thing that people have to try to do as well. You know, this is a CBT principle or technique. Yeah. But for a lot of people, whether it's about the pandemic, whether it's about Ukraine, whether it's about when Trump was elected, okay, people started going down some dark places, right? Whether it's in their mind or whether they're going on the Internet and so on. And if you recognize that this is what you're doing, I say thought blocking thoughts stop. I just put an end to it because it's so easy. It again, it's insidious like that. You just you start say, wait, how do I start fantasizing about, you know, post-apocalyptic, whatever and like, no, no, stop it. Because if it happens, well, it's going to be it's going to be a living hell maybe. All right. But if it hasn't happened, which it hasn't, by projecting ourselves into that living hell, we're already suffering the consequences of something of. Something like that, right? Yeah. So either worst, you know, either worst case scenario, we're going to go through hell twice. Yeah. And in a best case scenario, you're going to go through hell once unnecessarily, Right? Right. So again, gratitude is a good defense against that. Stop it. Recognize it? I it's an old technique. I have people like with put elastic band around the wrist. Right. Snap snap out of it. Yeah. Is it just you know and if you do want to stop yourself, use that band as a thing saying I should be pulling it, but I'm going to commit to not, you know, not doing what I'm doing right now, but. Creating that concrete connection between, Hey, there's that thought again, right? Stop it. Exactly. Yeah. Because that is under your control. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I guess on that note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. As much as we love listening to ourselves speak, especially me, we would love to hear from you as well. So our emails are in the description below. If you would, please write to us with your questions, feedback, comments, topics that you'd like us to cover. We can do this together. The two of us, but it's much better if we do it together. So we look forward to hearing from you. And we are going to have a segment called Roundtable where we're going to discuss the the feedback and the questions and so on from our audience. And we will we will take it to the next level. We're going to help you be able to deal with some of these issues that you might be bringing us or it's going to be a topic for us to explore together. And we really look forward to building a community, a community of like minded people who want to do right by others, not just for themselves.