Post-Pandemic Mental Health
For a while, everything paused. Streets emptied, schools and universities closed, and the days blurred into one another. At first, it felt temporary and extremely strange. Over time it became almost like the new normal.
The pandemic interrupted life on a global scale, and many therapists were concerned about its mental health impact on our existing clients, not just through life coming to a standstill, but the fear of what was happening out there in the world, a world which seemed like a disaster movie. What’s only being talked about now is the longer-lasting impact on those who were in their teens or early twenties when the world stopped. The ones who were just about to launch, were just getting their bearings. Who, instead of making their way into life, found themselves locked in bedrooms, trying to finish school on Zoom, starting university and trying to attend lectures and make friends through a screen. Who were trying to grow up in a vacuum.
Now, several years later, many of these young people are in their twenties. Outwardly, things may seem OK, though they still may have academic gaps. But they’re working, socialising, perhaps even thriving. But inside, something feels off.
“I should be over this by now”
The person saying this might describe a flatness they can’t shake or a sense of social awkwardness. There might be a kind of emotional stiffness, like part of them stopped developing during those years and never quite caught up.
For some, it shows up as anxiety, around work, around love relationships or even making friends, around even small decisions. For others, it’s low mood or a lack of motivation, wanting to stay indoors where things feel safer. Sometimes it’s a more general unease that’s hard to pin down.
Older people may be confused as to what can be done, or even show disbelief that the struggles are still happening. As though the effects of lockdown should have ended when the restrictions did.
But the psyche doesn’t work to news cycles. The impact of those years on post-pandemic mental health, is still unfolding.
The Years That Should Have Mattered
There’s a reason rites of passage exist. Not because every culture enjoys ceremony, but because psychological development needs markers. Adolescence and early adulthood are meant to be full of mess and movement; testing boundaries, forming identity, learning through trial and error. They’re years when you’re supposed to get things wrong, fall in love, outgrow friendships, have your first real heartbreak. All of which requires real in-person contact with life.
But if your developmental years were largely spent indoors, with no clear end in sight, no structure to push against, and no one to truly see you, something in that process gets interrupted. Enough that later, when life starts up again, you might feel like you’ve been dropped into the middle of a story without having read the beginning.
Post-Pandemic Mental Health – This Isn’t Just a Social Problem
There’s often a tendency to treat this kind of delayed effect as something to power through. “Get out more.” “Say yes to things.” “It’s just social anxiety, everyone has it now.” And yes, social anxiety has probably increased since the pandemic, or at least our awareness of the term has. But what’s really going on for many people isn’t just about making small talk or adjusting to busier commutes.
It’s about feeling developmentally out of step with your own life. Feeling like others got the rulebook and you missed the handout. It’s about trying to live as an adult while still feeling like a part of you is unsure how to begin.
With that feeling can come with a kind of shame. Because there’s nothing visibly wrong. You weren’t hospitalised after all. You coped. You survived. So why are you still struggling?
Because coping isn’t the same as growing
In survival mode, we narrow ourselves. We do what we have to and postpone the rest. Which is exactly what so many people did during lockdown: they adapted. But adapting isn’t the same as becoming. And now that life has returned to something like normal, all those postponed processes are trying to resume, but without the usual signposts or support and sometimes without acknowledgement about how difficult it is.
Therapy, Your Post-Pandemic Mental Health and the Slow Resumption of Self
In therapy, I sometimes work with people who describe this kind of delayed becoming. They’re bright, thoughtful, capable and yet confused about why they feel flat or low or anxious. When we explore further, we often land on those missing years. Sometimes there were traumatic events or losses which may have had great impact. Sometimes there were simply events that didn’t happen in the way they were meant to, or an identity or sense of who you are as an adult, that never quite formed.
This work isn’t about trying to recapture lost time. It’s about allowing space for what got put on pause, to re-emerge. That might look like exploring or unearthing feelings that have been buried. It might mean questioning assumptions about who you’re supposed to be by now. Or it might just mean having a space where you don’t have to keep pretending that everything’s fine.
You’re Not Behind
One of the cruellest effects of the pandemic on the mental health of young adults was the way it made people feel behind, before they’d even properly begun. But there is no official timeline for becoming yourself. No fixed age by which everything is sorted. If part of you feels stuck or uncertain or you feel not quite present in your own life, that may mean some emotion or some part of you still needs time and exploration and a space to express itself.
That time can be given. That space can be made. And if it helps to hear it: you’re not the only one.
