The thing about trauma, is that when something happens that reminds you of your trauma (a similar event, or a similar smell, or taste, or some other stimuli). It triggers a trauma response in you. This manifests in different ways for different people.
So, in terms of people in Melbourne freaking out about Sydney's seemingly lacking response to the current outbreak, coupled with the new cases in Victoria - this is going to trigger a trauma response.
The lockdown was traumatising.
How much, depends on the individual.
When you have a trauma response, it is physically terrifying. Your adrenaline might surge. You could feel afraid. You could feel angry. You might react by lashing out. You might shut down. You might have anxiety that it is all "going to happen again".
Or that you don't think you could survive another lockdown, because you barely survived the last one.
These are all natural and normal responses, and I know they are hard, and I am so sorry if you're feeling this fear.
I don't know what is going to happen.
I do hope that you can do your best to be safe. Try to take each moment as it comes, do the best you can do to get by.
Please find helplines below.
Beyond Blue Covid Mental Health call 1800 512 348 (also online chat)
While avoidance isn't a long term coping strategy that leads to the healthiest of outcomes, it is something that can help you when your distress is high. Distract yourself with TV, or a game, or go and install tiktok and watch (non pandemic) videos.
Definitely take steps to shelter yourself from media & statistic overload (if you need to know information, ask a friend to pass on information relevant to you). Doomscrolling fulfils the need to try and control (by having ALL the information), but it may not help how you feel.
Mindfulness is key. "I notice I am feeling...." and then validation "It is understandable that I am feeling...."
Remind yourself that you do not have to act on your thoughts.
And, my personal mantra, when things are spiralling,
Here is not there, now is not then.
Be safe, pocketfam.
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Many people plan carefully to stretch their sessions out across a year, which means that they may be wary of utilising 10 in the first half of the year, only to find that they're then without access to affordable care if the system changes again.
In an ideal world, there would be mass availability of bulk billing psychologists and psychiatrists, but there are not. At the very least this system allows some people to afford care, but being able to budget their out of pocket costs means knowing how long coverage will last.
Extremely sotto voce, 'Criminalisation of those who start community transmissions for outbreaks isn't a sound health policy, and the name of patient zero is only relevant to health workers and contact tracers, and is none of our business.'
I know we are annoyed at rich people who may have recklessly flouted quarantine, but no one's name, or identifying details, beyond places they have visited should be public knowledge.
One of the best sociologists I know has broken this down in an excellent thread you can find here,
This entire thread, super important for educators and parents of Autistic children. In Australia, if your child has a diagnosis (I know this is fraught) you can take reports to the school and request an NEP (Negotiated Education Plan) that formally puts in requirements. (Cont..)
Not only do we have an NEP for our eldest, we also make sure to have a face to face scheduled chat if he has a new teacher that year (or via class messenger during a pandemic), to clarify communications around learning and specific needs. We check in regularly with our kid and
With the school to make certain that his needs are being met. On report cards and grading, we have always focused on comments around how they work (which can also be problematic, but we are fortunate our teachers are very good in this area).
Funemployment begins. Signing up to some learning course to look at a possible career change, gonna go get me some technology learning over the summer.
I'm starting with Azure fundamentals. Microsoft is offering a lot of their courses for free at the moment (you just need to pay for the certifications).
Microsoft really went and named something Blob storage.
Class allocation is always stressful for students and teachers. The kids list their friends and then the teachers try to put them in a class with them, and manage other stuff (a bunch of kids' dad teaches at the school for example so they can't be in his class).
We did Lucas' NEP (Negotiated Education Plan) review the other day, and discussed in that, that having the same teacher would be really beneficial to him. The teacher and he have formed a relationship, and he communicates well with us.
He's made modifications to the workload, and its been a great school year (no real complaints about heading to school for example). So today a school leader calls us and tells us they can't do chosen friendship group and teacher, so what would we prefer?