Why I’ve Struggled So Much With Fear During The Covid-19 Pandemic

How the combination of health and economic anxiety triggered my inner critic big time

When the coronavirus pandemic started, I was 34 and healthy with no underlying conditions (that I was aware of at least). So that meant I was in the “low-risk group”. Up until then, I’d had the luxury of not having to worry about my health.

I saw my role more as a potential spreader, not someone in particular danger of the virus. It’s worth adding that I was already working from home before the pandemic, rarely take public transport, and live with my partner with no kids so that removed plenty of risk factors for exposure.

Of course, when lockdowns arrived in Europe, even the most laidback people were all of a sudden afraid for their lives. This virus, which had up till then been downplayed as something that we could deal with without resorting to such harsh measures, suddenly became public health enemy number one, and seemingly a threat to us all.

The Model Pandemic Citizen

In an environment of such extreme stress and anxiety, I resorted to rather dysfunctional coping mechanisms of perfectionism. My goal was to be the model pandemic citizen who would never touch her face, always maintain her distance and thus avoid the shame I associated with becoming a granny-killing virus-harbouring monger of death.

When my inner critic goes into its most extreme mode, everything is my fault — you touched your face, so you’re going to get ill with the virus and kill your partner you good-for-nothing. In these moments, it’s hyper-vigilance, or else.

In addition to dealing with the madwoman in the attic, I also started to become rather terrified of the long-term effects of Covid-19. As a young woman in my 30s, I wasn’t really worried about dying or even being hospitalised.

What scared me the most, and felt the most relevant to me, were the reports coming through of people with Long Covid. In the beginning of the pandemic, we were told that 80% of cases would be “mild”, i.e. not severe enough to require hospital treatment.

“Mild” of course triggered images in people’s minds of just a cold, just a sniffle, no big deal etc. And when I started reading about Long Covid, it didn’t sound “mild” at all — it sounded pretty horrific.

Long Covid became another motivator for me to not get the virus at all, at least before we had treatments or a vaccine (being vaccinated has made me more relaxed). But this wasn’t just about health. It was also about what I consider my rather precarious career and financial position.

Economic Precarity & Health Mistakes

For the last few years, I’ve been trying to get my own online business up and running while freelancing on the side. As of 2020, I had zero salaried work and all my income was coming through my status as a sole trader or micro-entrepreneur in France.

When you work like this though, what happens when you get sick? As of July 2021, France offers health coverage for people in my position. The thing is, it’s not like when you go on sick leave from a full-time, permanent job. In that case, when you come back, your employer has to give you your post or an equivalent one.

My fear with prolonged sick-leave as a self-employed person is that there will be no work to come back to. My clients have no real reason to stick around. And anyone I freelance for is not bound legally to keep my post open. They can just go ahead and find someone else. And why wouldn’t they?

I feel so guilty and like such a failure for being almost 40, with quite a precarious job situation that the whole spectre of Long Covid just added insult to injury. Here I am, a gig worker, and now I’m going to get ill and lose what little I have. At least that’s what my inner critic was telling me.

So this fear of loss and of failure got mixed in with the hyper-vigilance — if I catch Covid, it’ll be my own personal failing. And if I get Long Covid and lose all my clients and freelance work, that’ll be my own fault too. My own fault for my economic precarity. My own fault for my health mistakes.

So yeah, this pandemic has been really stressful for me and I’ve been really careful. I haven’t caught anything, but that’s probably because I work from home and I don’t have kids. And here I am, blaming myself for systemic failings in pandemic response and in the job market.

Ableism In The Mix

But I also realise, with a little perspective, that I’m being rather black and white about things. Would I really lose everything, if I not only caught the virus, but also ended up ill for a while?

Another online entrepreneur, Jenny Shih, has written openly about how she kept her business going after she got chronic lyme disease. So there is a blueprint out there for keeping going, despite health challenges.

Also, colleagues and friends struggle with their own chronic conditions yet manage to live and work, with adjustments.

Two of my fellow online teachers struggle with migraines — when you have one, you can’t do anything. Another friend is a nurse, but has type 1 diabetes which is hard to manage and came on a few years ago. My mother has lived with hypertension since she was 48. My youngest auntie has had epilepsy all her life.

Countless other people in my orbit probably have health issues that they keep quiet as so many chronic conditions are invisible. As I thought about the people in my life managing chronic illness, I realised I was being pretty ableist in my melodramatic thinking about losing everything.

Obviously, it’s not easy to manage a chronic condition, but it is possible to still live and work. And we still don’t know exactly what Long Covid is. For some people it will clear up after a certain time. For others, they may have to live with it for the rest of their lives. Vaccines may play a role in reducing its prevalence — we’ll see.

Pandemic Of Inequality & Injustice

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this pandemic, it’s that inequality drives the virus.

If people don’t have adequate sick pay, or no sick pay at all in our world of fake self-employment and precarious jobs, then they can’t isolate when sick. They’re also going to be wary of getting jabbed if they have a bad reaction and need to take a day off to recover.

As Nesrine Malik put it in her article “Covid jingoism will not protect the west from the threat of Omicron”:

“Until it is understood that there is no return to “normal” without dismantling the very notion of what that normal is, the pandemic will continue to resurge.”

As an online language teacher, I know that many of my peers are working in precarious conditions. I declare my revenue and pay tax and national insurance so that I can claim sick pay, which puts me in a much more privileged position (even if my inner critic sometimes makes me forget that).

But many teachers doing lessons on online platforms for $5-$10 dollars (1 hour of lesson and a similar amount of prep time), will not be declaring that money, but taking it cash in hand.

What happens if they get sick and can’t work? Not to mention the fact that working for so little money (it’s not salary by the way) means that you have to work punishing hours just to get by.

If we’re going to get out of this mess, then going forward we’ll need to focus on one of my greatest values: justice. Economic justice for gig workers, vaccine justice for developing countries and health justice for people disabled by this pandemic.

As for my inner critic, well, the least I can say is that I’m much more familiar with it since March 2020. In 2022, I want to develop a better relationship with it. It’s trying, in its own awkward way to protect me, but it often ends up doing more harm than good.

And yes, I try to counter the voice in my head but looking at all the positives in my life and situation: an ability to work from home and to therefore isolate easily if necessary, being vaccinated and boosted, having access to sick pay etc. All the while knowing that the pandemic response is out of my control.

But as variants continue to rage and the future looks uncertain, I’ll carry on with my plan: caution during surges, return to a semblance of normality when things calm down.