How do you stay sane when people accidentally/willfully lie to you about Covid?
How do you stay sane when people accidentally/willfully lie to you about Covid?
People are making me feel crazy about fearing Covid. I heard a therapist go "I don't want to say Covid is OVER..." (but)
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Not in the case of the friend I'm thinking of.
Is the mental distress caused by westerners’ casual indifference to genocide?
I'm sure they feel that's part of it, but they never leave the house, got fired, got dumped, don't see other people, and only read/consume media about covid, so I don't exactly think they're setting themselves up for good mental health there.
They stayed at my house for a week a year ago and took a COVID test every day despite never going inside or unmasking. My wife and I also took a COVID test the day they arrived, and similarly didn't go inside their whole time visiting us, and yet they still requested (and we honored it) to wear masks in our own house for the whole week, despite all of the negative tests. If they don't accept negative COVID tests as proof someone doesn't have COVID (but still take them constantly), I'd say we live in different realities.
They've never actually tested positive for COVID themselves, but did go to five different doctors until they found one that would tell them they had long COVID. The first four all said they were too stressed. Since they got the diagnosis they wanted they have stopped leaving the house and been fired from their job. I also believe their partner dumped them and moved out. Before they got the diagnosis they were rock climbing and backpacking regularly (even during the period where they had decided they had long COVID already).
Before COVID this person was a self-aware hypochondriac, but they're well and truly gone now. So that's why I'm mad. I've lost a friend to their neuroses. And where they were previously aware of and working to mitigate their neuroses, they've now decided that their neuroses are correct and should not be a therapy target, so the outlook isn't good they'll ever come back.
So my friend is a hypochondriac who self-diagnosed with long COVID despite never having been infected. The symptoms of their supposed disease changed drastically after they got the result they wanted from doctor shopping, and they do not trust results from COVID tests.
So that's why I get mad at them, not because I'm trying to gaslight them.
I don’t blame your fried bro. It’s the people who aren’t masking during a deadly pandemic who are insane.
Ok but maybe don't generalize the hyper specific niche weird case of your allegedly hypochondriac friend to every other person who is afraid of having their lives ruined by a communicable disease that's known to ruin peoples lives.
Sure, just don't think that everyone who's mad about COVID shut-ins is trying to gaslight you.
Whatever. The word gaslight is used a lot because it describes how people feel in the face of an overwhelming propaganda campaign to get people to rawdog covid for short term economic reputation laundering. I don't give a shit about the word or the intent: at the end of the day, anyone trying to get me to take the risk of getting covid is trying to get me to risk my life for nothing, whether or not that's their intention.
Maybe covid minimizers aren't technically trying to gaslight people, but people sure as hell feel gaslit. The end result is the same: protections being undermined and more people's lives ruined.
My buddy did a fine job ruining their own life without ever getting covid.
Oh man you got me, I'm going to stop taking covid precautions now because I don't want to end up like your buddy.
Just be mindful of the effects it has on your own mental health, comrade.
I am! I'm acutely aware that if I got long covid and couldn't be athletic anymore, my mental health health would collapse to the point where my life would be destroyed and -- whether by my own hand or some knock-on effect of being disabled and unable to enjoy life -- I'd be dead within a year. Part of why I take precautions is to protect my mental health. Back in the brief period of time when I didn't wear masks due to social pressure and thinking that the vaccines 100% prevented infection, I had multiple scares where I was an anxious wreck because someone I had hung out with tested positive a few days later, or came down with symptoms, or their roommate had it or something. But now that I only hang out with people outside with some distance or inside with us all masked up, I never have that terror! I'm so much happier and more comfortable socializing taking reasonable, effective, realistic precautions.
Sure there are some downsides. I skip the big indoor parties and I do miss them. But I know they aren't worth the risk, especially since friends have spread covid to each other at some of the very events I avoided. I still make sure to see my core group of people regularly, for 1 on 1 hangs or in groups when we can coordinate it. It's different for safety, but not that different.
No more indoor clubbing or concerts for me, sadly. Those I do miss and there's no substitute that comes close. But I can live without those. I can't live with lungs so shot that strenuous workouts become impossible, as happened to a friend of mine.
I hope someday this pandemic is actually beaten and we can go back to how things were, but that requires us to still be alive and healthy -- so I'm doing what I can to stay OK until then.