We Have All Hit a Wall

“I feel fried,” said Erin H., a social media and events coordinator at a Midwestern university whose work once inspired and excited her, but now seems like an uncomfortable cocktail of boredom, fear, and exhaustion. (She asked not to use her last name so as not to upset her employers.) Things are taking longer, in part because she doesn’t want to do them.

“I’m out of ideas and have no motivation to even get to a point where I feel inspired,” she wrote, responding to a request from the New York Times to describe the work-related challenges in the 13th month of the pandemic. “Every time my inbox rings, I feel a twinge of fear.”

None of this is surprising, said Margaret Wehrenberg, an expert on fear and author of the book “Pandemic Anxiety: Anxiety, Stress and Loss in Traumatic Times”. A year of uncertainty, whipping back and forth between fear and depression, watching expert predictions fade and goal posts shifting, has made many people feel like they exist in a kind of fog, the world is grayed out.

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April 2, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET

“When people are under long periods of chronic, unpredictable stress, they develop behavioral anhedonia,” said Dr. Wehrenberg, which means the loss of the ability to enjoy their activities. “And so they get sluggish and show a lack of interest – and that obviously plays a big role in productivity.”

Nearly 700 people answered the Times’ questions, and the picture they painted showed a workforce at the end of their collective minds. We heard from a clergyman, a pastry chef, an ICU nurse, a probation officer, and a fast food worker. Budget analysts, librarians, principals, students hiding in children’s rooms, project managers, interns, real estate agents – their moods were strikingly similar, although their circumstances were different. As one respondent said, no matter how many lists they make, “I fall back into deep pajamaville.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who can’t say that last year wasn’t the hardest they’ve ever had,” said Elizabeth Abend, 41, in an interview. As the HR manager of a small chain of boutique gyms, Ms. Abend, who lives in Manhattan, faced a cascade of challenges: She had to tell casual employees that there was no work. Uncertainty about when and how to reopen; Switching to new digital services. And there was loneliness, the death of her beloved dog, her own tough battle with Covid-19 last spring, and the need to “be a grown person and pay bills and eat meals and all in the midst of the exhaustion of our whole world to be turned upside down. “

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