It has been a very long journey for many of us. Even though it has only been three months of our lives, it sure feels like it’s been an eternity since we were “free”. Coronavirus came unexpectedly, threatening our normal way of living and causing long term changes to the way we perceive this wonderful world.
It seems a perpetuity since last year’s good memories and how inadvertently everything was so perfect for us. Can you imagine people’s reaction if you were out last summer wearing a mask, not touching anyone, feeling germ paranoid and sanitizing every 5 minutes? Not even Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have dreamed such a magical story!
The truth is that Coronavirus came suddenly threatening our society and our mode of living. People worldwide understood it was real and dangerous, making significant behavioral changes to a self-preservation mode. Our brains had an initial encounter with this threat that immediately made us panic and vigilant, consistently keeping up with ways not to get infected with this deadly menace. COVID-19 was new to our brain making us adhere to recommended safety precautions, but with time that new stressor was no longer novel, and our brain got used to a peril that didn’t feel as dangerous.
It may seem logical that if you’re trying to reach the goal of surviving a pandemic, you’ll continue with precautions at a constant rate. However, that has not been the case for many of our communities. So why are we failing to maintain our safety precautions over time?
CAUTION FATIGUE
One possible explanation for extinguishing precautions is known as caution fatigue. According to this theory, a human brain is mostly wired to deal with short-term threats and when under chronic stress requiring caution behaviors for months, this goes against every threat response we know. Caution fatigue theory suggests that over time, these careful approaches begin to fade and disappear eroding motivation to maintain behavioral changes. Caution Fatigue drives through the slippery slope of having unconscious thoughts like “It’s just a birthday dinner, why not?” or “No one is wearing a mask, why should I?”
To avoid caution fatigue impacting our judgment there are multiple things we can do. I want to start by saying that if you made it this far in the article, you are already doing something to avoid Caution fatigue by becoming knowledgeable on this subject. Another important point to fight caution fatigue passes through focusing on mental and physical health. Having a clear daily routine, getting enough sleep, work on healthy nutrition, exercising regularly, meditate and connect with loved ones to provide and get support remembering social distancing its not equal to social isolation are some helpful tips.
Lastly, we think it’s very important trying to find a project that allows you to be happy while you stay at home. A new program that allows you to: (1) self-care and focus on gaining something for you during quarantine time; (2) allows you to concentrate on you and not on what you are missing out there; (3) gives some purpose to your time at home and allows you to grow as a person while bringing you joy and a sense of accomplishment. Imagine coming out of this process with a new vision, mission and skill for a better future.
MISCONCEPTION OF SAFETY MEASURES
Another possible explanation for the difficulties we experienced maintaining safety precautions has to do with the misconception and poor understanding of some of these measures. From the beginning of this Pandemic parts of our society had a hard time autoregulating and understanding this is a serious matter. It was only until our government intervened by declaring local disaster due to a public health emergency, that most people understood it was real. Our local and state government orders including shelter in place, mandatory masks and curfews provided regulation to mitigate and decrease the spread of an unknown lethal virus.
Unfortunately, these orders as many other restrictions in the world evolved into a sense of punishment by the community. People were no longer thinking about protecting themselves from the virus, and instead started thinking about why can’t I go to this party? when can I go to the beach? or why should I wear a mask?
The reality is that human beings don’t like things that are imposed. We didn’t like them when we were children and we don’t like them now. Think about it for a second, back in the day when you were punished by your father with no TV access for 1 month, how did that made you feel? I’m sure you were not happy at all. I’m sure all you could think in your mind was how to sneak behind your parent to watch some television. Well, that its exactly what has happened to us over the past months. We have been all thinking this is a punishment, and all we can contemplate in our minds it’s how do we get out? How can I go back to when I was free? or when is this going to be over?
In my opinion COVID-19 has evolved into a behavioral problem, and our biggest weapon to fight it is changing the conception of why we do things. Typically, when you are faced with a behavioral problem, correcting it involves making changes through a series of strategies designed to help achieve the desired goal. Some of those strategies include understanding why the behavior occurs, addressing the motivation behind the behavior, and altering the environment to provide positive support and encouragement for the desired behavior.
As you may conclude from the article, thinking we need to follow safety precautions because otherwise we get in trouble it’s a misconception condemned to failure. If we really want to make precautions a habit, we need to think about them in a positive way. We need to feel proud for doing the right thing. We need to know that wearing a mask it’s an act of love. We need to know that social distancing its really about altruism. We need to know that keeping yourself safe its protecting others, improving public health and ensuring hospitals can meet demands.
Our community needs to change the conception of why we take safety precautions. The only way to succeed at modifying our behaviors, its by recognizing with standing ovation all those that behave the correct way. We need to make them feel proud for their community service. Let’s get together to reinforce good behaviors and make people feel good for doing the right thing. I can assure you that if you praise someone on the street for wearing a mask or taking safety precautions, that person will feel good, and you will be making a difference!
Shrink Box Podcast is a social and mental health initiative carried by Dr. German Corso (Child Psychiatrist), Dr. Daniel Gutierrez (Child Psychiatrist) and Dr. Ricardo Irizarry (Brain Injury Medicine). We are a group of mental health experts proudly serving our community at South Texas Behavioral Health and Tropical Texas Behavioral Health.
Thanks Dear friends, doing a great job, Thanks Dr, Corso. Really really appreciate the work done by you guys.
Thank you very much
Thank you so much for this very valuable information.. All of you are doing a fantastic job getting this across all of us people. Specially for one that tested positive for COVID-19 , I have three grandkids at home while I am recovering, and tell me how hard it is to be after them to keep mask on, wash hands, but they seem to have gotten the point we are trying come across them all three grandkids are 6 and 7 years this month. And we protect them cause we love them, and we want them to be here for the after COVID-19 is gone and we can have our life back and they can again be kids doing kids stuff.
Thank you Elida! We hope you are recovering well!