New social anxiety? Local docs say hesitancy to return to normalcy is expected
As more offices are welcoming workers back to their buildings, and more places are opening up in general, some folks are feeling more anxiety than they have in a while.
Many have worked from home for more than a year now.
University of Kansas Health System clinical psychologist Dr. Gregory Nawalanic understands and says the hesitancy to get back to the way things were, isn’t limited to a specific group.
"It's not really just limited to people who were socially introverted prior to the pandemic," he said. "Some people who were doing fine are thinking, 'Gee, I kind of got comfortable with this.'"
Nawalanic says it’s important to remember everyone is reintegrating at the same time.
"If it's just around social anxiety, then it's around deep breathing. It's around challenging the…critical thoughts [such as] ‘Everybody is looking at me.’ Really, nobody is looking at you," he said.
He adds that it may take some time to get back to how things were when we began 2020, but that it can happen.
"I think that we can expect people to be a little socially awkward right out of the gates, but we'll get through this," he said. "It'll be a bump in the road, but before you know it, we'll be back to doing whatever we were doing before [and] hopefully as well as ever."