Who The H#ck Am I Now?
Studies show Britain’s younger generation of 14-24 year olds are feeling double the stress than the general population – with COVID stealing our sense of self, new careers, and so many potential nights of mindless self indulgence.
It’s October, and people are basking in the sweet bliss of legally being able to sit in a Spoons on a Monday night, finally. Despite the knowledge floating in the air that Covid cases are on their way back up, the pub is far from empty – and if you close your eyes, its almost like nothing ever changed. It’s loud, warm, and smells gracefully of Sourz Cherry shots. Henry* is wearing the fruity fragrance too, because I spilled mine.
With the second wave here already, young people reporting that they are coping well has declined from 64% in the first lockdown to 56% in the second one – study from mentalhealth.org.uk shows on the 8th October 2020.
More specifically, with the older bracket – 18-24 year olds – the study presents that 32% are feeling hopeless, while the rest of the population shows a greatly decreased 19%. During a stage of our lives usually preoccupied with freedom, learning, and friendships, it’s no wonder all of this isolation is causing people to question their identity. Master Coach and Hypnosis Trainer, Lizzie Thompson, explains in a story in the Metro that this sense of questioning is similar to what happens during a significant emotional event. Effectively comparing the mental effects of lockdown to life altering events like break ups and having children. Thompson explains this type of identity crisis entails a person getting confused about their likes, dislikes, what they want from life, and ‘questioning themselves constantly and feeling insecure’. It should be unsurprising then, that the mentalhealth.org study shows 87% of people have been using coping mechanisms like social media to stay sane. However, this may not work for everyone.
Unfortunately, A 21 year old student can vouch for all of this. In the cherry smelling pub in his University town, Henry explains ‘I’m extraverted and most of the time like people, but lockdown made me question who I am. I think thats what the big word of the day is – question.’
Henry attends a Russell Group university, and many young people who are or have gone through this identity confusion are also people who are used to the hustle and bustle of school and university life. ‘This was my problem with lockdown as well, because I didn’t have anyone to interact with, that defining social part of myself wasn’t really in existence anymore.’
“You cant escape the fact that we are social beings. The action of interacting defines who you are and you learn how to be a human by interacting with other people.”
HENRY, 21
Integrative Child Psychotherapist, Caroline Logsdail, who specialises in traumatic experiences of people aged 14-21, is seeing this in abundance in her practice. Caroline suggests that young people are being more emotionally affected than Britain’s adult population, as the effects of lockdown hit harder ‘in a time where they need to make their own decisions and mistakes’. For example, she says due to isolation and a lack of socialising, many pre-university people in her practice are regressing back to childlike, emotionally fragile states and that effect on long term identity development is unknown.
‘The main changes I have seen is from the lack social interaction’, she explains, ‘some are retreating to their rooms and going inwards and losing the much needed connection to their friends. Others are angry’. It seems like pre-lockdown identity is a contributor to how stable people feel when they are ultimately isolated. For example it seems characters who are more creative, extroverted, and entrepreneurial are more inclined to be active in coping mechanisms that will help with stability in lockdown. Caroline has seen the young people in her practice using social media and technology to stay balanced, ‘creating online friend groups, online film groups, and recently a young person said they were organising a cooking group at Uni online’.
“This feels like a traumatic experience globally and young people are mirroring those fears; what the media feeds them, what the adults around them are discussing, worrying about their future, economic stability and jobs.”
“Young people are angry and confused”
20 year old fashion stylist, Lara Pledger, says ‘I’ve been using social media more than ever. I’ve literally been glued to my phone to pass the time and escape’. Positively, it has allowed her to continue socialising and meet new people. She says lockdown has ‘strengthened my personal relationships. It made me realise we don’t need to go out, we just need each other’. Although this helps her to stay stable in lockdown, she says she’s actually feeling slightly addicted to social media and might have even ‘lost herself in it’.
“In lockdown where we are confined in our houses what else can I do? Thats when I started questioning myself.”
Lara Pledger, age 20
Henry explains he didn’t like social media during the first lockdown, with people promoting either the obsessively productive, borderline capitalist mantra ‘wake up at 7am, you’re not living if you’re not learning, make money’. Or, the social media performative activism that is ‘pay attention to politics but make sure everyone knows it.’ Because of this, he tried to stay away from social media beyond communicating with friends. 46% of young people did the same, and managed to cope well with lockdown due to this, mental health.org shows. But this still leaves the majority not coping well. Actually, the thing Henry missed the most about normal non-quarantine life was ‘face to face interaction on a physical level, rather than through a screen’. Is it possible then, that no matter how hard we try to stay connected, our stable idea of identity depends solely on our daily physical interactions with other people?
Not quite. During the same study, mentalhealth.org also found that people who were unemployed were 3 times less likely to be coping well than the rest of the study groups. And with the mental stress of not only this unexpected, life changing event that is the pandemic, many young people have also been watching the quick rise and downfall of their brand new careers. Thompson explains these emotional life events can trigger an identity crisis. This happened to Lara, who left university early and found a miracle opportunity working in the fashion industry for a big online retailer. But as with many companies during the pandemic, they were forced to make redundant almost half of the team she was working on. And after being made redundant because of the pandemics impact, she’s had to put a big pause on the career she only just got into, and is now questioning who she is and if it’s what she really wants to do in life.
It’s been an hour and the smell of cherry has discreetly slipped away. The air feels lighter to breathe and Henry is radiating catharsis as he ends his monologue by telling me, ‘Lockdown was a complete reshaping of everything. A complete breaking down and re-finding the core of what I am, and then building more on that core than I ever have before. I’m not the same person I was 6 months ago.’
‘I think I’d have a much less developed sense of self if lockdown didn’t happen. It’s like the question of ‘does human suffering make a human stronger?’. My core self is definitely a lot stronger, I know more of myself and all of the positives and negatives that come with it. Thankfully I got any help I needed and was strong enough that I could grow out of it into this better person’
*Henry is a pseudonym