Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
As I write those lines, we are reaching the end of 8 weeks of lockdown in the UK and nearly 2 months of social distancing. The restrictions are starting to ease around the world, each country having its own version of continued lockdown or initiating the resumption of “normal” life. With a few twists. I don’t know about you, but it is starting to feel very mundane. Eight weeks is a long time. It is enough to develop a new routine and get comfortable with new habits. And yet, I can’t help but wonder sometimes: “is it worth it?”.
I mean, yes, I know that humans are incredibly adaptable and will learn to get accustomed with their new tomorrow and whatever restrictions we need to follow to ensure everyone’s safety. But, is it worth getting fully comfortable into a new now when we don’t know when will tomorrow start? The temporary aspect of the situation keeps being emphasised, but we have no control over whether or not we will access the new stage of the wonderful post-lockdown roadmap every single government seems to be developing lately. Sure, we can all do our parts and we should respect the restrictions, but it’s not like at school when if you apply yourself to something you will succeed. Because this is not just about you and it doesn’t only depend on yourself. No wonder I don’t sleep great lately if that’s what’s on my mind.
Right, let’s review what we know about the effect of the lockdown, maybe the cause of all this gloominess can be identified and fought against. If the research into the long-term effect of a lockdown situation is still very young or focussed on so-called “atypical” population (e.g., prisoners, soldiers), scientists have been able to identify 4 effect of the lockdown on the brain. Stuff we can observe here and now but we don’t know how long it will take us to revert to how things used to be (if that is indeed something we fully want).
The first effect is linked to the lack of social contact. I’ve touched this subject before: humans are highly social beings. We wouldn’t be where we are now if it wasn’t for our ability to create and maintain numerous social bonds. We live in a time when, thankfully, it is very easy to keep in touch with your loved ones and friends even if you are not in the same country. We have the technology to connect with anyone, anywhere, whenever we feel like it. So why do I feel like I’m starving all the time? Well, it turns out that the part of our brain that keeps tabs on our social contact is not satisfied with some make-believe, with our last resort to stay in touch. Our brain knows it is not the real thing, just like your stomach can apparently tell the difference between real sugar and some sweetener, no matter how sophisticated it is – but that’s another story. Another interesting fact is that that part of our brain keeping tabs on our social contact… also keep tabs on our food intake! From an evolutionary point of view, it does make sense: back in our cavemen days, getting food was only possible through cooperative behaviours. No cooperation, no food. Thus, our brain, this marvellously sophisticated machine, decided to save some space and develop a 2-in-1 area to keep track of 2 interdependent behaviours: getting food and getting social contact. Guess I am indeed literally starving.
The second thing the lockdown completely messed up with is our need for physical contact. Some people might agree on this one more than others, but overall humans are very tactile. We spend an incredible of time touching each other, well we did anyway. Greeting rituals would involve some form of touching in most places, let it be a hug, a kiss on the cheeks, a handshake… It strengthens social bonds and help improve our wellbeing. Touching someone you care for will release oxytocin (the social-bond hormone and one of the feel-good hormones) in the brain, making you feel connected and loved. Loneliness, anxiety and perceived physical pain can all be lowered by a touch. It’s a very potent stuff that we should not forget to value in tomorrow’s world… whenever we can be closer than 2 metres from each other. To all the introvert out there: let your extraverted friend hug you once in a while. You probably need it as much as they do, and it will do you good that is worth the mild discomfort. Promise, we’ll keep the hug under 10sec.
Thirdly, the lockdown put a bridle on all our desires and taught us to deal with frustration, while developing our inhibitory behaviours. I’m not talking here about how we will react to shops re-opening and having once more access to everything, but how we are managing not having it all as we usually did. I introduced before one of the voices in my head: meet again impulsivity. Impulsivity has been incredibly frustrated during the lockdown. Impulsivity couldn’t do as it pleased anymore. It had to take into account all the restrictions in place and learn to listen to the voice of self-control (you remember? The thing that fights decisional impulsivity). With the lockdown, we had to listen to self-control to not go completely bunker. We had to understand that no, we couldn’t go out meet our friends, that no, the pubs were no longer open, and no, we couldn’t travel everywhere. We had to start using a part of our brain I personally used to ignore most of the time: the pre-frontal cortex, headquarter to will and self-control. In the lockdown, we had to go against pretty much everything impulsivity was suggesting and actively seek out self-control to help us deal with this. We had to consciously use that specific part of our brain. And it can be exhausting.
Picture your pre-frontal cortex as your triceps: you know you have them, but you don’t specifically train them or use them if you don’t have to. And then one day, you are told that you can’t use your biceps (i.e., impulsivity) anymore and you need to entirely rely on your triceps. So you start using them. And it hurts. Badly. At first, you can merely do anything, they’re such small muscles, they can’t really pull the same weight your biceps could. Then, one of 2 things can happen.
One, is a risk that it all becomes too much, that you can’t take using your triceps anymore and you start using your chest muscles. Meaning, you’ve been fighting impulsivity so much that one day you just give up and binge-watch all 16 seasons of Grey’s anatomy or devour all the chocolate, ice-cream and sweets you can find in the shop. Why would you do that, you ask? Because it releases dopamine in your brain, the absolute feel-good hormone. It feels incredible… for the whole whatever time it took you to do that. But after, you are back to where you began, and you need to start training your self-control all over again.
Two, you keep on training your triceps and one day you realise they grow stronger. Your self-control has a voice of its own, loud and clear in your brain and you no longer have to consciously seek it out each time you are facing a choice. Impulsivity and self-control are now able to voice their respective suggestions and it is no longer a permanent battle to keep impulsivity at bay. The brain is a muscle, using it will strengthen it and focussing on specific areas is positive. Even if it is really, really tiring at first. Training self-control helps to create new habits and make sure the post-quarantine does not lead to a second wave.
Finally, the lockdown has been really good at increasing the level of uncertainty we have to deal with. Different people will react differently in the face of uncertainty (cf. post “The unknown”), which in turn can lead to the release of stress hormone in our brain and anxiety. A certain acceptance that we cannot control everything is healthy and will help put less strain on our control-freak brain. The lockdown has brought another source of uncertainty: not only don’t we know when we will be able to resume a semblance of normal life, but we don’t know how the others will act around us. Do we need to be wary of “the others” or can we trust them? That is a story for another day.
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