Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #11 The Pandemic Personality Paradox: How Two Years of Disappointment, Loneliness, and Pivoting Has Fast-Tracked Personality Change Among Young Adults, and How To Find the Silver Linings

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#11 The Pandemic Personality Paradox: How Two Years of Disappointment, Loneliness, and Pivoting Has Fast-Tracked Personality Change Among Young Adults, and How To Find the Silver Linings · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

[00:00:00] I'm Dr. Sarah Olivo. And I'm Dr. Liz Seidler. And you're listening to College is Fine, Everything's Fine. We wanted to come to you today with a new episode, but probably a topic that in fairness, people are a little sick of, but I think this is a, an interesting twist on it. We're talking about COVID, we're talking about the pandemic, but don't stop listening yet.We read an article in the New York Times that asked about The pandemic and whether or not it's changed people's personalities. And I thought that that was, of course, as from a psychology perspective, pretty fascinating. And I was not surprised to hear that the answer in many ways is yes. And in addition to that, right, Sarah, I think, and every person we've interviewed so far, Uh, we've noticed this trend that a lot of the social difficulties that they might be having or maybe how they got to a certain place in college was impacted [00:01:00] about by COVID.Can you think of some other examples that have come up with some of our guests? I thought it was just funny that no matter what the topic it came up. So how'd you get together as a band? Oh, there's a COVID outbreak. We were on the same dorm or How did you get involved in the body positivity movement? Oh, I had to take a year off school because there was a pandemic and I didn't want to go that year.So then I got into advocacy and it's, it's across the board. So it wasn't even just a sense of, Oh, it made me lonely and isolated. It was all these other ways that it made people pivot. And I thought, That's been intriguing to it. It hasn't all been bad necessarily. In some ways, it led to something really great.And of course there are some ways where people have shared that it's been really lonely and isolating and through them for a loop. And Sarah, I don't know if we've shared this in the podcast, but COVID actually is probably why the podcast came together for us now. Oh, that's true. Sarah and I, during COVID, not even in person, as like a consultation group for therapists over [00:02:00] Zoom, like a lot of you probably spent a lot of your time, and kind of connected offline about our concerns and our like passion for helping college students and trying to find a way to reach all of you, and I don't know if that would have happened in terms of this podcast if COVID hadn't happened.I think we would have just probably put one foot in front of the other. Done things the old fashioned way. Seen, seen people, I think, of that one on one model. So there can be some lemonade out of lemons for sure about this. So we know that for you guys, you're probably having various levels of, some of you still some frustration around this.Maybe there's some loss you experienced in some way, a family member, the loss of an opportunity. You've had to change your plans drastically. We know other people who have It's been fine, kind of a blip on their radar, if anything. But then I think about those people, even them, they have to deal with finding that difference.And managing that with peers or friends who have a different opinion of COVID. [00:03:00] So it's never just easy. I think even if, you know, your circumstances within your family or your community or where you go to school, it might, your experience might be different. But I think we're hoping today to talk about how it's impacted a lot of people.All college students in, in some degree or capacity and that it might be important to take some time to think about how has it impacted yourself and hopefully Sarah and I can talk a little bit about what do we do now we have some, some pearls of wisdom. Yes, so our promise to you is that by the end of this episode, we're going to end on a really genuinely hopeful note.But first let's talk about the New York times article. So the title of it is, did the pandemic change your personality? And then it said something like most likely the answer is yes. So of course, obviously. This is going to be the case for everybody out there, but the researchers studied essentially what the article didn't mention, but we know as psychologists is the big five personality [00:04:00] traits, introversion and extroversion, creativity, being agreeable or not being conscientious in that range as well as neuroticism.So that's what they studied. They wanted to see changes in those areas. And they found that overall that people were less extroverted. Less creative, not as agreeable, and less conscientious. They didn't mention neuroticism, so I thought maybe all of us just stayed neurotic. I don't know. I think the pandemic promoted some.And so this amounted to what the researcher said was about a decade of normative personality change that happened over a period of a couple of years. I was thinking about how much over a decade I might change and to think about that happening so abruptly where you kind of like, you shake your head and gives someone, I can imagine it might be giving people a little bit of whiplash in some way.Who am I now? What is happening? I used to be this way now I'm this way. Again, it could be for the better, but that, that regardless that that probably happened pretty quickly. And that might have shaken people up [00:05:00] again. Yeah, and I think it's even, I think, more particularly important for young adults when that is the period of time that you're really developing your personality and understanding it more.And then you're thrown in this tornado of environmental factors that are influencing, let's say, the development of certain personality traits. But it's fascinating. It's fascinating to me. Yeah, and I think we were talking about this offline a bit about how it does make sense that people would be less conscientious, less agreeable, and less creative because we're talking about the hierarchy of needs here.A lot of times we've evolved really not too long ago from people living in the wilderness needing to run for the saber toothed tiger. And now that we have, uh, Our modern comforts. We don't have to use that as much. But honestly, the pandemic did create a bit of a survival mode for a lot of people. And you're not polite when you're running from a saber tooth tiger.You're not like, Oh, look at the sunset. Let me paint it when you're trying to forage for your food. So it makes sense [00:06:00] that these are the personality traits that would have been impacted the most. Yeah. And then I think the downside of that is that for a lot of people that's prolonged, like you're still seeing it, right?Even though we might not be in that necessary heightened state of hypervigilance that we were in the beginning of 2020 and that there's still this like long lasting effect where people are noticing, let's say a dullness or a lack of ability to access these other aspects of their personality that maybe they were able to prior to the pandemic.So, yeah. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about all that and why that might be in a little bit, but first don't take it from us We're gonna play you a few clips from some of our college guests So I'll kind of ties off to the year that I took off and cove it I think that definitely changed a lot of people's plans.It certainly changed my plan. 2019 And we got sent home in my spring semester. Um, at that point, I [00:07:00] had definitely been in pretty rigorous academic environments my whole life. I'd been in high school, I worked really hard, took hard classes. And in college, I was ready to do the same thing. But in my year off, kind of once COVID hit, I realized that I hadn't taken any time to think about the way I was living.Like, thinking about mental health, the way I was eating. And that's so much that comes with college, too. So we graduated high school. We're all juniors, and we graduated high school in 2020. So that was like dur, like right when Covid happened. And when we went to s we, when we came to school, our college got shut down within like a few weeks because there was a covid outbreak up here.It's just my mom and me. Um, was it hard leaving her? Yes, it was very hard. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, because especially over covid, you know, she was. the only person I saw. Yeah. So we got super, super close. But I think now that I'm here. I think it's probably harder for her. I know. I was gonna [00:08:00] say, it's probably really, it's not, I'm in this new awesome environment and she's where she's like, she works right next to my room and yeah, but uh, I miss her.I'm going to see her soon. I'm going to see her in October. I'm really excited. Is she coming out or are you going home? She's coming out for parents weekend. Nice. Awesome. Apparently, we can get the parents to do keg stands. That's the goal. Oh, like guys, that's not going to be. Yeah. What do you think? You think mom's up to the plate?I think she's an adventurous person. I think she also already went to college. He's like, I've been here. There's so many people here kind of like what you guys are saying, but like, I don't really have friends yet or I have friends. But it's like, I'm hanging out with the same two people who live next door to me.And it's like, you know, for me, that was something that I struggled with. I'm still really good friends with my freshman year, um, friends. And, you know, we all room together this past year and I love them. But something that was hard was that I was a freshman during [00:09:00] COVID still. So it was very. You know, for people to a room like masks, like there wasn't that many social opportunities.So I really felt, I think like claustrophobic and like, I'm someone who I was like, so confused. I was like, I go to this huge school and I have three friends. And I love them, but like, I'm someone who in high school, like I have multiple like groups of friends, like I really like to like be with different types of people.And I was so like frustrated because I was like, is something wrong with me? Like, did I think that I was like better at making friends than I am? Or like. You know, why does everyone else seem like they're making so many friends or like, you know, I went to school in New York, I'll disclose. Um, and at that time, people in the South were like doing, you know, they had a normal college experience and I felt like I was in a small prison.Um, so I think that like comparing is a real thing. Like I saw my friend in Clemson and I was like, Oh my God, she's at tailgates and she has friends and she's doing all this stuff and [00:10:00] I'm crying in my room. Like, Oh no. Dang, man. I didn't know. I mean, mine was like, first semester, we were all trapped in this dorm.And so, like, in this dorm, because of COVID. So, like, I would go different places in different rooms, and there'd be all these cliques, and I had friends. I had friends, but I really only had one, like, very, very close friend. So first semester, I didn't feel as lonely, but second semester, I felt pretty lonely.As you can hear from our guests in those clips, everyone's experience was really different in terms of how COVID impacted their life at college. We also did an informal poll on the podcast, Instagram, and Asked you guys, did the pandemic influence your personality and we thought we would show those results.So 33 percent said, hell yes. And I would fall into that category, 33%, 33 percent said, yes, 22 [00:11:00] percent said yes for the better. And 11 percent said what pandemic question mark. So even there, I think there's this variability, right. In terms of how, what changes have we noticed within ourselves after the pandemic.I thought that that was such a great highlight of maybe anecdotally what we've seen in our work and with friends. And I have a metaphor I'm going to give you in a second. Cause I love a metaphor, but I can tell you what I went through during the pandemic, living in New York and raising two young kids and what my sister went through in the pandemic, raising two teenagers was totally different, so different that I was like, I might not be able to speak to her for a little while, because I cannot hear one more time about how great this is for her.So we don't have to travel or do anything. I was like, I hate your guts. Call me in a couple of years. Um, but it's made me start thinking about the shipwreck metaphor and CBT therapists. We love metaphors so much. And don't you feel like, and you'd said this in the past when we've talked at it, that's tends to be what people remember.So we're always trying to come up with them. So [00:12:00] I tried to come up with them for the pandemic and here's my metaphor. You ready? I'm ready. I'm just getting ready my pen to write this out, guys. Oh, yeah, yeah. Write it out because I want to use this one. So, essentially, I thought about how before this all happened, we were all living in our own little boats in a huge, vast ocean, right?Some of us were in dinghies. Some of us in huge ass yachts, some of us in just like regular old boats, right? I was in the yacht, obviously clearly next to the Kardashians. I just pulled right up and we, but no matter what size boat we were on, we were kind of used to that boat, right? That was our life. That was our world.That's what we knew. And everybody shipwrecked during the pandemic. So we suddenly, our boats were cast onto this desert Island that we were not used to yet. And we had to get used to a new way of living. I mean, some people went from a really nice boat to a really nice part of the island and they found this gorgeous luxury or they have their like servants find the nice part while they send babes.I get that part. [00:13:00] Some people really had it rough and they lost people in the shipwreck and it was an incredibly difficult time. And they're still trying to build shelter. Other people maybe went from a boat that was fine, but now they still have to get used to a new community or a new section or a new type of community.ecosystem. Essentially, everybody had to make a big transition in some way, shape or form. And so when it's, I think it can be hard to compare and say, Oh, I have nothing to complain about because I didn't lose someone or they can't complain because they were in this yacht. But the truth is everybody had to learn something incredibly new and go into a bit of survival mode.So that is my metaphor for the pandemic. I like it, Sarah. I like, I like too that this, the like, kind of like theme throughout that metaphor is this idea of adjusting and also how variable people's experiences are from where they were, their location perspective [00:14:00] before the pandemic and then what location they're in now after the pandemic and that Probably through a lot of acceptance, people have had to really make some changes or attempt to make some more meaningful changes.Um, and I think that the piece in there that you and I know have talked about, and it's definitely been a lot of news articles is this idea of a collective trauma as a society that we've experienced. And we thought it might be helpful to talk about what that looks like and define trauma. And it might.Come up in ways that you're not fully aware that that is related to what's been going on for the past few years. Mm hmm, because how many times you've been talking with someone? I mean for me it happens still. Where, I mean, you can debate whether the pandemic is over or not, whatever, you know what I mean?We are in a different place now than we were a couple of years ago. And so I think people forget that that's part of the filter they're seeing the world through. And they'll just say things like, I don't know why I don't want to [00:15:00] do X, Y, and Z anymore, or why is it that I'm still struggling to date or, and it's almost as if they can't give themselves credit for what they've been through from a psychology perspective, we're all seeing this through the lens of trauma, which has.Three ish core symptoms, right? One is psychological changes in some way. The other is hypervigilance and then there's avoidance. So that's obviously we're simplifying things a lot, but if you think about those three different areas, maybe you'll recognize some that you're going through right now. What are some things you've noticed in terms of the psychological changes?I think that there is like a dullness or blondness that a lot of my clients are reporting that the way that like Things they used to find interesting or exciting or pleasurable, they just don't really have the same experience anymore and like an irritability. I see a lot of that. Like, I just feel on edge.I, I used to never be like this. I used to not be like [00:16:00] quick, quick tempered or things didn't get underneath my skin as easily. And I don't like this about myself. So I'd say those two things kind of like, yeah. And we call this in psychology, like anhedonia, kind of like noticing that things are not as enjoyable or pleasurable.And then this like irritability or kind of tension that's underlying our emotional experience. Yeah. People I've had people say the word numb. I've had one of my clients said, I feel like I'm a, a skin, like a nerve without a sheath. Like I'm just, I'm just so reactive. The other thing that I've found to be really interesting is this idea of hypervigilance when certain things you're sort of looking for danger in a much more activated way, and that things might get you reactive more quickly and make you more fearful, even though they're not dangerous in and of themselves.This has come up where people will say to me, Oh, my gosh, isn't it true that Once you do something for 10, 000 hours, you get better. That idea of, oh, all concert pianists or something who are, uh, anyone who's sort of a [00:17:00] master at something has had to practice for 10, 000 hours, wherever that came from. And then it becomes this idea of, well, we have practiced isolation for well over 10, 000 hours, or we have practiced staying home and doing classes on zoom.Why is it that when someone asked me to do something on zoom, I'm not used to it. I should be a genius at this by now. And I said, well, it's not because it's, you're practicing a skill. You're reenacting something that was traumatic for you at the time in a big adjustment. And so that's something I've had to talk with people about as well.Like it makes sense that when you hear, I know for you and me, probably having little kids, whenever they're saying, Oh, a school day is off. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm like, Rageful and because guess what? I've definitely practiced over 10, 000 hours of my kids being home, but now I just don't have, I'm not a master at it.In fact, it makes me that much more perplexed when it happens because that was a pretty traumatic experience to have to teach my children to work full time. And then we add the avoidance piece. I think sometimes what we [00:18:00] see is that like fear situations or kind of cues get like overgeneralized to. Other situations that maybe aren't even initially related to the trauma.So I've seen for a lot of clients that even are no longer like fearful about COVID, they still avoid situations that they were avoiding in the beginning of the pandemic. And maybe it was recommended at that time. There's a client I work with right now that told me they still haven't been back into the grocery store.And they even like rationally, they're like, I don't know why I won't go in, but, and I'd rather just like order it online, like everyone else. But they're like, there's something stopping me from going back into that situation or another client of mine really wanted to go to this concert. And they were just continuing to void situations where maybe it doesn't fit the facts anymore.There is no threat or danger. But it's just been generalized and over time, probably reinforce these avoidant behaviors and they're difficult to [00:19:00] stop. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I work with a lot of people who have OCD and so that's been such a shift for them to be like, wait a minute. I was right. The world is really dangerous and very contaminated.I mean, there's many different types of OCD, but I do know that there is still a lot of reckoning with what do I, What's part of my OCD? What am I avoiding because of that? And what do I need to actually avoid because it's truly dangerous. And that has been a really long journey for folks who are struggling with OCD.So, yeah, so those are the three areas of trauma that we've seen. And. It just be curious to hear from you guys at some point, what are the things that you're starting to notice? And maybe we can put this out on Instagram after we air the episode, we'd love to hear some direct comments about that. So of course, as we talked about before, it's not as if everybody has been feeling the experiences of trauma, but it's certainly a large portion of people are.So we wanted to hit that [00:20:00] mark for sure. And, um, And on the other side of it, there are people, again, we have those people that 11 percent of our really scientific poll we took on Instagram who said, what pandemic? And somebody who, who grew up in Tennessee and was around people who felt like this is just not that big of a deal.And to have my whiplash coming back to New York, where everything was so closed down and then talking to my nephews, who one of whom went from a small Southern town in Tennessee to a large state school in Tennessee, didn't have such a huge difference for him. And what he experienced. But my other nephew went from a place where COVID was not seen as such a big Issue.There weren't a lot of cases to a college in a different state where it was a big deal. And he had to get used to tolerating both of those things to talking with friends who are having different college experiences across the board. So even for people who felt like what pandemic you, everyone in college, it can oftentimes be very much a moving target about where you are.Who [00:21:00] you're speaking to and those different experiences. So I think either. Having guilt about not being in a place that's so closed off or closed down. I feel like I need to come up with a better word for that. Maybe having some guilt about your college experience being more normal, but one of your friends is in a place where it's, they're struggling because it's shut down.So guilt about, can I post this? Because I don't want some of my friends to see that I'm okay. Or the opposite. The person who's looking at some of their friends, having that really typical college experience while they're isolated in their dorms and wearing masks to class. I think that that has created such an interesting and sometimes very difficult divide amongst the college experience.Yeah. I think as you were saying that Sarah, I was thinking about how part of the things that we know that helps when we go through like a collective trauma is like shared grieving and being able to lean on our social support system. And I think exactly what you've said, I've seen with a lot of college students I work with where they, there's almost like this inhibition of [00:22:00] communication about the pandemic.Because of fear of people having different perspectives or opinions and a lot of comparisons. And again, I think one of the reasons why we're talking about this is trying to normalize the differences in terms of what people experience and also how The after effects may look really different too, based upon what your experience was like.Right. Now we don't get to only know what's in our circle because of social media. We get to see what's happening across the board. So I think that it just exacerbated that. One of the other areas that I know personally, I've definitely experienced, and I've heard a lot from college students is this It kind of seemed like an absence of life, right?It was like, okay, like I'm going to binge Yellowstone. What other Netflix series can I binge? And this is great. And I'm in pajamas all the time to Monday through Sunday. I have a different scheduled activity. Everyone wants to get together. Weddings are back in the motion, [00:23:00] right? People are having birthday parties, like clubs are open, concerts, everything.Real pressure, I think, to say yes to everything. I should be doing this because I didn't have this the past few years. I should be saying yes. I'm making up for lost time. And I think a lot of freshmen that started at the beginning of the pandemic and now where we are with the pandemic, I think, really feel this because they feel like a lot's been robbed from their college experience.I think the other side is they're starting to feel like burned out. They're like, I don't know. Should I say, yes, am I going to regret this in five years from now that I didn't have the best college experience because of the pandemic there's just so many shoulds and I think difficulty making decisions about social situations.And I think I've noticed as a result. I think yes to things, but maybe not being really mindful about is this wise minded saying yes to something. And then even when I'm in the experience, I'm already thinking about, like, the 5 other things I [00:24:00] have to do that weekend or that I've committed to, which. Is no bueno.Yeah. I think about one of the aspects of mindfulness is full participation. Both feet in. Right. I know a lot of people think about mindfulness as being this meditative, calm quality, but it's different than that. We don't have to get into it here, but one of the aspects of mindfulness is simply just being in the moment without judgment.Full presence. And I can tell you that I've been doing a lot of mind, less socializing where I'm there, but I'm not really there. I'm putting one foot in front of the other. I'm just out there because it feels like if I'm not, are people going to think I'm weird? And I think that's something where I'm trying to, and I encourage college students as well.I understand it's a fun four years of your life and. What are the things that enrich you, bring you up, re energize you? It is okay to just do those things. I have a self imposed no plans this weekend and I just got a bunch of texts saying, Oh, high school [00:25:00] football game. Are you going to go? And I felt that pressure like, Oh yeah, I should.It's so fun. It's a beautiful day. And so this doesn't, again, we say this all the time. This doesn't stop just when you leave college. We all still experience this. So the sooner you can learn to say, Does this feel like it would be a mindfully fun or re energizing or soothing experience for me? And if not, it's okay just to say no.There will be another party. There will be another activity. Yeah, I think that making purposeful, meaningful decisions about how you spend your time is something that I'm, I've noticed and definitely my college students are trying to Work on more now that the pandemic has happened, right? Recognizing that our time is valuable in terms of our behavior, where our mind wanders is valuable, and it's just hard to put into practice.Yeah, I think it's really hard to put into practice and maybe some things to try or like you just turn off your social media while you're doing it so that you can mindfully be on your [00:26:00] own without looking and seeing all the other people who made a different choice than you. There's some ways to be able to do that.Right. So listen, this is the tough news. No shocker. We've all been through a hell of a time, and we promised we were going to end on a hopeful note. And like we said, we actually genuinely believe this. We believe what we're selling. So, One thing that we know can happen with something that's a trauma is that people who find a way to make meaning from it, and that can look like a lot of different things, tend to metabolize the trauma in a new way that gives a sense of growth.And one of the ways I think people found a way to Make meaning was to really examine and reprioritize their values in their life. I've heard from a lot of college students where I think they like trim the fat of their social circle, right? They maybe reconnected with loved ones, got closer with family members during periods of [00:27:00] lockdown, right?Were able to spend time with a sibling that maybe they normally wouldn't have spent time with. And as a consequence are making more mindful choices that they've learned something about themselves, their values, who they want to spend time with, what they really value doing and are working really hard, uh, attending to those values.And I will say. That in the one area that I see a lot of this is despite the fact that we are definitely in a mental health crisis in this country, the amount of advocacy that I see from young adults around mental health awareness is a beautiful way, I think, to make meaning out of a really horrific, stressful, traumatic time.And I think a lot of young adults, and I respect them, and they've been so emotionally resilient, is that they've really Taken matters into their own hands to affect change. And that would be an example of like making more value based decisions, right? I think people are going less broad [00:28:00] and wide and deeper.And then that has led to so many fascinating and exciting. Changes in terms of advocacy. I, I, I think you and I both are like, we love this generation. This generation gives us hope. So, and there's a reason why people of older generations, why some of the grandmas and grandpas of our, of our lives didn't struggle as much during the pandemic.And that's because they'd already experienced a hardship and they had some muscle around it. And it allows you down the road to be less perturbed by small life. Issues. So you won't, very likely you won't be as flustered if something comes up cause you will see things can be hard and then they do get better.I remember at nine 11, I had that happen to me right out of college, I was living in New York city and it was just plastered. I lived in union square, it was plastered with missing person signs. It was just so horrible for so long. And I remember all the articles came out at the time. Is this the end of New York city?Everyone's going to move out. And the same thing happened for the pandemic. Is this the end of New York city? [00:29:00] Is everyone going to move out? And I thought, well, I've seen these articles before I wasn't perturbed by them. And I think somebody who really loved being in the city and thought that that could happen to them would have been more upset sometimes with these tougher experiences, it allows you to be more unflappable down the road.So that's, that is a silver lining and it's not to say it takes away from the pain, but now you might have some pain with some resilience alongside it. We really appreciate all of our guests that you heard from today and everyone who's been involved with the podcast to date. We want to hear from more of you, please call into our hotline.You'll hear the number at the end of the episode, engage with our social media content on Instagram and Tik TOK, or reach out to us if you're interested in sharing your story. Definitely. If there's anything we missed about your experience with the pandemic, send us an email, leave a message or DM us on Instagram.We want to hear from you. And we want to [00:30:00] get the word out. If there's someone you feel Could use some support at this time. Please share this with them in any way that you can. If you're a parent who's listening and you have a college student who needs some help, if you have a friend who, you know, might just need that little ping, please share it with them.We are trying so hard to spread the word. We started this podcast so that college students across the country could get some free help and support and anything you can do to help us in that mission would be so appreciated. Thank you to our guests for sharing their stories and advice. This podcast is for college students and we want input by college students.Please reach out by text, email, or voice memo to colleges find podcast at gmail. com or nine to nine, 500, two, two, three, one. Tell us your story. Give us tips on what kinds of topics you'd like to hear, or give us feedback about an episode. 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