Report: There is no imminent return to normal pre-“Corona” life, and...

With the continuation of the outbreak of the Corona virus during the year 2020, and the expectations of the continuation of the pandemic in the next year, it has become likely that things will not return “to normal” soon, according to “CNN”.

The phrase “return to normal life” has become commonplace, and politicians, officials, experts, and even family members love to rely on it to give a little hope for the days ahead.

Perhaps this is nostalgia for the world as we knew it before, that is, as it was in January; Where everyday life was closer to our past decades.

But January is long gone, and it will not return. Psychologists assert that this fact is only bad if we cannot deal and adapt to it.

And we’re slowly learning whether this year’s changes are permanent. If the daily work will remain the same, that is, it will be done from home as many people around the world do today, and whether, for example, wearing a mask on public transportation will become just a part of life, and whether the handshake and hugging will become less common. And we don’t know if most of our daily interactions will happen via videoconferencing (and not in person), for long.

“Five years of change in six months” is a common slogan of the epidemic; The turmoil changed lives because of lost jobs, relatives living alone, or they may have died without proper farewells.

Psychologists say that cutting ties permanently in January is not necessarily a bad thing. The danger comes from longing for normality again, rather than continuing to work on how to cope and cope with whatever is to come.

“Politicians who pretend that a return to normality is near are deluding themselves or their followers, or maybe both,” said Thomas Davenport, a professor of information technology and management at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

“People who experience tragedy eventually return to their former level of happiness,” Davenport said. But I think Corona is a little different; Because we expect it to end soon. Therefore, there is no need to permanently change your positions on this issue. ” He added, “The human tendency to believe that change is temporary, and that the future will resemble the past again, is called the normalcy bias.”

People who do not adapt to change believe that what they remember as “normal” will return, and delay adjusting their daily routine or outlook. Davenport said those who refuse to wear masks may be biased towards normality; Because they see this interference in life as a passing fad that they do not need to adopt.

Brain circuits prefer to survive, although part of our brains may be inclined to resist change. Because we feel that disasters are a passing event, a more powerful part of our brains is rapidly embracing the new situation. “Adaptation of pleasure or pleasure” is the detailed name for why we are alive. It’s the brain’s ability to quickly accept something in your environment weeks before it could have stopped you in your tracks. It was originally intended to protect humans from predators, and it’s compact, so we don’t constantly see all the relatively new things as threats and miss out on the newer and bigger things.

“When good and bad things happen, you first feel intense emotions, then adjust and return to baseline,” said Sonya Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. This is much stronger with positive events. People do not adapt completely to the negative change in their lives. ”

The benefit of “pleasure adaptation” is that it works in all directions. Changes that change daily life for one month may be quickly dropped the next day when they become irrelevant.

“It could be a matter of adjusting to the mask as the new normal, and then returning to the old normal,” Lyubomirsky said. She pointed out that the behaviors that are still stuck are those that are linked in our daily routine, and that «turn on automatically, if this is a real habit, then it can in fact maintain itself. Now we wash our hands frequently without even thinking, and this is something that can definitely stay with us. ”