Are We Stress Swapping?

Stress swapping is the replacing of one high-stress activity with another; and it’s also a term I use to describe the phenomenon of the past two and a half years.

During the first year of the pandemic, my take on stress swapping was individual and personal. I was asking myself, “How is this pandemic impacting my daily life and routines?”

Now I’ve shifted to examining our collective stress swapping and how we seem to not be eliminating stress, but rather shifting our attention and energy from one stressor to another.

Prior to March 2020—when we were mandated to quarantine in our homes for 14 straight days, minimally—I went about my life as I pleased. Then along came this suspicious coronavirus. Early in what I initially thought would be a short-lived quarantine, I was thrilled to stay home for days on end, enjoying relief from my daily routines.

Soon thereafter, though, things changed. I began suffering from Zoom fatigue and my eyes grew heavy from staring at the computer screen all day.

Two years into an international health pandemic, countries are opening their borders, vacationers are trickling back into tourist sites, and corporate offices are testing hybrid work models. The stress and impact of making real-time adjustments to our daily lives didn’t go away; instead, it has been swapped out. We’re seeing record numbers of health care professionals and teachers leaving their jobs due to burnout, while politicians war with one another over vaccine mandates and COVID precautionary measures.

I’ve learned to pay attention to the mood in our city and county, and to watch for the numbers of beds that are available in the intensive care unit, as I also watch retail establishments close down, their windows blacked out, unable to survive another year with such unpredictable revenue. There’s also the rise in petty theft, cries of unemployment fraud, delayed COVID relief grants, inflation, and recall elections across the nation. If I’m not careful, I’ll be swayed by whatever the alarming headline or social media post of the day is telling me to care about, to invest in, and to fear.

So, how am I managing? I am not alone. We are collectively stress swapping. I see us rise to the challenge, and collapse from the weight. Then, get up, lift one another up, and take a step forward. Even amidst the devastation, death, and disappointment, I know that our story doesn’t end here.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, we’ve learned that, for many of the women we serve, everyday stressors have been swapped out from one thing to another, rather than resolved. BlackFemaleProject continues to curate safe (now virtual) landing places for our community to come together for collective reflection, healing, and learning, recently hosting some of our largest gatherings to date with more to come.

And although the stress we’ll face on the other side of this global health emergency is yet to be determined, we remain hopeful.

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Submitted by: Precious J. Stroud

Are we stress swapping? Part 2