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Even though we’re still in Spring, the year 2020 is already an eventful one—the COVID-19 pandemic, the Senate impeachment trial of the President, and probably a few other surprises. Another “event” that mirrors these headline events is one that is less visible—our feelings about these events, and the potential to feel overwhelmed by them.
I’ve gotten this question many times over the last couple years and only recently do I have a complete answer. Like everyone else, getting trusted information from what’s available online has been a bit frustrating. Even at psychiatric conferences, I felt some of the answers from my colleagues seem to conflict. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions but I feel it is important to share where things are at in tracking this nationwide trend.
In psychiatry, we usually think of energy as a way to describe how we are feeling mentally and/or physically. For example, depression tends to be associated with less energy, while mania is associated with increased energy. However, we can also look at energy in a big picture kind of way. The physical world and our bodies appear through the eye of nuclear physics to be a latticework of energies, in which the body is surrounded and permeated by an energy field which carries information.
Contrary to popular wishful thinking, most of us still need about 8 hours of sleep a night which translates to 25 years of our life asleep. We live in an increasingly 24/7 society where sleep is not a priority and can be regarded as an unnecessary diversion of time that could be better spent elsewhere.
