Feeling Stressed Out In Ridgefield? You're Not Alone

RIDGEFIELD, CT — Marking the second anniversary of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., the American Psychological Association partnered with The Harris Poll to gauge national anxiety levels over the past two years.

The "Stress in America" survey found that your countrymen's nerves were already stretched tighter than piano wires by the pandemic and record-high inflation when the threat of a third world war began streaming across their smartphones.

Lorraine Lazarus Morley, a clinical social worker with a residence and practice in Ridgefield, is not surprised.

Morley is a special needs parent, as are many of her clients. She said remote learning has been brutal for them.

Nearly two-thirds of adults nationwide told the polltakers their life has been forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns for children's development were particularly keen, according to the survey results

"For parents whose kids are very young, not having those kids in school, had to have been one of the most stressful things they've ever experienced. If their kids have behavioral issues, those issues sometimes become exacerbated," Morley said.

Absent periods their children are in school or in a program of some kind, parents had no time to "regroup."

"Your whole schedule is thrown up in the air, and you have to reinvent your life," she told Patch. "The stress is unreal."

Morley said there are those in her practice who have "embraced the changes and moved on." But others "took a step back" when Russia invaded Ukraine. She says clients in their mid-20s to mid-30's are asking, "What's next? How can we keep going? How do we put one foot in front of the other?"

There is no one right way to mentally process the threat of entering a third world war, according to the counselor. She has found the best defenses against that kind of crushing anxiety are not among the tools a counselor can teach, but the ones a patient has been born with.

"If you've come from a family of very resilient people, you have a better way of finding resources and moving forward in your own life, no matter what's going on around you," she said.

As much a curveball as the war in Ukraine is, we still get more worked up over the domestic devils we know, according to the APA poll. Eighty-one percent of Americans cited the Russian invasion, and the tangential threats of domestic cyber and nuclear attacks, as "significant sources of stress." But those fears still lag behind inflation (87 percent) and supply chain issues (81 percent). The poll indicated that stress over financial issues registered at the highest recorded level since 2015.

Morely shot down what she described as a popular misconception that everyone in Fairfield County is well-off and coping well.

"No one knows what goes on behind closed doors," she said. "There's alcoholism, there's drug addiction, there's divorce ... and nobody's got it perfect. If you have more financial cushion, hopefully that makes it easier. Not everybody in Ridgefield has that."

Millennials have become "stuck" due to how they consume media, Morely said. Where previous generations would tune into CNN when they were ready to watch some news, today's crises seek out and find young people through always-on social media feeds.

"It's a choice whether you want to escape it or not. And I think a lot of young people don't because that's not how their lives are anymore."