As pandemic shutdown's 1-year mark arrives, experts explain why many could experience 'anniversary reaction'

Maybe it's the memory of your last day in the office — or at school or out to dinner or at a party or visiting family — that haunts you. But however you personally mark the "before" and "after" of life in the pandemic, the fast-approaching one-year anniversary of lockdown (mid-March for much of the country) is bound to bring up difficult feelings. That's due to what’s known as a "trauma anniversary" or "anniversary reaction."

"It's an annual date when, a year or many years after a traumatic event has happened, we experience upsetting thoughts, feelings and memories," Michelle Marchese, a Massachusetts-based certified trauma therapist, tells Yahoo Life. "Because after the event, our nervous system is so primed to be looking out for something threatening." And when indicators of that time start popping up — "the way the light is in the sky, the weather, smells … proximity to other events or holidays," or anything that reminds your system — you can be triggered in a way that is beyond your control.

"The part of our brain that reacts to a trauma or a stressor or upsetting event creates an instinctual response that overrides the other parts of our brain," explains Marchese, who shared an explanation of trauma anniversaries on Instagram, noting, "I've been feeling this in my bones. And I've been seeing it with people in my professional and personal lives. I hope this helps bring some clarity and acts as an invitation to take it as easy as you are able."

The pandemic's abrupt and profound change in our lives, compounded for so many by illness and/or caretaking and grief, has been largely felt as a traumatic event — something that typically involves a death, a brush with death or a fear of death, with examples ranging from accidents and serious illnesses to war, sexual assault, physical attacks and natural disasters. Whatever the specifics of the event, its anniversary can be a stressful, upsetting, exhausting reminder, throwing you back into those initial feelings of panic, fear or emotional paralysis.

The collective angst over the upcoming COVID shutdown anniversary has been the topic of an increasing number of social media posts.

Some got into personal specifics about grief and dread, including Amanda Kloots, whose Broadway-star husband Nick Cordero died of COVID in July, at just 41, after a horrendous struggle that she publicly shared in real-time. "I've been dreading this month since January 1st, it was the start of everything," she wrote on Instagram alongside a joyous family photo. "So much happened in this month a year ago, for my family, but also for us all. The loss is devastating in so many ways."

Others could relate:

The possible reactions to the anniversary will vary greatly, Marchese explains, depending on the individual.

"People's nervous systems tend to, because of earlier experiences, have one or two trauma responses that they go to. And everyone has trauma responses — you don't necessarily have to have had a 'capital-T trauma' to react with a trauma response,” she says. "Even to things considered normal stressors, our nervous system is reacting all the time — maybe something could have been jarring or surprising or upsetting that you don't necessarily connect with the word 'trauma,' like you weren't in an accident where you almost died, you weren't mugged at knifepoint, but maybe you've had a lot of loss, were teased at school, or your dog died."

Trauma responses, she explains, typically constitute a reaction of fight (sudden aggression), flight (intense urge to flee), freeze ("dissociating" or spacing out) or fawn — the latter a more recent addition, as coined by PTSD therapist and author Pete Walker and referring to how some people who have dealt with the trauma of abuse react with behavior that mimics how they might have "fawned over the aggressor, to pacify them." All reactions, Marchese notes, are instinctual and beyond a person's control.

Such triggered reactions, Charles Figley, director of the Tulane University Traumatology Institute and an expert in mass-disaster and collective trauma, tells Yahoo Life, are "essentially symptoms of PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder]; you are, in effect, harboring fears, and the fears can be set off at the drop of a hat."

And it's important to realize that the anniversary marks not only the traumatic event, he says, "but the start of an era — a period of time — and [in this case through] the collective memory of a lot of people as well. So we are able to remember back very well to what it was like before things started getting bad, because we savor those times. … I think everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing, who they were interacting with, the last time they had a meal out. There is this reckoning, and this sense of loss, really, which most everyone feels."

Marchese likens it to what New Yorkers may feel every year on Sept. 11, when there are both "collective experiences" and individual ones. "It's never good when a trauma happens, of course, but if there's a shared experience, and people can hold each other through it, I imagine that could help" around anniversary times, she says.

The irony right now, however, is that while much of the country is feeling shaken in the same way, there is no guarantee of societal grace over our individual levels of distress.

"There seems to be this shift, and this pressure, to get back to normal and be productive — especially with the arrival of the vaccines, with schools starting to open, [college] students being expected to be up to full course loads. … And we're actually going to be less productive," Marchese warns, "because we're going to be triggered by the anniversary, and all the thoughts and feelings we've been pushing through during this year will come out."

In order to deal with this, she suggests "some sort of slowing down," and that we "try to adjust expectations around productivity and performance, knowing that some things may take longer to accomplish."

Therapy, if you haven't already sought it out, can also bring some relief, Marchese says, as can moving your body — whether through traditional exercise or, say, a solo dance party in your living room — or doing something creative, listening to music, reading poetry or writing in a journal.

Finally, it's important to just let yourself grieve over what's been lost, she says, stressing, "Let yourself have those feelings."

Read more from Yahoo Life:

• Why AOC is right about how it's triggering to hear 'move on' after experiencing trauma

• Watching Capitol riot footage is traumatizing your system

• Laura Berman warns parents of pandemic drug use after son's overdose. Here's how to keep tabs on your teen's mental health.

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