What It Could Mean If You're Letting Friendships Slip Away During COVID
HuffPost
If you're letting relationships fade away, is it a sign of depression or just a product of pandemic exhaustion and stress? Here's how to tell.
As the pandemic creeps into its third year, many friendships are looking a little worse for wear: Group chats that were once bubbling with conversation have gone mostly silent. Zoom wine nights lost their luster mere months into the pandemic. And meeting up with friends is a lot more complicated than it was back in 2019, since we’ve all formulated our own unique ideas about safety and risk.
Given all that, it’s hard to notice if you or a friend are keeping your distance purely because of the pandemic or because of a deeper reason, like depression. Social withdrawal has always been a common sign of depression, but our need to socially distance made it harder to pick up on, said Zainab Delawalla, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta.