The Shame of Underfunctioning During a Crisis

This post probably would have been more timely a few months ago but…see title.

Did anyone else totally crash and burn when they were in quarantine? Because I did. I had nearly a month of no work and I started it so optimistically! I was going to exercise every day, paint walls, do yard work, finish projects of all sorts, restart this blog. Just LOOK at all the time I’ll have!

And at first, I did get things done. I finished a big project going through all of Mom’s records and recording them digitally. I went on walks, I did yoga, I painted one wall. I listened to live readings with my friends, I texted all the time. I called friends across the country and around the world.

Professional-Level Underfuntioning

But after only a week or two, I could barely get anything done at all. I decided that Netflix was my best friend and what I needed most in life was to make and eat a whole pan (i.e. MULTIPLE PANS) of fudge by myself. By the end of four weeks, I was so starved for personal interaction, I nearly cried just seeing my doctor’s face on Zoom.

I *knew* I wasn’t the only person to feel this way. I surrounded myself with quotes and stories of just how normal it is for my brain to shut down in the middle of an unknown crisis, such as an unprecedented global pandemic.

But all the same, I felt worse and worse about how little I was getting done. How much there was I wanted to do. And my failure to complete hardly any of it. Even as I was fully aware it was a totally normal response, I felt myself slip deeper and deeper into shame about my failure to use my time productively. And what about all those people who had been in quarantine for months longer than I had? I felt like such a failure.

A Dream Deferred

A big layer to my feelings was that I was *just* about to quit my job when the pandemic started. I had been recording my Mom’s large collection of vinyl records into digital files for months and the plan was to quit my job once I finished that project.

Instead, Covid-19 spread in the U.S. like wildfire, shutting down travel, and increasing my need for continued health insurance.

At the prospect of quarantine, I felt sure I would have plenty of time to do all the final little projects around the house to get it ready for renting, to restart the blog, to dive into opportunities.

But as time went by and uncertainty increased, I felt trapped. Trapped in my job, trapped at home. For someone as introverted as me who rarely goes out anyway, being forced to stay at home was an entirely different matter.

Origin of the Term

I first heard the term “underfunctioning” during Brené Brown’s excellent and timely podcast, Unlocking Us. She started this podcast right as the Covid-19 pandemic was getting underway and the 6th episode addresses under- and over-functioning during a crisis. She tends to over-function, so that’s what she speaks about most but I think the biggest takeaway is to know that it’s a real thing and to recognize it in yourself.

Finding Healing

In the end, I spoke to my doctor about getting back on the same anti-depressants I took after my father died. She also included some anti-anxiety pills that have been supremely helpful. And just talking to someone about it who understood was helpful.

And to be honest, I went back to work soon after that. Even as I feared the virus, seeing people’s faces at work and having a job to do made me feel so much better. I can’t say I agree with our state for reopening as soon as it did. It may have been better for me to sit in my quarantine failure and figure out how to work through it. I can’t imagine someone feeling the way I did and still having other people to take care of.

The general tenets of keeping yourself OUT of the depression spiral that I got myself into is self-care. Keep yourself connected to others, exercise, eat well, shift your expectations of yourself. But what if you can’t shift your perspective? I doubled down hard on normalizing how I felt. I knew I wasn’t the only one, I knew this was my brain on fear. But just the same, I slid strongly into despair.

You’re Not Alone

I really don’t want to hold up prescription drugs as the cure for whatever ails you. I’m in the painful process of coming off those drugs now (I can get more than a little bitchy.) And I don’t have a satisfactory answer to how to heal yourself of globally-weighted despair. I just want to say that if you under-function as I do, you’re not alone. We have a word for ourselves, and whether your brain believes it or not, it is completely normal.