Finally free, finally normality. Yes, but how are we? And the question that arises in the return to sociality in recent weeks. At the moment there are 12 regions in the white zone, plus the autonomous province of Trento: in practice, over 40 million Italians, around two out of three citizens, live with anti-Covid restrictions reduced to a minimum. Yet it is not a given that everything is sunshine and roses.
As the psychiatrist explained to the Dire Agency Carlo Valitutti, we can see "a greater discomfort on the part of people compared to what happened after the first lockdown. Paradoxically, if on the one hand it is true that there is a desire for freedom, on the other hand many do not allow themselves to go so calmly into "the idea of starting to go to gyms or swimming pools again, for example. This is what you actually feel beyond what you might think when you see bars and restaurants open."
In short, more than one person is experiencing the much-desired return to life with some discomfort. According to Valitutti, a disconnect has been created between the need to protect health and the need to resume economic and work activities which has increased month after month, creating "confusion and a loss of critical sense in people".
In short, as longed for as they may be, the acceleration in the pace of vaccinations and the decline in infections (and deaths) have translated into a gap between the speed of external time and the need for slowness of internal time. "The speed of reopenings associated with a desire to return to normality has paradoxically created more confusion - added Valitutti - There are people who, instead of being happy with the restart, have now started to have doubts that perhaps they should have had before, in the midst of the pandemic According to a dynamic that must have occurred in the daily lives of many of us, people accustomed to using reason "have indulged in catastrophic assessments", encountering and posing obstacles to their normality.
But there is a solution, according to the psychiatrist: the exercise of one's critical sense. "It helps us think that we are living a
a necessary moment to safeguard ourselves and also necessary for the future - states Valitutti - Just as the idea that we are not omnipotent, that we cannot solve everything in a certain way but that we must respect ourselves and what surrounds us will be useful. The virus has pushed us back to our limit."
