Pandemic Echoes – How COVID-19 Shaped a Generation’s Anxiety

It began as a two-week lockdown. But what followed was a global pandemic that reshaped how we see the world—and how safe we feel in it.

In therapy, especially with adolescents and young adults, I’m seeing the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic ripple through their lives in quiet, persistent ways. What we’re dealing with now isn't just the virus itself—it's a generation carrying the psychological residue of prolonged uncertainty, isolation, and invisible grief. Of course, the pandemic has affected each generation in its own way. But so far, it seems like the social, emotional and physiological effects on young people who were at malleable stages in their development were profound. 

Let’s name some of what’s showing up.

1. Eco-Anxiety with a Pandemic Twist

Before COVID-19, many young people were already aware of climate change. But the pandemic blurred boundaries between personal safety and global crisis. Suddenly, the air could hurt you. The person next to you in the supermarket could unknowingly make you sick. Thinking back, I realise that suddenly, young people were expected to step out into dangerous environments as the adults/immunocompromised in the household could not. This heightened alertness bled into climate fears. “If a virus can shut the world down, what will happen when the planet gets worse?” clients ask. Or eventually, “How long till the next pandemic?” 

Eco-anxiety now wears the costume of health anxiety. The fear isn't just about the earth dying—it’s about our bodies being vulnerable, permeable, exposed. Existentialism has found a way to creep into young minds almost too early on. 

2. Health Anxiety as a Daily Companion

During the pandemic, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, and hyper-awareness of bodily symptoms became a survival script. For many, especially those with anxious tendencies, those scripts never turned off. Even now, a cough, a sneeze, or a busy tube station can send someone into a spiral. This, coupled with neurodivergence (ADHD/ASD/AuDHD) or existing generalised anxiety, has proven to be disastrous for young people.

We need to acknowledge that for many adolescents, their formative years were spent indoors, on edge, and constantly adjusting to “the new normal.” That definitely does something to a nervous system.

3. A Loss of Milestones

From cancelled proms to online university lectures in their childhood bedrooms, young people lost more than time—they lost rites of passage. The lack of transition rituals has left many feeling unmoored. Therapy becomes the space where we grieve what didn’t happen, and try to build a sense of self that includes, rather than denies, that loss. It is a space where you can explore the loss of something tangible, like your graduation, but also the perceived loss of continuity, consistency and celebration it would have come with. 

What Can Help?

Rebuilding safety isn’t about pretending the pandemic didn’t happen. It’s about helping young people develop internal safety tools, narratives, and relationships that help regulate their nervous systems in a world that still feels uncertain.

At Smarā Therapy, we understand that these echoes aren’t overdramatic. They’re real. And they deserve tenderness, not minimisation.