Psychologist and host of the "Psych With Mike" podcast, Dr Michael Mahon joined Randy Tobler to look at how people are reacting to the lifting of some Covid-19 restrictions.
Tobler joked that with vaccinated people able to go-about their days mask free, people are joking, "wow, I feel sort of naked."
Mahon called the reaction a form of "post traumatic stress disorder."
"We've gone through this experience, which in psychology terms called, a non-normative life event. So it's something that happens outside the expected course of the life-plan, and that has a significant after-effect on the psyche," says Mahon. "People go to work or go out into public, they don't have their mask on, they realize they don't have their mask on, they're like, 'Oh, I forgot my mask' then they realize, 'Oh no, I don't need to wear a mask.' And it's disconcerting, it makes you feel strange."
Tobler points out that people are still "naturally social-distancing" from others, calling it now a "gracious gesture of civility."
Mahon says humans have, "been conditioned to act a certain way, and it's been a long enough period of time that that's entered the zeitgeist of our psyche, and now we're going to have to learn how to break those habits. And the truth is, we're not going to go back to the way it was before Covid, we're going to go back to something that's gonna be new. So we're gonna have a, quote "new normal."
Mahon also discussed his recent podcast focusing on "The Victim Script" with Tobler.
