Johnston: Yeah, a lot of people get angry or mad in isolation. Johnston: Probably - there are all kinds of psychological aspects to being in isolation, so, depending upon the person, I think it could. Johnston: Everyone reacts differently to cabin fever - some get depressed, some get anxious and some might crack up and start finding things funny that aren’t. Isolation will also make the world seem scarier than it may actually be. We’ll also have a harder time regulating our emotions and regulating our behavior. In that, the Muppets want to get away from each other and maybe some families feel that way, but what I can speak to, professionally, has more to do with the effects of social isolation, which can make it harder for us to think and process information. It also can lead to very high anxiety or otherwise serious problems kicking in or becoming more intense.Ĭoan: There are different kinds of isolation, and my specialty has more to do with social isolation than it does with being kept in a certain physical location, which is what they’re talking about in that goofy Muppets song. It can also lead to overdosing with alcohol or drugs and other poor self-care. Long-term cabin fever can make one very depressed and can lead to abuse of co-residents physically or psychologically. It happens when people are limited in where they can go and what they can do, and particularly when they’re tightly confined. Rosenblatt: Symptoms include feeling trapped, restless, irritable, depressed, bored and wanting to escape. Rosenblatt: The “cabin” in the term “cabin fever” originally referred to being stuck in a simple and isolated living place - like a cabin - in bad weather. That said, a lot of the things people are reporting right now - like loneliness, restlessness, sleeplessness and anxiety - those are what people and the popular culture associate with cabin fever. James Coan, director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Lab and host of the science podcast Circle of Willis : Cabin fever isn’t a real thing in the sense of being a diagnosis, so cabin fever isn’t really anything. For example, a person that I knew who served long stints underwater on a Navy submarine said he and his shipmates definitely had cabin fever.Ĭarmel Johnston, NASA scientist and crew commander of a mission where she and five other scientists spent a year in isolation to simulate life on Mars: There are a lot of definitions of cabin fever, but generally I think it’s that feeling of getting antsy or anxious when you’re stuck in a confined space and you don’t have a lot of your regular outlets in life. Paul Rosenblatt, professor emeritus in family social science at the University of Minnesota and the leader of a 1983 study on the subject of cabin fever : “Cabin fever” is a term in everyday English that describes how people feel when their freedom to go out and about is greatly limited. These are the kinds of pressing questions I have, so let’s get into them… On What Cabin Fever Is Like, can it really “burn in your brain,” as one of the pirate Muppets says? Or can it make you square dance, dress in fruit or spontaneously speak German? So in an attempt to better educate myself, I reached out to a few isolation experts to ask some questions about the real cabin fever and how it compares to the Muppets’ musical interpretation. Along with these misconceptions is the term “ cabin fever ,” which we’ve all been hearing a lot about recently - yet I honestly cannot hear the phrase without envisioning the Muppets singing it aboard their pirate ship in Muppet Treasure Island. I’m not kidding, this plaque literally hangs in my office next to a life-size Kermit replica:īut I’ve also adopted a few misconceptions in my education from the Muppets, like, for example, the fact that my entire perception of the Swedish language is based upon the Swedish Chef, and until recently, Kermit and Miss Piggy’s abusive relationship seemed okay. As a child, I learned letters and numbers from the gang on Sesame Street, and as an adolescent and now adult in pursuit of their dreams, Kermit’s words from The Muppet Movie are literally my personal credo: “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing, keep pretending.” In my 34 years on planet Earth, I’ve learned a lot from the Muppets.
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