Back in the fall, Michelle Shiota noticed she wasn't feeling like herself. Her mind felt trapped. "I don't know if you've ever worn a corset, but I had this very tight, straining feeling in my mind," she says. "My mind had shrunk."
Shiota is a psychologist at Arizona State University and an expert on emotions. When the COVID-19 crisis struck, she began working from home and doing one activity, over and over again, all day long.
"I will be honest, for the past 14 months, I have spent most of my waking hours looking at a screen, either my laptop, my phone or a TV screen," she says, often from the same sofa, in the same room in her San Francisco home. All that isolation — and screen time — had taken a toll on Shiota.