Our basic needs are four-fold, and include a need for security and safety, intimacy and belonging, and feelings of accomplishment, according to Psychology Today. But when these basic needs aren’t met, this can cause us to go into “fear and trauma mode”, and make us feel as though we don’t have control of our lives.

We are hardwired to switch to “fight-or-flight” when we are confronted with situations that threaten our ability to fulfil our needs. “Typically, we feel anger and aggression in fight mode”, meaning that we are much more likely to lash out, regardless of whether it’s a productive or rational thing to do.

What the ongoing pandemic is teaching us is that there are more ways for us to feel as though we aren’t getting our needs met than we may have realised. As Dr Becky Spelman, a psychologist and clinical director at The Private Therapy Clinic, explains, when we are constantly being told we can’t do the things we want to as we did before, it can feel as though we’ve been hit with a roadblock.

This is the psychology of why Covid is making us more irritable