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Having a pint with friends after a long, hot day at work used to be one of the "most enjoyable things to do in London" for Anil Douglas.
But even though he's missed the "therapeutic" experience of being in the pub over lockdown, he told Xinhua that it would be a "mistake to jump back into it so quickly."
Pubs have been given the green light by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to open on July 4, with "1-meter plus" social distancing measures in place. But many operators in the industry do not believe that the general public will be ready to return.
Tim Gaba, a previous pub owner and who, due to the coronavirus pandemic, is now unemployed and lives alone, feels very conflicted over the return of pubs at the moment.
"Going to the pub is the only place I know I can meet people, watch a football game and not feel like a complete loner," he told Xinhua, "but I do not trust the general public to behave responsibly on July 4th, especially once they're four or five pints deep on a summer day."
Although the level of anxiety on average has fallen compared with that at the very beginning of the lockdown, the June 2020 "Personal and economic well-being" report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the level of average anxiety is still relatively high -- mainly due to uncertainty on a return to normality.
Peter Kinderman, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool and a former chair and president of the British Psychological Society, told Xinhua there are a number of factors contributing to people's anxiety at returning to normality which are causing them to become conflicted.
"What we don't know is to what extent our lives are going to be disrupted by the need to keep ourselves safe from the virus. We don't know if there's going to be a vaccine and when it's going to be available. We don't really know the impact on our economy," he said.
These underlying uncertainties, according to a research, are fuelling the current high levels of anxiety people are experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr Sara Tai, a consultant clinical psychologist based in Manchester argues that the reason some groups are experiencing high levels of anxiety, is due to trying to control many factors that are currently not in their control. For example, parents want their children to return to school so that they can go on with their jobs smoothly, but meanwhile, they also wish to guarantee the safety of their children.
Kinderman believes that to ease public anxiety, clever and clear guidance from the government is the key.
He suggested that government lay out clear information on the "Do's" and "Don'ts" of returning to normality, which he believes would have helped erase the uncertainty that people face in returning to offices, schools and pubs.
In addition, what people really want from the government are resources to make a return to a productive economy safe and information that is clear as to how we proceed, he said.
As the lockdown restrictions do begin to ease, and many pubs and social areas fully open from July 4, psychologists believe that the process of adapting to a new normal will take time to fully adjust to.
"We're going to have to work through that -- make new decisions, see how things will fit together in our lives," said Dr Tai, adding that it will eventually move people towards something positive, but in the process it won't feel comfortable.
"I'd imagine that a lot of people will have an increase in anxiety and feeling a little bit disturbed really, whilst they navigate through all those changes and re-prioritize," she said.
