‘I feel like I’m in a dark tunnel’: Small business owners are increasingly feeling the mental health impact of lockdown 2.0

Kozeta Izeti was looking forward to a busy December — until she learned Toronto businesses would be going back into lockdown.

“I had tears in my eyes,” the exhausted owner of Kozeta Salon & Spa on Eglinton Avenue West said. Her first thought was: “Now what?”

The holiday shopping season is normally one of her busiest times of year and Izeti was hoping to recoup some of the profits she lost this year, especially during the initial COVID-19 lockdown in the spring.

Now she shares feelings of frustration with other small business owners told they are not essential while the big box stores are allowed to stay open.

“It’s essential to us,” she said. “I need a roof over my head.”

And she is burned out from months of uncertainty and financial stress.

“I’ve never been so exhausted in my life,” said Izeti, who immigrated from Albania in 2000 and opened her spa 11 years ago. “I feel like I’m in a dark tunnel and I don’t know … when I’m going to see the light to get out of it.”

Many of her staff are newcomers to Canada and she’s worried for them, too.

A new survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) found that almost half of small business owners surveyed have suffered from mental health issues because of the pandemic.

Fewer than 30 per cent of small businesses are making their usual sales, said Laura Jones, executive vice-president of the CFIB, and the uncertainty of the pandemic is causing a lot of stress.

“It’s particularly stressful for business owners because their livelihoods are impacted,” she said.

Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology with the University of Toronto Scarborough, said business owners have two levels of stress going on: the health threat, which everyone is facing, and the economic threat to the business that likely supports them and their family.

Not only does this cause sustained anxiety, the helplessness many feel in the face of the pandemic can lead to depression, said Joordens. Both anxiety and depression are health risks in and of themselves: by keeping your body in fight-or-flight mode, anxiety can compromise your immune system over time, and depression can become a suicide risk, he said.

“That feeling of helplessness can kind of sneak people toward more of a depressive mindset, which is even more scary than anxiety,” he said.

Joordens said it’s important that business owners, and anyone experiencing high levels of anxiety due to the pandemic, find a way to take a break from the day-to-day.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Forty-three per cent of small business owners surveyed by the CFIB said they are working significantly longer hours than usual. Jones said this is for a variety of reasons: some may be filling in for staff who are sick, or can’t afford the level of staffing they need. Many have been working extra hours to launch and maintain e-commerce, and are also taking more time to clean thanks to pandemic protocols.

The end of the pandemic “can’t come fast enough,” said Jones — business owners are just trying to hold on long enough to make it out the other side.

While there are several programs in place to help small business owners weather the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic, including federal subsidies and support from the province, there are still gaps that need to be addressed, said Jones.

A coalition of around 50 retailers, including large companies such as Ikea and Hudson’s Bay, has asked the province in an open letter to let retailers reopen, arguing that the current restrictions are just pushing shoppers to other stores instead of lowering risk.

On Tuesday in response to the letter, Toronto Mayor John Tory acknowledged the frustration of small business owners watching as big box stores have largely been able to stay open if they carry essential items.

“We know it has a horrific impact on the small independent retailers,” he said. “I’m meeting today with some of the small business people to listen to them.”

He said any change to the lockdown “won’t be a political decision, it will be a public health decision.”

With files from The Canadian Press

Rosa Saba is a Calgary-based business reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: