The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our way of life and with it has brought some mental challenges. Leonard Carr writes that this is also a time to re-evaluate and to grow.
The world and our lives as we knew it have, for the past few months, been in the process of undergoing sudden and radical change. Old certainties and taken-for-granted realities have been made redundant.
The current crisis is causing unanticipated drastic changes to people’s way of life. Every aspect of life has been affected. From the most personal to the communal and public.
The way we sneeze, greet and go about our daily business, to people’s livelihoods and sense of safety and security.
The rapid spread of coronavirus has bought about not only a general health crisis, it has also given rise to what for many has become a mental health crisis. Crisis is revelatory.
It tests people’s mettle.
It either brings out their resourcefulness, wisdom, creativity, courage and skill, or the opposite.
Crisis does therefore not so much create mental health problems so much as it reveals people’s underlying vulnerabilities or intensifies pre-existing conditions.
This observation applies not only to individuals, it applies equally to relationships.
Emotions, like viruses, are often extremely contagious. Many people are becoming infected with and spreading fear, hysteria, cynicism, pessimism, and mistrust. This applies particularly to people who are addicted to news and social media. For those who follow the media, the misinformation and accurate data are almost impossible to tell apart. Comedians and satirists seem to have the most logical coherent take on reality.
Resist change
It is natural in times of rapid transition for people to resist change and cling to the wish or belief that things need to stay the way they have always been. The impulse to deny reality or resist change, especially when it is forced on you is a major cause of stress and anxiety.
This is especially so when the change is so pervasive that it affects your lifestyle and everything that you are accustomed to being able to do and took for granted. In short, it is very disconcerting to be forced out of your comfort zone. Uncertainties are frightening. They confront you with your at best imperfect control over your world.
Many people have in many ways been taken back to that childhood experience where you knew from adults talking behind closed doors that something big was going down, and you were not being given any information that would help you to anticipate or prepare for what was coming.
There is a sense of acute vulnerably and bewilderment. It is unnerving when your ability to predict and control your future has been taken away.
At the beginning of the lockdown many people seemed almost euphoric as if this was a welcome break and opportunity to stay in pyjamas or tracksuits and enjoy being at home.
For those who live in poverty it no doubt caused unimaginable stress where income and food security were the greater threat to physical and mental health than the virus. Then when the reality started to bite. The disillusionment manifested in people looking for who to blame. Accusations dominated the narrative.
As people started to realise that we have to start coming to terms with the fact that this is our new reality for the foreseeable future, a sense of loss and grief set in. The grief was compounded for those who suffered the loss of loved ones or people who were important to them. Coupled with the sense of loss is the anxiety that you feel when certainty or predictability are lost, and you feel as if you are no longer in control of your life.
Fight or flight response
The experience of losing control because a real or imagined threat triggers what is referred to as the fight or flight response.
The fight response manifests in tension, aggression and feeling physically and emotionally inflamed.
This can lead to a need to lash out or actually lashing out.
The flight response is characterised by restlessness, tension, feeling trapped, numbness in the extremities, and a need to move. When the fight or flight response proves to be ineffective, you may go into a freeze response.
The freeze response is best described as feeling numb and or even paralysed to act.
The fight, flight, and freeze response are all in a sense contracted states where your perspective becomes narrowed, your heart closes in self-protection and your behaviour becomes rigid and compulsive.
In stress people turn away from themselves and become focused on the real or imagined threat. These stress responses have obvious consequences for relationships.
They all tend to make people become more self-engrossed and less compassionate, responsive, and empathetic toward others. It is therefore understandable why for many, their relationships have also gone into crisis.
The lockdown has made people more reliant of those in their immediate environment for emotional support and nourishment. People whose relationships were explicitly under stain before this crisis have either found this time to be an opportunity to reconnect and get their relationships back on track, or it has pushed them over the edge.
The pressure cooker of lockdown has exposed for many the power imbalances in society and in particular the reality of privilege. For many this realisation has led to a re-evaluation of their personal values and priorities and more compassion and sense of responsibility to the disenfranchised in our society.
On the domestic front there are some people who have used this reality to renegotiate gender roles to make the distribution of responsibilities and labour in the home more equitable.
For others the refusal to take equal responsibility for domestic duties has become a source of tension and strife.
A gift
Crisis can no doubt seem overwhelming. It presents us at the same time with an opportunity to turn adversity into a great gift. It is a gift that has the potential to offer benefit to all walks of society.
This experience challenges you to re-evaluate your values and priorities.
Instead of focusing on uncertainty and vulnerability, you can take control of your life by focusing on what you can control – the quality of your relationships, your contribution to those in your immediate environment and to society at large.
This is an opportunity to learn how to be a deeper, stronger, wiser and more resilient person. If you do not know what that means, now is a good time to find out, accessing the bountiful free resources on the internet or better still, trying out psychotherapy.
There is for all adults a collective responsibility to model and teach the children that you encounter, the perspective and skills to deal with adversity.
The pandemic is not going to last forever.
While this, lockdown continues, it presents us with an invitation to up our individual and collective game. To enhance your physical, emotional, and spiritual lives. This means to live more fully, thoughtfully, and deeply; to become more deeply engaged with what it means to be alive and to be human living in these times. You can reclaim your sense of well-being by deepening your appreciation of the gifts of life and the privilege of the life you have; to be grateful for every new day; for health and for the people around you.
– Leonard Carr is a clinical psychologist
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