The Covid Effect - honest perspectives from a therapist & mother

The first thing on every client’s lips this week was the return of phase 2 restrictions.

Confusion.

Fear.

Grief.

Helplessness.

For some there was also a surge of anger.

‘It’s not fair!’ are the sentiments shared by all of them.

Having worked through the last 18 months of Covid as a trauma therapist, I’ve watched how this pandemic has taken its toll on the spirit.

Those who seemed to be coping fine at the start, are waning fast.

Those who were already struggling are starting to crumble, and afraid that they will lose their ability to go on. Panic is setting in.

Then there are those who did lose, and succumbed to self-harm, violence or worse.

One of the hardest things for me is… I can’t really make it any better. For anyone.

The mental health hurricane in progress is situational. And we are still in the middle of the situation, so outcome orientation is futile. All we can do is find ways to self-care, and get through it together.

The together part is important. We need each other to survive, recover and heal. So, when we are ripped apart from each other, we are killing our instinctive biological impulses. With every directive to social distance, we are chipping away out our human nature.

In order to survive, we have to abandon ourselves. This is a relational trauma response. When a child grows up in volatility, one of the relational adaptations is to people-please to keep the peace; also knowing as ‘fawning’. We are ‘fawning’ to Covid.

When we exist in survival for too long, threat becomes normal. ‘Fawn’ decontextualizes as part of who we are and how we live. In the aftermath of Covid, will it become normal to go against our need to connect?

This can’t be the new normal.

We don’t work without each other.

This is something my daughter has been feeling to her core.

How do we explain Covid restrictions to a young child, without either terrifying them, or lying to them? And which is worse?

In my home, we have been minimizing ‘Covid-talk’, because I don’t want my kids to worry. But of course, she is going to worry. Masks may now be normal, but as soon as she’s told she needs to cancel her playdate and we can’t go out for sushi, the terror washes through her – ‘something’s wrong. I’m not safe.’ Her body speaks a thousand words. ?She’s been feeling this for too long now, and tonight she had a panic attack. ‘Mummy, what if I die?’

After I soothed her and she went to sleep, I cried.

For her. For my clients. For all of us. Collective grief.

I’m crying because I feel our collective loss and depletion. (I know I’m at risk of secondary trauma now, but to be honest, we are way past that. We are all in the trauma together. There is no secondary about it.)

You see, we all have a certain capacity to cope. And then an extra little hidden reserve to help us out when we are at the end of our tether. It’s called ‘surge capacity’.

But we have been tapping into that hidden reserve for a year now…. and it’s time to fill up our tanks.

I could write something encouraging and say ‘we will all be fine if we do some yoga online, one less zoom call a week and download headspace or some other meditation app.’

But that’s just not true.

We need some time to heal. From our frazzled nervous systems to our aching hearts.

And we can’t do this alone.

Human connection through a screen just isn’t the same.

Can such honesty breed the intimacy we need to heal?

If there’s one piece of advice I can give right now, it’s this:

Find humans that you can safely be with in the flesh. Drink each other in. (You can decide what that looks and feels like together).?