Life in the Time of Covid-19 (and Beyond!), Part Two: Self Understanding

 How can Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s Stages of Grief Help Us Understand How We Feel About Stay-at-Home Orders and the Risks of Covid-19

Every year the holidays bring us a complicated soup of emotions—joy, but also trepidation. Happiness, but also stress. We look forward to it, and we dread it.

This year it’s worse.

Our emotions have been caught in the tornado of covid-19 for nine months now, and we’re exhausted. We might feel depressed, or angry, or apathetic.

We are all grieving.

Even if we didn’t get sick or have any loved ones that became ill or passed away, what many of us have been feeling over the last nine months is grief. Grief over the loss of life as we knew it. Grief over the loss of many things we have struggled for years to build, whether it’s a career, a sense of community, or even a sense of control over our life.

In the past nine months, we have become isolated from people and activities that are important to us, that helped us define who we are and how we want to show up in the world.

In my therapy practice I have closely watched the up-and-down rhythm of our collective response to covid-19. We have gone through all of the “Stages of Grief” elucidated by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her well-known 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

When we look at the various “stages” of grief, it is important to understand that these stages are all fluid. We move back and forth between them, and sometimes experience more than one of them at the same time. They are not hard-and-fast experiences that everyone goes through, but were developed from case studies of over 200 terminally ill patients. Dr. Kübler-Ross’s conclusions have been called into question by many other researchers for being anecdotal and even misrepresentational, but they can be useful as a framework for understanding the confusing feelings we may experience as part of our grieving process.

At the very least, exploring these different “stages” can help us understand that our confusing feelings are “normal”, and are shared by many others. We don’t have to feel isolated in our emotions, as well as in our homes!

Denial.

At first there was disbelief. It’s the Chinese virus, I’m American, ergo, it’s not my problem. Some of us (cough, you-know-who) are still pretty stuck in this stage, but most of us moved on long ago. If you still don’t think covid is real, you are probably not going to like my viewpoint. We will have to just agree to disagree.

As the number of those infected with the virus is spiking again, we see another type of denial that is borne of fatigue. We are so so sooo tired of isolating, wearing masks, giving up so many things that used to happen IRL, that we just pretend that covid isn’t a thing. Not all the time, but every now and then we just allow ourselves to “forget” and do something that would otherwise be out of our comfort zone. Almost everyone I know has had some moments like this, however brief. We pop into a store to buy a Christmas gift that we could have ordered online, we meet up with a neighbor and give each other hugs, we go to a friend’s house and sit together inside because it’s freezing outside. This denial is closely linked to the “bargaining stage” we will discuss later.

Anger.

We suspect it’s true—if we’d all just quarantined for two weeks at the beginning, this would all have been over very quickly. And now we have to stay at home for months and months because some people weren’t careful? Who are those people and why are they causing me to lose my job? Why are they forcing me to be apart from my family over the holidays?

Divisiveness and rage have shown up again and again throughout the past 10 months. It’s hard to be angry at a virus, and so easy to be angry at a person or a group of people. This is dangerous, though. Anger and fear are powerful emotions, and historically they have been used by unscrupulous groups and individuals to lead people to oppress those with less power. We know this, but it’s still hard not to be angry when we are all feeling so uncertain and powerless.

Anger can also be used to fuel positive changes.

In May (also known as the second of six months of April), George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis policeman and all the anger we’ve been storing for months helped fuel the anger over centuries of injustice to break out in protests all over the country. Anger as a positive force for social change.

Anger keeps coming back to the forefront when tensions mount over disagreements. Leadership has shown us that the way to express your displeasure is to rant and rave, make up stories about those with whom you disagree, and file lawsuits when things don’t go your way. It’s not a good look, but it is certainly the way many people think we should solve problems. A very scary precedent, indeed.

Anger is a very understandable response to many of the situations in which we find ourselves these days, and we should not berate ourselves for having this emotion. Rather, we should ask if there is anything our anger can inspire us to do to make some positive change in our life or our society. I am quite sure that literally millions of people this November were inspired by their anger to vote for changes they believed in.

Bargaining.

I’ve seen various levels of bargaining throughout the pandemic. If I wear a mask to pick up my take-out food then it cancels out the exposure to the restaurant workers. If I order my groceries in, then I can see that one friend who is being less careful. If I do workout videos from home instead of going to the gym, then I can go on that weekend in Palm Springs with my friends. It’s bargaining, but it’s also called risk management.

The difference is that bargaining tends to be the trade-offs we give ourselves permission to make, whereas risk management is based on a more specific analysis of the potential viral load incurred in any activity.

Bargaining is simply a narrative in our own mind, and a way to avoid guilt, not risk. We all do it, it’s a very human response to fear and uncertainty, but let’s not kid ourselves about what it means. Allow yourself to bargain, but don’t forget to make a more objective assessment of the risk involved when the stakes are high.

Depression.

We learned to gather together on Zoom, and then we grew tired of even that, and became more and more isolated.

Again and again I have heard comments from clients who are feeling so overwhelmed that they didn’t even have the motivation to meet up with their friends on Zoom. I also heard from those who are feeling most isolated about how distressed they were that their friends were canceling or ghosting the Zoom meet-ups that they had been really looking forward to, and on which they were relying for their only social interaction of the day.

It used to be that when people stopped taking good care of themselves, wore their pajamas all day, stayed at home and ate take-out in bed while watching Netflix, we called it “depression”. Now we call it “quarantine”.

When you are not feeling depressed and apathetic about life in the time of covid, keep an eye open for your friends and family who are all alone, or are exhibiting more extreme examples of depressive behavior, like staying in bed for days on end, not eating, not sleeping, or expressing feelings of hopelessness.

It can be hard to tell these days if your friend is clinically depressed, or just going through the stage described above. So reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask. And keep the suicide hotline number in your phone. 1-800-273-8255. We all need to take care of each other.

Acceptance

So now we come to 2021.

We know covid is a thing. We know that we need to protect ourselves. We know that we aren’t going back to the “old normal”.

But what is the “new normal” supposed to look like?

Given that we all move back and forth through these “stages” of grief, it is a good idea to use the periods when you are feeling accepting to think about how you want to structure your life to be meaningful and enjoyable in the months ahead.

You won’t always have the psychic energy for planning your “new normal”, so take advantage of the times when you do feel motivated, and cut yourself plenty of slack for the times that you don’t.

It’s perfectly okay to spend one afternoon thinking and planning, and the next day order pizza and stay in bed watching Netflix all day. Progress isn’t a straight line, and if you can give yourself permission to take a break when you need it, you will have more energy to move forward on the days when you can.

Summary

When it comes to the covid-19 quarantine, don’t expect that you will necessarily have all of the feelings described above, but do know that if you are experiencing any or all of them, it is perfectly normal!

Check in on your loved ones, use what energy you have, and go easy on yourself for needing more breaks during this unusual time. Soon enough we will again feel like we have more control over our lives. Until then, give yourself permission to feel whatever you are feeling and to do whatever you need to in order to maintain your mental health!

This article is one of a four-part series on Life in the Time of Covid-19. For more helpful ideas about how to build your best life in these crazy times, read:

Looking Back at 2020: 8 Things I Learned About Life During the Covid-19 Pandemic

3 Ways to Be Resilient in the Middle of a Global Pandemic

A New Beginning in 2021: How to Make Resolutions That Stick in an Age of Uncertainty

Could You Use Some Extra Help Navigating These Crazy Times?

Therapy can help you sort out your feelings and find a way forward that is meaningful for you. If you’d like a FREE consultation about how therapy can help you with your specific situation, give me a call at 323-999-1537 or shoot me an email at amy@thrivetherapyla.com so we can chat about how I can help. I look forward to talking to you soon!