Be Kind to Yourself, You Weren’t Designed for a Pandemic.

Stop blaming yourself for your response to trauma. 

Over the past fifteen months, every single human has experienced a prolonged trauma. This has been a collective trauma in the truest sense of the phrase. No one has escaped the anxiety: is my family safe? Will I get to keep my job? Will I be safe at my job? How do I adjust my business to survive? Can I see my extended family? Are my children safe at daycare? The constant risk calculation has been excruciating. 

Not one of us has escaped the experience of loss. We are all grieving. We are grieving the lost jobs and houses, the months spent in isolation, the loss of connection from the communities that sustain us socially, the vacations delayed and then eventually canceled. 

We’ve lost our sense of safety. Daycares, schools, workplaces, grocery stores have all come to represent risk. We’ve watched with horror, wondering if our medical system would collapse. Government leadership has not inspired confidence. Faith in voting, science, policing have been shaken. We are on hyper-alert to threat.

We’ve all lost something. And let’s not waste our emotional energy invalidating ourselves or others by comparing the magnitude of our suffering. Let’s suffice it to say that everyone in our global community has experienced prolonged emotional stress, loss, and uncertainty. Prolonged, collective trauma on a species level. 

Meanwhile, life has gone on. Pregnancies, babies, graduations, retirements, birthdays, holidays, weddings; all adjusted to fit the inside monitor of a zoom call. All marked with the same demoralizing risk calculations and conspicuous absence of those we love who are not in our “bubble”.  All have taken place in the time-warp of the pandemic. Days lengthen under the fatigue of the mundane (coupled paradoxically with the overwhelm that can only be created by being asked to do way too much, all at once, everyday) while months and weeks still churn on, leaving us to wonder - how has this gone on for so long? 

Our brains seek order in chaos. We do not respond well to uncertainty, let alone 15 months of it. So we’ve adjusted. We are remarkably adaptive as a species. We adjust incrementally to our environment, no matter how stressful, scary, or severe. We forget that, as social beings, this version of life, family, work, and community is not what we are designed for. We’ve even evolved our language to reflect our new reality: “pods”, “bubbles”, “social distance dates”. 

But! This isn’t normal! Pause and congratulate yourself for adapting and surviving. 

Let’s take a moment to honor that you’ve made it this far. 

It’s not your fault that this is happening. When we feel out of control (for example, during a once-in-a-lifetime global health crisis with no good options and a whole lot of unknowable risks and variables), our brains seek to control whatever we can. We start to assume more control than we actually have, turning discomfort into a personal failure. Subconsciously, we think: if I am in control, I can change things. So our anxiety, fatigue, difficulty focusing, and irritability all become personal flaws rather than a trauma response. 

Whatever you are experiencing, give yourself the grace of a gentle reminder of the context. You’re feeling burned-out in all areas of life? Yeah, it’s a pandemic. You’re not connecting with your partner despite near constant physical presence? Yep, that’ll happen in a pandemic. Your moods are fluctuating and you’re having a hard time regulating? Definitely a struggle and probably exacerbated by... the pandemic! You’re experiencing panic and anxiety related to what were once daily activities? That sounds like a reasonable pandemic response to me. 

These are real emotional experiences and you need to acknowledge them and care for yourself as best you can, meanwhile acknowledging that you are a human having a very human response to prolonged trauma. 

Because of our remarkable ability to adjust and forget our own context, it is especially vital that  we communicate with one another. Shame and embarrassment grow in silence. Simply stating our inner experience out loud sheds the light of connection into those dark corners of our mind.  Shame flees this light. When we share that we are feeling uninspired, disconnected, insecure, anxious, we are often met with the most healing words: “me too”. We realize we are not alone, and what once felt like a personal failure becomes a shared experience.

I urge you to practice self-compassion. 

Remind yourself and those you love: this is not normal. We are surviving. Do this often, at least once a day.

Let’s be kind, let’s be patient, and let’s be gentle. To ourselves and to each other. At least until this is over. And then after that too.