Coronavirus particle, illustration.
As a therapist who works extensively with trauma and its effects on peoples’ lives, I thought that I would share some thoughts that might prove helpful during the COVID-19 health crisis.
When most people think of trauma, they think of the most extreme forms—e.g., experiences of war, rape, torture, etc. A more inclusive definition would include the events and experiences of ordinary life: divorce, illness, accidents, and bereavement, for example. A traumatic experience can be a disastrous or life-threatening event that can cause severe emotional stress, as well as any event that has an adverse psychological effect.
We are all living under a pre-traumatic cloud right now, i.e., we don’t know what’s going to happen and what we can do to control it. So the only thing we can control is our own reactions. The challenge while being locked up at home is how we can get ourselves to remain calm and have as much control as possible over our lives.
It is important to create a reasonable degree of structure in our daily lives. This might not be much more complicated than having some activities that have a beginning and an end that we can establish and adhere to. When you’re traumatized, you live in a timeless sense of helplessness. Once you start dividing up the day into activities, e.g., at 8 I will make eggs for breakfast, at 10 I will do yoga for 30 minutes, at 11 I will call my mother, and at 12 I will have lunch, etc. you have begun a helpful process. The focus ought to be on your own internal capacity to do things to organize your life. This does not have to be extreme, but the more you have specific plans and activities during the day that you can attend to and complete, the better you are likely to feel. This may be especially true for those whose structural lives have been changed in the extreme… like those who are suddenly unemployed.
When you’re ‘frozen’ in the context of a traumatic or pre-traumatic state, the sense of time disappears and the sense of control likely disappears, as well. The fear is that under current circumstances, too many of us will fall into a state of timelessness and helplessness. This can become quite serious. The issues of boundaries, expectations, and predictability are paramount. The world outside of us now is completely unpredictable. We have a medical virus and, some would argue, we have a political virus. Both are extremely difficult things to deal with. COVID-19 and our political situation are contaminating each other.
Trauma is about the loss of predictability and trust. You get traumatized as a kid if you cannot trust your parents. If your parents become unpredictable and you don’t know who your parents will be from one moment to the next, you are likely to be traumatized. Unpredictability is at the root of trauma. That’s why we are all in a pre-traumatic state. The one thing we can do about external unpredictability is to make our own life as predictable as possible… even if, to some degree, it seems boring.
Another component of trauma is immobility which is why it is very important to be as active as we can and not allow ourselves to become too sedentary. It’s important to move our body and to feel the strength in our body.
An example for good trauma therapy is cooking… yes, cooking! It has structure, definition, there are rules to follow and it gives you an opportunity to see what you can produce. It’s helpful to create a great meal even if, for now, you have to eat it alone. Organizing our interior life when our exterior structure has disappeared is the heart of good trauma therapy.
