#pandemic #relationships #isolation
As Hank Scorpio says, 'the key to motivation is trust'. When it comes to relationships, they involve give and take on a foundation of trust. The pandemic impacted on this delicate balance when we were separated from people further away and became isolated to protect the most vulnerable in society.
Freud's concept of the 'reality principle' conceptualises a position where we realise what is happening as it is, rather than how we wish to see it. Mental functioning stems from being able to assess the external environment and discern actions which serve us. Those that are congruent with our values, sense of self and how we feel are the ones we tend to gravitate towards. Taken with the 'pleasure principle' (not just a fabulous Gary Numan album) we move towards decisions which feel good and are in keeping with how we see the world. There is a sense of balance here, hedonism could describe an overactive pleasure principle in action.
I was reflecting on how the world seems to have resumed now, four years since the pandemic. We curtailed our pleasure principles because reality as we knew it had changed dramatically. Not only were there restrictions but we also lived with a viral threat. Amygdalas activated as fear coursed through our systems and we lived in a state of hypervigilance to being dangerous and threatening in relation to another person.
Anecdotally, casual conversations with others have revealed to me that we are only now making sense of what impact this restriction, isolation and acute sense of being a danger has had on others. Whether we were in a relationship or living with family and this felt strained under the additional pressure of being together all the time, experienced work anxieties and income uncertainty, or mourned the death of a relative without the much-needed rituals of grief to offer us comfort, so much of this experience has changed us.
Though all experience changes us, this feels a particularly acute and intense phase to have endured collectively. It seems some of us are still making sense of how isolation, bubbles and restrictions on our choices have impacted on us.
We evolve across our life span. Acceptance of change and letting go of those aspects of our lives which are not in touch with the 'reality principle' seems to be how we survive and thrive. This may be a painful experience of letting go of notions of how we wish things could be and therapists are well-placed to support people in this process. I am aware I write this blog during the Equinox, a day of balance, of daylight matching darkness, at a time of year when leaves let go and fall from trees.
Nostalgia can be a powerful reward-seeking drive towards being the person we were before or trying to recreate the relationships which once fulfilled us. The frustration of things not being the way we want them to be, we need to vary the lens with which we can see things now. We can't stick leaves back on twigs.
Acceptance of changes may involve experiencing a period of grief for the past versions of ourselves and the losses we experienced during the lock-down in the height of the pandemic. Lost opportunities, lost relationships, lost space and time. The stages of grief including feelings of anger, sadness, moments of denial and bargaining before we find a semblance of acceptance. This cycles repeats as often as needed for us to process and arrive at a new reality.
Hopefully once we have grieved for what was and what could have been, we no longer see things how we want to see them...we see them as they are. From this new positioning, we are fortunate to make decisions which serve us. Establishing trust in the process of letting go of previous attachments in keeping with the 'reality principle' and reconnecting truthfully with what motivates us in the here and now.
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