Self-love in the time of Covid: the mental health challenges of a global pandemic  by Brian Gillen

Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.(Garcia Márquez, 1989: 295)

One of the major reasons people first present for psychotherapy or counselling is that a difficult event or crisis occurs in their life. It has often just happened, is still happening or is about to happen, and the anxiety, depression or emotional disturbance associated with this experience is too much for them to bear on their own. As we know, it can be hugely beneficial when someone reaches out and shares their problems and struggles in a professional therapeutic setting. However, a paradox often exists when they do so in the midst of a life crisis.

While it may take a bolt out of the blue to motivate a client to seek help, the suddenness, shock and overwhelming nature of their experience can actually hinder them from being able to fully process it or reveal its true purpose and meaning in their life. It may also create or reinforce an overly simplistic belief that the event itself was ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ (and therefore should be forgotten or avoided), rather than something from which one might derive positive insight and experience. As a result, the opportunity to nurture and enhance their overall mental health and find a more sustainable and resilient way of coping, irrespective of what life throws up, can get lost.

During the therapy process, a client, say Greta or Greg, may gradually discover that it wasn’t the difficult life event itself, rather the negative, traumatic or overwhelming emotional reaction they had towards it, which posed the greatest problem. That Buddhist proverb – ‘pain is inevitable, suffering is optional’ is apt here. The sense of not being prepared nor able for the sudden, painful experience can undermine a person’s self-confidence and create untold anxiety, causing them to suffer much more than any crisis warrants. On a deeper level yet, it also raises the question for each individual, ‘do I know myself as well as I thought?’

Further along the journey of therapy, should they choose to stick with it, Greta or Greg may ultimately come to realise that the original life crisis or so-called bad event had a completely different meaning and purpose - to reveal to them deeper truths about themselves and shine a light on the paramount importance of their self-relationship.

Covid-19 society

Following more than a year of disruption and anxiety in the general populace over the global coronavirus pandemic, we as a nation may not be that dissimilar to a shocked or confused individual picking up the phone for the first time to call a therapist or counsellor. We may not know explicitly what we need or why we need it, but somehow implicitly we feel there has to be more to this frightfully difficult event (and how we are experiencing it), than meets the eye. The Covid crisis and its impact have focused minds, made us more curious and aware of our state in life, and more invested in how it will all turn out. However, as with any existential life crisis, the temptation in society has been to cover over the cracks and move on quickly from the event, rather than stopping to consider its true impact, particularly on our wider mental health and wellbeing.

The national conversation, conducted mainly through political discourse and the mass media (even more so during Covid restrictions as casual face-to-face social chatter was uniquely hampered) was predominantly focused on the health and socio-economic consequences of the pandemic. The physical health impact, especially for those in older age cohorts or with underlying health conditions; the knock-on restrictions and delays in routine healthcare services and treatments; the economic uncertainty and hardship from job losses and business closures, education, childcare and special needs resources disruption; social isolation and separation; and the upsurge in numbers of deaths.

With the message came the method, how to keep the populace engaged and interested in the midst of much personal sacrifice and growing Covid fatigue. Specialist concepts and jargon adopted from the corporate and medical worlds (flatten the curve, lockdown, super-spreader, asymptomatic, aerosols, antibodies) made us all feel a little more knowledgeable and possibly in control of events. Maps showing county-by-county compliance league tables, a Covid Olympics if you will, kept us on our marks. Epidemiological statistics and ratios, charted in large colourful graphs, told us that the most important number was now a letter called ‘R’. Pictures of microscopic invading ‘mutants’ and ‘variants’ kept us in a collective thrall, like a dystopian sci-fi movie.

As well as being informative and entertaining, there was a social cohesion dividend. Popular media played a quasi-emotional role in helping to discharge the pent-up needs, frustrations and feelings of its captive audience: impatience with the slow pace of society reopening; restlessness at the curbs imposed on travel and movement; frustration with changes and delays in the vaccine rollout; unholy outrage at individuals or cohorts deriving any unfair advantage such as showing up maskless to a large funeral, hiding out at a local shebeen, having a house hooley, jumping the vaccine queue or skipping the quarantine hotel. It also provided some much-needed hope in the form of the now infamous ‘not all heroes wear capes’ recognition of our healthcare and frontline workers. Accentuating this positive and the various spontaneous acts of kindness and charity breaking out in the outbreak made us feel we were indeed, ‘all in this together’.

The real pandemic

The national conversation may have acknowledged and lamented the ‘mental health effects’ of the pandemic too; however it has failed to grasp the true gravity and extent of this. Not unlike a new therapy client, eager for quick solutions to longstanding complex problems, we risk ending up with shallow fragments of truth in the absence of a more organic, deeper dig into our mental state during and following this crisis. Maybe we are quietly petrified from discovering that our struggle with our self-relationship is in fact the real pandemic event. Covid and all the uncertainty, confusion and change it represents has been a catalyst for this, challenging and exposing our already fragile mental health.

The past year-and-a-half has burgeoned a deep and profound struggle within each of us - a pandemic of individual existential self-doubt and angst, sometimes questioning the meaning and purpose of who we are, and sometimes the world itself. In the new normal there has been a sadly unavoidable, life-and-death imperative not to be physically close to each other, not to touch each other and not to hold each other. Apart from being counterintuitive and countercultural, this experience has seemed unnatural and emotionally limiting for many people. It may well have traumatised and confused the normal functioning of mind, body and soul and potentially disrupted and damaged families, friendships and relationships.

Added to this, the old reliable fixes and solutions people often depend on to solve or distract from life’s problems, like supermarket flour and toilet rolls in the early lockdown, became limited or ran out completely. The inability to plan ahead or focus on the future laid bare an incapacity to live or be content in the moment, here and now. Greater home isolation and confinement revealed the already fractured nature of some relationships, put under further duress and resulting in an escalation of domestic violence and fallout. The lack of social and recreational outlets uncovered a deeper struggle with self-contentment, self-reliance or simply being with myself. The inability to flex our economic muscle too, for example buying nice clothes, changing the car, taking a foreign holiday or moving house, exposed the weakness in our inner psychological muscle if you will - namely the ability to draw self-esteem, self-worth and value primarily from within ourselves and our relationships rather than from our external possessions, achievements or image.

Every cloud

There are those who already know much of this and have been on a journey towards self-knowledge and self-love long before Covid struck. They perhaps have an advantage in an upside-down world finally revealing itself so emphatically. As with Noah’s Ark they have been secretly planning for years how to cope and survive a global disaster, just by living quietly and securely within their means and within themselves, building their inner psychological lifeboat.

There are also those who previously lived life on the edge, insecurely attached to external, worldly distractions to create some form of balance or happiness within. Having had many of those options taken away, they were left silently scrambling to hold on or to find any meaning in the crisis. Some, no doubt, doubled down on previous behaviours, partying harder, stressing harder, depressing and oppressing harder - their inner mood pendulum swinging longer and wider in a context of diminishing returns. But some may have taken the tide at the flood and started to take back control of their lives, realigning their relationship with self. In a time of adversity and chaos, they might well have stumbled upon their greatest opportunity yet to find some love, peace and joy in life.

This may be the silver lining to the Covid cloud. Just as the virus respects no boundaries or borders in its spread, so too its opportunities are equal, universal and potentially life changing. There is an opportunity for everybody, in the face of such shared turbulence and adversity, to lose their minds and come to their senses, as Perls advised, to reset and reconnect with themselves - with who they are and what they want in life (Perls, Hefferline, Goodman, 1994: 127). There is now full and unfettered permission not to go buy that mid-life crisis sports car or face lift, snort that dodgy line of cocaine or project all that suppressed anger and disappointment onto the partner or kids. Rather, this is permission to slow down and live ‘the examined life’ like never before. Permission to love again perhaps?

Doing whatever we need to truly ‘stay safe’ as the newfound social gesture extols, grants you and me full permission to be more compassionate, kind and loving to ourselves. It can be given to myself by myself, but it will be supported and enhanced by many in society - other folk who are similarly trying to ‘hold firm’, remain grounded and love themselves too. Such self-agency and empowerment for each one could bring untold mental health benefits for the many. Take the example of work and our relationship with it. Perhaps starting to really appreciate the value of a job or role, or that once bemoaned long commute to work, which possibly only ever served to expose one’s inability to be alone or bored in a good way. Realising, like Scrooge the morning after, what we wouldn’t do for another chance at that life now rather than the kitchen-cum-diner-cum-bedroom-cum-office, since occupied and endured relentlessly. The pandemic and its associated disruptions and restrictions can be a catalyst for positive change and reconnection with what really matters in life, a life less complicated and more simple.

Connecting with our ‘inner child’ is a therapeutic idea relevant to this simplification and permission process. The more Greta or Greg can see the innocence and vulnerability of that small child part of themselves, the more they will be compassionate and understanding towards all of self, including their needs as an adult. The plight of today’s children can be a very useful reminder or model for this. With education, games and social activities having been limited or halted during Covid, and the added economic and social pressures brought to bear on families and communities, perhaps the greatest emotional toll of all has been on our young adults and children. With society reopening, let’s hope that they bounce back without too many long-term emotional scars or injuries, the worst ‘long-Covid’ imaginable.

What is essential?

Staying with childhood things for a moment, that classic children’s book The Little Prince has this little gem among many in its pages: “it’s only with the heart that one can see rightly, what’s essential is invisible to the eye” (de Saint Exupéry, 1974: 33). The emerging post-Covid era is an opportunity for us all to do things differently this time round, to see with the heart not the head. During the clamour of pandemic protocols and directives regarding ‘essential’ services, jobs or travel, we may have missed the most essential ‘essential’ of all - our core mental health and self-relationship. And just as the definition of what was essential in a lockdown is very contextual (e.g. travelling certain distances was prohibited, but allowed on compassionate grounds) being good to myself, minding myself, and loving myself is the most prescient and essential focus any one could possibly have during or following a crisis. It’s a body, heart and head balancing act that therapists have been promoting and encouraging with every Greta and Greg since therapy began.

Indeed, much of this new reckoning will play out in an upsurge in demand for psychotherapy, counselling and mental health services in the coming months and years. Thankfully such professions and services were generally deemed as essential during the crisis. The challenge now is not merely to keep that nominal designation but to strengthen and improve it. Having moved out of the eye of the Covid storm, humanity will need help to process and heal our individual and communal trauma. But like good therapy, why stop there? We need to proactively facilitate people in society to continue the process, to carry on working on themselves and become much more self-aware and resilient for the longer term. Otherwise, the negative impacts of the pandemic, like generational trauma, will not only linger but continue to fester for years to come. Worse still, we will have missed a once in a generation opportunity to transform the ordinary mental health and wellbeing of our people.

Society, politics and media has already started to drive home the post-Covid message of economic, social and institutional reinvestment and rebuilding, and of course this is important. However, rebuilding and investing in the psychic, emotional and mental health of the nation is much more essential, and not just in the short term. In order to do this we need to see past societal, political and media narratives, and prioritise our mental health and deeper psychological and emotional needs. Psychotherapy, counselling and the health and social care professions in general can be at the forefront of this new moment.

Positive mental health and wellbeing is founded on love of self, and love of each other (in that order - you cannot fully experience the latter without the former). It requires time, patience and understanding, all of which have been under enormous pressure in the pandemic (arguably much more than economic and monetary means and resources). The crisis has exposed the delicate inner psychological fabric of our lives and our fragile relationship with ourselves and others. Ironically, in a time of great societal strain, stress and change in the world, we need to know, trust and love our innermost self even more. In our hearts we know this. Deep down every Greta or Greg wants this.

Like any crisis, we should respect the pandemic and learn to live alongside it, but we should not let it determine us, our lives or what we truly need. If anything, let us use this time as permission to get back to our primary purpose in life - to know and love ourselves - with or without Covid. Let us not wait for the end of the pandemic or indeed the emergence of another crisis to begin the journey back to self and self-love.

Brian Gillen is a psychodynamic psychotherapist and the Director of LifeChange Psychotherapy & Counselling in Dublin. He has been a Regional Organiser for IAHIP and is Chairperson of the CORU Counsellors and Psychotherapists Registration Board.

References

de Saint Exupéry, A. (1974). The Little Prince. Pan Books.

García Márquez, G. (1989). Love in the Time of Cholera. Penguin Books

Perls, F. S., Hefferline, R., Goodman, P. (1994). Gestalt Therapy: Excitement & Growth in the Human Personality. Souvenir Press Ltd.

(C) IAHIP 2021 - INSIDE OUT 94 - SUMMER 2021