The COVID-19 pandemic triggered everyone around the world at the same time. The most common feelings people report are fear, anxiety, and loneliness, often with no clear way to feel grounded again as the pandemic timeline is uncertain.
Unconfirmed grief is also triggered for people during the pandemic. For example, a 22-year-old male client has had flare-ups with his obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his general anxiety and sex addiction have been triggered since the pandemic began. Having guided his therapeutic work into his deep, original grief, which he describes as not connected or cared for by his parents, he now understands and processes his grief more effectively and his symptoms mentioned above have drastically decreased. I have seen this pattern in many clients who have fewer daily triggers after being immersed in their original grief work.
When grief is triggered (especially when we do not know that our grief is triggered) it can create an intensity that is related to the feeling that we are currently identifying as it goes back to our original grief. What I have termed "primal grief" is the perceived awareness of our earliest emotional wounds, and when this is tapped, everything we are currently dealing with seems exponentially more serious.
Primitive grief usually arises in the first five years of life, when we are most susceptible to being shaped by life circumstances. The basic emotion associated with the pandemic is grief, and if not recognized, felt, and addressed, grief will continue to elicit more easily identifiable emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression, and other feelings and responses typical of people in to occur in a crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of how understanding the different types of grief, especially primal grief, can be helpful to us when experiencing current daily triggers as our deep grief awareness is the tools that we implement, we can provide better information.
Traditional mourning
The most easily recognizable grief that the pandemic causes for people is traditional grief. Traditional grief is the grief we feel when someone dies. For many of us, traditional grief is the only type of grief that we are aware of. Most of us are aware that only in the event of death and dying do we acknowledge grief for ourselves or others, and the greatest fear associated with COVID-19 is the possibility of getting sick and that either we or a loved one will die.
As of December 13, more than 305,000 Americans had died of COVID-19, and there were approximately 1.6 million deaths worldwide, according to the Worldometer tracking website. When we see the number of deaths related to COVID-19 around the world, it is easy to become overwhelmed by fear and fear. It's also easy to believe that death is inevitable when we or a loved one gets COVID-19.
Ambiguous grief
Another type of grief that has become widespread during the time of COVID-19 is what I call "ambiguous grief". Ambiguous grief is the grief felt when a relationship ends or when we lose a loved one in our life who is still alive. Ambiguous grief can also be felt when we lose something that is important to us or when we are conscious of something important that we never had. According to Pauline Boss, the main theorist of the concept of ambiguous loss, the grief experienced during ambiguous grief can persist because there is no closure like there is with traditional grief.
During the pandemic, there was undoubtedly ambiguous grief for many of us. Most of us have lost relationships, lost personal connections, and lost our ability to move around in our communities. Most people fail to realize that the primary emotion aroused in them is ambiguous grief. If we don't know what we are feeling and where it is coming from, we usually cannot address it effectively. People can believe that they feel anxious, anxious, or lonely when in reality their deep grief is triggered and the awareness felt is fear and dread. With no real sense of when the pandemic will be over, and no sense of a planned closure date, there is constant ambiguous heartache that creates persistent insecurities for many people.
The pandemic causes many types of ambiguous grief. The ambiguous grief I see most often is the grief felt from the loss of daily interaction with others due to physical distancing. This has created a sense of isolation and loneliness for so many people. The interactions we lack may include either significant relationships or random interactions with people we don't know well at all. For example, a simple conversation with the cashier at the grocery store or a simple conversation with a stranger in a park can serve as a kind of spontaneous connection. For many of us, these interactions no longer occur or occur much less frequently.
During this time the living human interaction is sorely missed and our brain notices the loss of connection. As noted by John Bowlby, the renowned attachment theorist, people are difficult to connect and the pandemic has broken the human-to-human connection for many people. Some people living alone or in other isolating circumstances have not had a face-to-face conversation or a hug from another person in months, and this draws on their deepest sense of original sadness alone.
For example, my customer "Charles" hasn't left his apartment for over eight months because he is afraid of COVID-19 and other health concerns. Charles lives alone and has not attended anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous meetings since the pandemic began. Charles has not seen human touch in over eight months and describes the effects of this unfortunate reality as "constant loneliness and depression." Charles is deeply saddened by the loss of the way he has communicated face to face with others.
Another type of ambiguous grief that most of us feel is sadness about the loss of our "normal" way of life. We used to be able to leave our homes and grocery store, go to work, go to school, attend spiritual meetings, and socialize without believing that our health could be compromised. Well, these ways of life have either been taken from us, or we need to put in extra safety precautions to be able to do them at all. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have lost so many regular activities: wedding ceremonies, funerals, graduations, birthday parties, farewell parties, sporting events, competitions of all kinds, and many kinds of intimacy.
Most of us took many of the daily activities of pre-pandemic life for granted. Now we feel ambiguous grief because much of what we used to do is now impossible. We feel a loss of our freedom to connect and move in society.
Physical distancing during COVID-19 has forced us to make intentional connections with others rather than relying on spontaneous connections when we want to feel emotionally healthy and maintain healthy relationships. Deliberate connections during COVID-19 are exactly what they sound like – ways to meet up with others that we discuss and agree on in advance. Instead of communicating and deciding what fun activities to do, we are actually planning who and how to connect in a safe way.
COVID-19 has forced many people to make choices about who they want in their inner circle of social connections. Individuals in charge of and following the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have selected a short list of friends they can trust to socialize during this time. Some relationships flourish, others worsen.
It is difficult for many people to live in isolation and not everyone can deal with conscious connection for safety reasons. The removal of spontaneous interactions has caused many of us to turn and create new paths of connection. Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, and many other platforms were widely used to connect during the pandemic. Most are fine among those who were able to enter intentional association during COVID-19, but many are not doing well among those stuck in their original grief and not knowing how to make intentional associations. In March, a comment in QJM: An International Journal of Medicine predicted increased isolation-related mental health effects, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, already noted in China during the pandemic. In addition, the literature by Jiang Du and colleagues from the Substance Abuse Treatment Department of the Shanghai Mental Health Center suggests that people with substance use disorders and addictions are particularly sensitive to stress and have an increased potential for poorly adapted coping styles during periods of pandemic-related isolation exhibit . According to a study by Brad Boserup, Mark McKenney, and Adel Elkbuli in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, relationship problems and domestic violence are on the rise after assignments, quarantines, and social isolation worldwide.
<img data-attachment-id = "24261" data-permalink = "https://ct.counseling.org/2020/12/grief-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/grief_covid/" data- orig-file = "https://ct.counseling.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grief_COVID.jpg" data-orig-size = "1250,833" data-comment-opens = "1" data -image-meta = "{" aperture ":" 0 "," credit ":" "," camera ":" "," caption ":" "," created_timestamp ":" 0 "," copyright ":" " , "focal_length": "0", "iso": "0", "shutter_speed": "0", "title": "", "Orientation": "0"} "data-image-title =" Trauer_COVID " data-image-description = "
Black and white photo of a person from behind who puts his hand on a window and looks out. It is raining and there are raindrops on the window pane.
"data-medium-file =" https://ct.counseling.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grief_COVID-300×200.jpg "data-large-file =" https://ct.counseling.org /wp-content/uploads/2020/12/grief_COVID-1024×682.jpg "load =" lazy "class =" aligncenter wp-image-24261 "src =" https://ct.counseling.org/wp-content/uploads /2020/12/grief_COVID-1024×682.jpg "alt =" "width =" 500 "height =" 333 "/>
As already mentioned, people who are in recreational addiction may be particularly triggered during the pandemic, as local protection regulations require separation and addiction recovery is about learning to connect. One of the main components of addiction recovery is learning how to have healthy relationships and connect deeply with others. When in-person therapy sessions, in-person group therapies, 12-step in-person meetings, etc. are removed from the recovery plan, it can be difficult for people to connect through teletherapy or video meetings.Connecting was a pre-pandemic challenge. Some people in recovery have switched to video meetings well, but for those who haven't, recovery may stall or be at greater risk of relapse.
Fortunately, some recreational addicts have used the extra time to do more convalescence and more self-care while acknowledging their grief, and this has provided an opportunity for further growth. Grief awareness and the use of recovery tools to intentionally connect are critical to sobriety and recovery. I am moderating two meetings on the global addiction recovery website, In The Rooms. A meeting is designed for dependence, grief, and relationships, and attendance at that meeting has doubled during the pandemic. Also, I created a coronavirus support meeting on In The Rooms every Monday. More than 100 participants have been taking part for eight months. In fact, the membership of the entire website has doubled since the pandemic began. People in recovery are trying to find various connection methods as face-to-face meetings are not currently possible.
Original grief
I believe that the different types of grief caused by the pandemic are also related to people's original grief and therefore increase the intensity of emotions. As mentioned earlier, I have identified original grief as the grief felt with the perceived awareness of our earliest emotional wounds. I believe whenever we feel strongly activated or charged, our original grief is unlocked by any current trigger.
Jaak Panksepp's research in his text Affective Neuroscience states that grief and social bonding are related in the mammalian brain. A lack of social attachment or a sense of loneliness is also what we feel when we are feeling sad. Grief is the experienced and felt loss of a lack of social attachment.
In essence, all grief is not only linked in our brain, but also in our feelings and in our body. A current feeling about grief, sadness, or loneliness will go back to our original sadness and make today's feelings more intense or charged. In this way, the original grief during the pandemic is tapped because at some point we experience fear, fear, loneliness or loss. And because the trigger is safety related and there is the possibility of illness or death, the depth of grief is beyond today's situation. it actually connects with the deepest and most troubling grief we have ever experienced. In other words, our original grief is being tapped daily due to the daily triggering of fear, loneliness, and insecurity from the pandemic.
A concrete example of how daily triggers can reconnect with the original grief is the case of the task. If you feel isolated and lonely during the pandemic, and if your original grief involves abandonment by parents or other primary caregivers, the current feeling of loneliness will be associated with leaving early childhood, and that feeling will be more intense. This can also be the case when physical or emotional security is part of our original grief, as both are triggered due to COVID-19.
As an example, one of my clients, "Colleen", saw her father abandon her in her early teens. Her experience was terrible and included the lack of food and supplies. Also, Colleen's mother was so upset after Colleen's father left the house that she left Colleen emotionally. So Colleen always reported that he was deeply lonely.
During the pandemic, Colleen's termination scheme was triggered again due to the constant isolation. Colleen feels abandoned and forgotten by the world. In her treatment we use this time to delve deeply into her original grief, which she reports: "I am not important to anyone, not even to my parents, who are supposed to love me."
Treating Pollen's original grief also alleviates her current sadness about feeling alone and forgotten during the pandemic, as both are linked in their neural path of social bonding. Conversely, if we were only to address Colleen's current feelings about COVID-19 and loneliness, we would not address everything concerning her because her original grief would continue to be tapped. So it would serve as an unknown trigger for her loneliness. In this way, knowing about our original grief can be a very empowering process in identifying and addressing not only our basic loneliness, but also the current triggers we experience as adults.
This unprecedented and difficult time in our world is certainly a trigger for most of us. If we can be aware of some of the deeper feelings below, like the different types of grief we are experiencing, we can be more confident and take active steps to heal our ultimate trigger of original grief. The deep grief awareness of the original grief can empower us not only to heal our underlying pain, but also the current triggers of the ongoing pandemic.
****
Related Reading by Cheryl Fisher, Columnist for Counseling Today: “Counseling Connoisseur: Death and Sorrow During COVID-19”
****
Sophia Caudle is a licensed clinical mental health advisor with three private practices in North Carolina. She specializes in sex addiction, sex therapy, and ambiguous and original grief. She conceived ambiguous grief through her work with partners of sex addicts, while partners experience grief over the loss of their partner after learning of the double life of sex addiction. Contact them at [email protected] for more information on Ambiguous Grief and Primal Grief, or to plan your high-speed grief breakthrough intensely.
****
It should not be assumed that opinions or statements in articles appearing on CT Online represent the opinions of the editors or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
