by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Grief.

Suffering is part of human existence.  This is fact.  Every person in the world has lost something of significance and gone into a process of grieving.  Grief takes on different forms for different people.  Some numb pain; some deny through avoidance, and some lean into the pain.  Loss is unavoidable. 

Grief comes after loss, and psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross believed that there are 5 stages of grief.  They are:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

There has been criticisms of this grief theory among social scientists.  I don’t love it or hate it.  I do think grief is a process, but I don’t necessarily think there is a structure (that we grieve in this consecutive order).  Grief affects us all differently, and we all manage it differently.  It is an incredibly powerful emotion that has physical, social, behavioral, cognitive, and spiritual affects.  

David Kessler said, we lost the world as we know it because of COVID.  I don’t think it’s extreme to consider we as a collective society and we as individuals are experiencing grief due to the loss of our pre-COVID lives.

On a frustrating day, I live in COVID denial.  On a bad day, I live in COVID depression.  On a hopeful day, I live in COVID bargaining.  On a melancholy day, I live in COVID acceptance.  On a sad day, I live in COVID anger. 

Notice how I didn’t say “on a good day”?  Yeah, that was on purpose. 😔  It’s hard to see the good in grief.  COVID has fundamentally changed our society and that is having profound effects on our well-being.  We are culturally going through transformational change.  It has been abrupt, dramatic, problematic, and traumatic.  

While time may heal all wounds, scars are left behind – reminders of what we loss and subsequent negative emotions when we pay attention to those reminders.  But with COVID, at least for me, I guess I see a very dim light at the end of the tunnel.  A return to pre-COVID “normal” seems so far away.  We are six months into this global pandemic, and my wounds are still healing.   

I’m fortunate to understand what’s going on (for the most part).  I know myself well enough to know when I need special or extra care.  As someone who suffered from depression in the past, I know that I am in a vulnerable state.  I’ve had to make conscious and concerted efforts to give my mind, body, and soul the care it needs to sustain this discomfort for the foreseeable future.  

I feel like what makes the recovery part of COVID grief so difficult is that we do not have the outlets or ability to lean into the connections we desperately need to get us through these difficult times – at least in California. 😒 And what we are able to do, we must do with half our face covered – preventing us from receiving non-verbal cues from those with whom we communicate.

Like so many things we encounter in our lives, we often have a hard time accepting things for what they are when those things are beyond our control. While I logically understand this global pandemic, my emotional side is having a hard time coming to terms with it.

While I may not agree with the consecutive order in which we grieve, I do believe that acceptance is the last stage. Some days I accept COVID for what it is (on that particular day), but I have not accepted it for what it has done (personally and economically). I have not accepted the mental and behavioral health ramifications that are stemming from it (individually and collectively), nor have I accepted with the ability to move on.

Like scars from wounds that have healed, acceptance does not mean that all of our negative feelings magically disappear. Reminders still exist. When we push too hard, stitches can come undone. Infections can arise. We are. still. in. the healing process. Acceptance does not come within a specific timeframe. And even when the wounds have healed, sometimes it truly does become living in a “new normal.”

by : lacylit10 Life Lessons

Loneliness – Part 2

It’s been 4 months since I wrote this post on loneliness, and 6 months since this pandemic dramatically altered our lives.  I think most of us would agree, we did not expect it to be so impactful and last. this. long.  

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you may have noticed that I love learning about how our emotions develop through chemical reactions in our brains.  Here are a few things I’ve learned in my reading of Together by Dr. Vivek Murthy:

  • Our brain has two networks: one for social processing and one for non-social processing.
    • When we are done performing a task (non-social processing), our brain immediately switches back to social thinking.  So even when we’re just kicking back and relaxing, our brain is preparing for social interactions.  
  • The prefrontal cortex is a selfish portion of our brain, active when we are “self-processing.”  However, this part of the brain is also active when we turn our attention to others. Meaning: we define ourselves as we interact with others.  

We are literally wired to socially connect.  Relationships are as functional to our being as food and water.  Just like when we go without those needs, there are physical and behavioral ramifications when we go without social connection:

  • When our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and one became isolated from their tribe, hypervigilance would set in. Hypervigilance is a state of increased alertness that puts a lot of stress on the body and is not sustainable for long periods of time.  Over time, hypervigilance became embedded in our nervous systems to produce anxiety that we associate with loneliness.  The stress on a body due to loneliness over long periods of time can lead to heart disease and other chronic illnesses.
  • Emotional and physical pain are processed by the brain in similar ways.  “The sensory fibers that register emotional and physical pain overlap in the brain.”     

What is even. more. fascinating is that quality of connection matters.

If you remember, there are 3 dimensions of loneliness based on the types of relationships we have:

  1. Intimate – emotional connection
  2. Relational – social connections
  3. Collective – community connections

We need all 3 to positively affect our well-being.  You can’t have more of one and expect it to balance out the others.  

What concerns me about this pandemic is that really, none of us are getting the collective engagement that we need, and only some of us are getting the relational connections we need.  If we are getting relational connections, it’s probably inadequate since so many activities that we would typically engage in with these friends have been extremely limited too.  Most of us are only fulfilling our intimate connections.  Some of us aren’t even getting that either. (Hi. 👋🏼 Yeah.  I’m single. 🙄)

In order for us to develop strong connections with our caregivers, as babies, we perform perceptual narrowing. Perceptual narrowing is when babies start to favor faces of their family’s race and ethnicity.  They do this to hone their focus on their caregivers’ subtle cues and nuances to build a strong a relationship, secure attachment, and to bond, love, and build trust.

The intricacies of our natural, chemical make-up and the profound human connections that result from them are unmatchable by even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence. Technology cannot replace face-to-face communication.  Phone calls, text messages, and Zoom meetings are not fulfilling our need to connect.

Add in the mask mandate, and it gets worse, in my opinion.  You’re not receiving all the subtle non-verbal cues in a face-to-face conversation when half your face is covered.  

When we feel socially disconnected, we often feel unknown.

Dr. Vivek Murthy

While self-care is critical during this pandemic, it starts with self-awareness. Pay attention to your mind, body, and soul. Indulge when you need to indulge and make no apologies. Remember you are at the base of your leadership pyramid. A building can collapse from a weak foundation. We have to be strong for ourselves and for others.