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Coronavirus Disease 2019
Coping in the Time of the Coronavirus
We will meet again.
Posted April 9, 2020
"I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature." –Paulo Coelho
We’re all home (if we’re fortunate enough to have one). And each of us has a different response to crisis. One wife told her husband she would divorce him if he didn’t wear gloves at the grocery store. Extreme times elicit extreme emotions. How to cope amid massive global suffering?
First stage: Different personalities converge. My patient Sarah, age 21, is home from college. “I cannot do another weird family meal,” she moans, feeling guilty that she knows she has it good but can’t help being moody anyway. Her mother, single and keeping a small business afloat with three children, is understandably edgy and treating Sarah like she’s 9 again: “Get off that phone, you’ve been on it all day!”
This time at home with family, where the love and the wounds originate, can be a time of healing as old patterns emerge. My patient home with Dad and sister (Mom died years ago) assumes the role of “mom” like she always has. I encourage her to choose whether this old role suits her today, in the current crisis. Trauma may be reactivated. Yet precious bonding is also possible. Many emotions may be part of the same day or the same moment: positive thinking shifts to helplessness, then to gratitude. Our family is eating dinner for the first time in years—between power struggles and tears.
We will connect more successfully with family if we can remember that your solution isn’t my solution. Honoring our separateness is a pre-condition for enjoying togetherness. As your husband heads out, for distance drinking with his buddy in your garage, you will repeat the mantra: “You are not me and I’m not angry about it.” I invite my patients to consider the concept of sonder: The realization that each person has a life as vivid and complex as one’s own. Because even though we know our partner or son is a different person, much of the time we expect him to behave exactly like us.
Second stage: Everyone access your inner grown-up. Even the kids. Teens can accomplish remarkable things. Louis Braille invented his language for the blind when he was 15. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. My just-tween daughter can do the dishes with a smile, I discovered. Despite a mourning process that even the fortunate must endure, as human connection has been dramatically eroded, we can notice the fear and find ways to shift gears.
Some basics for thriving: To each his own. Teen daughter is on Tik Tok with full makeup and hair. For five hours. It’s a thing. One mom nearly drove her son crazy by demanding that he “be in the moment” when his way of staying calm was to plan his post-quarantine road trip.
“The ocean diver doesn’t need snowshoes” –Rumi
General rules for staying sane: Don’t get ahead of yourself. Go outside. Find one thing to appreciate about each person in your family every day. Know yourself and tell family members what you need. One person’s medicine is another’s poison. Take naps if you can. Follow the light. If people around you are going down the dark dystopian way, walk away or change the subject. We can offer compassion to support friends and family. But we need to have our own oxygen mask on first. Fear is contagious and asymptomatically transmitted.
Teens with time on their hands can explore those hobbies they don’t have time for in normal times. One of my patients has gifts as a hairstylist so she’s making YouTube videos with hair tips and offering haircutting for free to her friends on Zoom. Another creative teen made a video thanking all the front-line health care workers for their sacrifices.
“We cannot put economics over lives. I understand we are worried about feeding our children. But we may not have children to feed.” –Keisha Lance Bottoms, mayor of Atlanta
Insist on the civic duty to stay home. Empathize with your teens’ frustration that they can’t see friends or that they won’t be having a prom. Acknowledge the feelings of loss. And the truth of the moment: courage and sacrifice will be required. The experience of humility, the sense that we are small in a good way, may be a consequence of these trying times.
Dr. Jordan Schlain, a San Francisco doctor on the front lines of the epidemic, explains the difference between first-order and second-order thinking. The latter is crucial in the coming days.
First-order thinking is fast and easy and only solves an immediate problem. I’m hungry so I’ll eat a chocolate bar. Second-order thinking is more deliberate. It includes interactions, time and consequences. Think about the result of eating a chocolate bar every time you are hungry. The message from Schlain: “Think bigger than yourself.”
We can go victim or become a master. We can connect and contribute. And we can respect that my solution isn’t your solution. Until this crisis passes. And we meet again.
