How Covid-19 has impacted our most important connections.
We are around five months into a pandemic that has turned our lives upside down. While everyone is arguing about vaccines, conspiracies and annoying buzzwords, I thought it might be interesting to take a step back and look at how Coronavirus has impacted us in our relationships with ourselves, others, and God.
1) Our relationship with Self:
Most of us have handled the pandemic by becoming either over or under connected to self, which manifests either as anxiety or depression, or both.
The scenario of a global pandemic has primed us all to think in terms of “what-if” and worst-case scenarios. People who struggled with anxiety before the pandemic have mostly handled the pandemic in stride. They were used to being anxious, and had the CBT skills, coping strategies, and medications to handle this crazy situation. Nearly everyone has had a degree of increased anxiety, but since that is almost a nearly universal fact, it almost carries a sense of “misery loves company,” i.e., a coronavirus slogan of “we’re all in this together.”
The experiences of those struggling with depressive symptoms are a little different than those experiencing anxiety. While anxiety has a “top out” point (i.e., a panic attack) that can occur and then the body regulates afterwords, depression does not have a bottom out point. There is no point that by staying in bed, neglecting self-care, isolating, etc., that the body regulates from after the fact. Those types of symptoms could just go on indefinitely. In my opinion, those depression diagnosis or symptoms have really had it the worst through the pandemic.
If you’ve progressed with anxiety or depression symptoms to the point where you’re ready to handle up on them and find the best way to fight against your warring mood, give me a call!
2) Our relationships with Others
Our relationships with others have been incredibly impacted by the pandemic, and we’ll look at two of those types of relationships now: our spouses and our friends.
Marriage
Have you ever known a couple who moved away from their support system for work or school? The change requires them to lean into each other for everything that their “village” used to help provide. As a result, whatever was underlying in the relationship is magnified. If the foundation of the marriage was solid before the move, it’ll strengthen as a result of the stressors and transition. If the foundation was faulty, that will be exposed by the move.
The pandemic, and especially the quarantine, functioned like a couple moving away from their typical support system. Whatever was working still worked. Whatever needed strengthening became obvious to all.
Friendships
Similar to the above analogy of a couple moving away and their strengths/weaknesses being magnified, the same can be said of friendships during Covid. When you move away, there are people who you think you’ll stay in touch with whom you don’t, and people you expect to drift away who surprise you by the ease of connection over distance. During the pandemic, you may have experienced this as well. People who were more casual friends did a better job of keeping up with you than people you considered close friends. This isn’t something to judge necessarily, but just a gift of clarity for who your people truly are.
3) Our relationship to God and Church
The last relational change we’ll talk about today is your relationship with church. Most churches transitioned to some form of online service to meet governmental regulation and not have undue exposure to members. If prior to the pandemic, you were one to come in the doors, find your seat, not speak to anyone if you can help it, and then dodge out after it’s over or after communion, then the transition to online church probably wasn’t very drastic for you. On the other hand, if you found a lot of social support through your church family, online church is not cutting it for you. Church is definitely more than the message and the singing. That has never been more obvious than during the time when we haven’t been able to gather as normal. Additionally, if you are one who has spiritually lived off of what the pastor is feeding you on Sundays, without taking much responsibility for fostering your own connection with God, you’re probably feeling pretty anemic right now. Take some time today to reconnect with God in a meaningful way.
Please feel free to contact Crossroads Professional Counseling, LLC for any therapeutic support you may need during this crazy season. If we are not the right fit for you, we will help you find someone who is. Appointments available in person (with precautions) and virtually.
