“My dreams are haunted,” Alice told me, tears on her cheeks.
The specters inhabiting her nights are of the dying and dead. An ICU nurse in a COVID unit, the faces of her patients, afflicted and afraid, rip at her soul. She is suffering PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. The problem for Alice, and those in similar straits, is that there really is no “post.” They re-live their trauma repeatedly.
In contrast, Jonathon is far removed from the daily onslaught of the contagion, but he dreams of it as well. His father-in-law, who became a true father to him after his dad’s sudden death, succumbed to COVID. They made their goodbyes on FaceTime. Now, he is overcome with grief and slips into dark mental spaces that feel like forever.
Tina clerks in a convenience store. She lives with and looks after her grandparents. She wears a mask, sanitizes and keeps her distance. Nonetheless, she still has to deal with maskless customers who won’t muster the character to do the right thing, not even in the face of over a half million dead. In idle moments, she finds her mind filled with worry. She can’t imagine how to endure losing one or both of her grandparents because she brought home the virus.
Mark’s exposure has been minimal. The closest he’s come to the pandemic is a friend who tested positive but escaped with mild symptoms. Nonetheless, he acknowledges a nagging foreboding about the well-being of loved ones, compounded by worries over his job security.
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Our Common Story?
Most of us have our COVID story, our individual narrative about how this pestilence has warped our lives. Some have squeezed a bit of goodness out of our common mess. Giving, empathy and compassion have blossomed among many, and, all around us, there are acts of courage and self-sacrifice. And while our stories are each unique, from a broader perspective, they may constitute an almost universally shared experience.
Carl Jung, a famed psychoanalyst, postulated the existence of what he called the “collective unconscious.” He believed each of us carries, in our DNA, certain mental themes, symbols and archetypes that influence who we are and how we live. Others broaden this concept to assert that the collective unconscious is more than the heritable metaphysical tenants of the species. They believe we are all connected at a very deep, some would say spiritual level in real time. If this is true, and there is some evidence to that effect, then all humanity is intertwined in ways largely escaping our conscious awareness.
In this instance, what connects us is COVID and its many impacts on our lives. So, perhaps we are not just grappling with our individual angst alone, but are also drinking from a common well containing a stew of mental toxins from our shared suffering. Should this be true, then we are not simply separated islands of trauma and grief. Rather, we are mourning and suffering as a people. One’s individual distress in the foreground is amplified by our collective anguish in the background. Obviously, many of us assign our torment from the pandemic largely to the happenings in our individual lives, rather than the persistent, gnawing impact of our collective angst and trauma. Aware or not, it’s possible none of us are spared drinking from that shared well.
Often, those who do recognize the collective impact of individual suffering feel motivated to extend kindness, generosity and compassion to others. They do so in an effort to pour clean, fresh water, so to speak, into the shared well of the unconscious. It helps dilute the mental toxicity that erodes our well-being, but it does not remove it.
So, let us not deny or minimize our reality. Over a half million of our fellow citizens have perished, many more carry deep emotional wounds, and we are still clawing our way toward regaining our lives. Like it or not, acknowledge it or not, we truly are all in this together. Not just in ways we readily recognize, but also within the hidden psycho-spiritual forces that underpin and inform our individual lives.
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