The pandemic has brought about changes that are affecting your sense of self. The restriction to prevent the spread has affected people in multiple ways. Some of them, being gathering among friends and family. The pandemic has had a major psychological impact because it has changed how people interact with each other, shop, worship, exercise at the gym and eat out. There has been a loss in people’s sense of freedom, security and control among many other losses included.
We do not realize it but the pandemic has caused us grief. We are grieving meaningful connection with friends and loved ones. This is because we are losing treasured aspects of communication, and mainly how we as an individual communicate.
If you have noticed, we feel closely connected to people we know and strangers too at some point. But it’s not just them that we feel connected to, it’s connections to your work and other settings as well. We as people miss the connection with our larger community. Even the smallest interactions we have had with others in the past now seem valued. Sharing emotions with others over a fun game, attending a sporting event and going to the cinema are truly missed. Some of these experiences can be met through virtual opportunities but they aren’t the same as the real deal, especially when it comes to communication which is difficult due to virtual limitations.
It is true that unforeseen events cause can make it difficult to deal with what has happened and move forward. It can be difficult to grieve during such time. One can face identity crisis on losing their job if your identity is closely tied to your job.
Most of us don’t even know when we are in grief.
Grief may cause you to feel empty, angry, or unable to feel joy or sadness, it could just as well be a number of mixed feelings.
There might be physical symptoms, such as:
- Trouble sleeping
- Trouble eating
- Excess fatigue
- Muscle weakness or shakiness
One may go to the extent to socially withdraw.
Grief definitely has an experience of its own making one feel awful. The fact is that it is a necessary process, one that helps you stay aware of your own feelings. It helps you realize that you’ve experienced a loss and that you’re going to need to adapt to it. Grief is a great process in order to reach closure.
Conclusion
When we experience loss in general, grief is a process that comes into picture. We need to allow this process of grief to take place and we can do so by identifying our losses and expressing our emotions towards it. If it’s got to do with the loss of your regular routine, preparing a new one with things that you have to do and would love to do throughout the day would be ideal. This would help you complete your tasks and you shall find each day filled with purpose. Of course, getting used to the new routine would take some time but preparing and maintaining a schedule would be a great start and you do not have to be too strict with your schedule, go easy on yourself. After all the point of all this is to rise up and not to condemn ourselves. This is clearly a time of uncertainty and is thus important for us to understand what we can and cannot control, and then finally focus on what we can control because this will help us make positive and useful changes to our situation.
If you know people who are in similar situations do reach out to them and provide them with emotional support.
