Well, I don't know about you, but that was my first pandemic.  It's hard now to imagine life without it having happened.  I have learned so much about myself and the world.  My personal and professional life have been permanently altered.  I think maybe that's a little bit like any other kind of trauma we have survived.  Terrifying experiences leave a mark.  I can appreciate how much we would all like to believe this just isn't so, how seductive it is to think we should just let it go and move on.  These strategies are great when they work, when painful experiences have been processed and integrated.  Unfortunately, that's just not the way things usually play out.  As a therapist, I see people who are working so hard to rise above the injuries they have sustained, that they end up blaming themselves for things that have happened to them.  So we do the hard work together, to look at those seminal experiences, to try to understand how and why they could have happened, all while building skills to take care of ourselves and live fully in the here and now, in the post pandemic world.

Is it over?  It's not really over, is it?  What else is going to happen to us now?

I guess we have all learned to be pretty flexible in the world of therapy.  I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing people online, camera on and camera off.  I have appreciated the telephone as a great back up, with audio technology that is less glitchy than the interwebs.  I am so relieved that psychotherapy requires just enough infrastructure for people to have conversations.

That said, we should probably take advantage (while we can?) of being able to be in the same room again, without masks if we choose.  Going forward, my group practice will move forward in a hybrid capacity.  The goal is to take the best from the pandemic, the convenience of telehealth, and integrate it with the pleasure of in-person contact. With the power of the group modality, we can go back and forth, adjusting for conditions, as we have learned to do these last few years.

How are we supposed to make sense of everything coming at us from all directions at once?   How do we proceed when our faulty early training meets the world gone mad?  Can we ground ourselves in health and safety when the answers are complex?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/us/us-covid-test-availability.html​

What a time it is to be an American, to be a global citizen.  As I write this, the snow is melting in the middle of March, a painful reminder of the perils of climate change while we self-quarantine due to Coronavirus/Covid-19.  Groups at this office are now officially on hiatus and I anticipate most individual and couples/family appointments moving to the teletherapy option temporarily.

As social primates, human beings require connection with each other.  How do we connect in the most healthy way now?  Ironically, the best thing we can do for each other at this time is social distancing.  It feels silly, it feels like overreacting, but the reality is that the health and safety measures recommended by scientists and trustworthy governmental authorities demonstrate appropriate anxiety.  It is incumbent upon all of us to flatten the curve of this pandemic.  If it looks like we overreacted later on, if things don't get as bad as we fear, that might just be the demonstrated evidence that the actions we took worked.

This strikes me as similar to the resistance we all feel to making a change in our lives with regard to the way we treat ourselves or in relationship with other people.  It might feel like too much, or even impossible, to say no to someone or something in our lives that isn't working anymore.  We might be accused of overreacting.  But this very reaction might be the one that is required to make the change.  Once we make what feels like a drastic change, things might not turn out as badly as we feared.  This might be the demonstrated evidence that the seemingly extreme action we took worked.  Frequently we have become too used to something that is harmful to us.  We may need to temporarily or radically distance ourselves from business as usual to prevent further damage. We might be required to flatten the curve to heal.

It's hard on the Eve of the New Year not to feel some hope for the future.  While we learn to increase our tolerance for what is, it's hard not to dream of what might be.  So on the Eve of 2020 I dream of more acceptance for all the thoughts and feels we all have every day all day long.  I dream of more strength for the hard lines we sometimes have to draw.  I dream of people talking more openly to the people in their lives so we can all pursue the civilized human goal:  How can I treat others and myself as well as I can while understanding that I will frequently fall far short of the mark?  And that is good enough as long as I keep trying, keep working, keep going? 

Okay, we are more than halfway through 2019.  How are we doing?  As we watch our country get riven apart?  As we fear for the well-being of the planet?  As we think about the people we love and what they want, what they need, what we want and need, what we might not yet be getting, all the ways we are failed and feel we fail?  Mindfulness has been all over the mental health shop for a long time.  So has acceptance.  I admit to struggling with this idea in our traumatized world, as many things do not appear acceptable to me.  But I am starting to think maybe there is a new goal that doesn't insist I accept unacceptable things:  understanding that mental health looks like ever increasing tolerance for uncertainty.  This kind of acceptance goes beyond social media therapy advice to "let it go and live our best lives."  It's more like DBT's radical acceptance, where we go as far out as we can get, get really radical, until we are at the edge of the painful existential truth of human life:  we don't really have any way to control what is going to happen.  Terrible, beautiful, boring, fascinating things happen everyday, everywhere.  So at a time when it's really hard to keep holding up, what if we say:

How much can I increase my tolerance for this reality, right now, working for change and growth always while learning to tolerate more and more the lack of control and certainty that is the hallmark of human existence?

Is change coming in 2019?  While democracy is under attack and vulnerable populations are exposed to even more risk, there is a scintilla of change in the air.  Could the spring really bring hope for a Green New Deal?  Are people finally fed up with the top down bottom-line power structure on which planet plunderers deny health care to Living People?  Are children and women and queer folk and people of color and those who are differently-abled finally getting more concrete support from white allies protected by privilege?  Can we hold on as 2019 reveals what might develop when reality begins to appeal more than the lies of those who dominate others for their own gratification?

Let's face it, there's a lot of really terrible very real news every day these days.  Each morning can feel like an invitation to self-attack.  How are we supposed to take care of ourselves at a time when progress appears to be rolling backward?  How are we supposed to have hope that health and integrity will out over the poison of systemic oppression?  How can we not feel guilty about concentrating on our own mental health and relationships when so many people are suffering so much?

At a time of cataclysmic change, it is even more important that we work hard to take care of ourselves.  We need every mind and voice we can get to fight the powerful forces that want to take us back to a time when only certain people could have the privilege to create the lives they want.  I believe that deep and broad feelings are a rich resource that we all deserve to experience.  I believe we can work toward personal health while we fight for systemic change.