CHOICES SHAPE YOUR FUTURE
By Judith Ashton
Very few people seem to be talking about it, but the memory of Covid still looms large for so many who are still living with the trauma of their experiences from that time.
Everyone’s professional and personal lives were subject to massive upheavals.
Some more than others. There were so many restrictions…social distancing, the 2km limits, the family “bubbles”, lockdowns and mask mandates the list goes on.
The fallout has been colossal. We have a mental health crisis, a loneliness crisis, a bereavement crisis, a lack of trust in government and in some areas of medicine. Kid’s education suffered, parents tried to work and teach at home, lack of contact with the ill or dying, limited funeral goers, cancelled weddings, increased domestic abuse, break ups,… I could type all day!
A year after Covid, I ran a “Deeply Relaxing “day workshop for 40 HSE nurses …we ‘d all clapped and banged lids for them, but the stress trauma was still there in their exhausted bodies.
Unfortunately, stress always has been part of this shift-work profession as it is for most front line workers, and many nurses find the daily stress extremely difficult to cope with. It is a fact that many days off and long-term absence is due to stress- related symptoms of one type or another. If this continues long term as it often does, many wonderful nurses fall victim to ‘burn out ‘and may leave the profession altogether, often taking early retirement on disability grounds. What a waste of experience and training!! This is a terrible indictment of our health-care system, our present society and a personal tragedy for the nurses involved. We lose too many good nurses this way.
I have worked in the area of stress control for many years and have seen this pattern
in several other professions, notably the teaching profession where again there is a massive drop-out level due to the endemic stress implicit in the over-loaded system. Stress in our society is actually at record and all time epidemic levels!! Imagine that!!
We all can experience short stress filled events but chronic stress takes a big toll on both mind and body and both need to be addressed in order not only to release it but to clear it from the system and allow natural self-regulation processes to re-establish.
Counselling and psychotherapy can be very effective but often fail to address the way the body holds emotions. In 1933, nearly a century ago, Dr. Wilhelm Reich wrote about “Character armour” and “muscle armour”. His recognition of the importance of the physical component of psychoanalytical treatment led to his estrangement from the psychoanalytic community His books were literally burnt and his research censored. He was effectively witch hunted and he died in a US prison. Today much of his work and “body based” approaches are gaining recognition but sadly are far from mainstream.
Gabor Mate and Bessel Van Der Kolk are top of the best sellers lists but it will be a long time before adequate numbers of such therapists are properly trained and their approaches are widely adopted. Which is very sad because until such times, so many people take medication for stress related symptoms and are not dealing with root causes.
So, to return to my original point and “Covid-caused-stress-symptoms”, we need to really talk about how people were effected, we need to recognise the trauma that we collectively experienced, we need to release the pain and talk about grief and loss. Then and only then, can we come to terms with, clear the pain and move on. We can’t just say, “It’s over, let’s move on, business as usual!” It’s never that simple. It’s complex. We are all complex beings. We need to acknowledge the past in order to move on…It’s a process which always needs a first step.
We’ve been here before with other collective traumas and it’s often taken decades to first, recognise and then, talk about the stress and grief that people internalised. As a society we need to start talking about this particular pain.
Doctor’s waiting rooms are full of clients who get prescriptions. (It is said that 75% of them have stress-related symptoms.) If this were not the case, the (also stressed) doctor could spend more of the time dealing with other problems.
No doubt I will be writing more about this in the future and am planning some more related talks and workshops. Watch this space.
