Coronanxiety

Is it a thing? Someone had to find a name for it, and yes I believe it deserves a name and I’m going to tell you why. One thing I think we can all agree on is that 2020 has been a strange year for all of us. 

Lockdown for some has been a truly harrowing experience, for those on their own it can seem like a prison of solitude with no human touch for so long now that they can’t remember what another person’s hand feels like, the denial of an essential human need for us social beings can be nothing short of excruciating.

Others have juggled work and home-school simultaneously and have been riding the storm. Like a boat in a wild sea, seeking salvage of a quiet harbour where they can recoup and revitalise. Many have been trapped with just their own critical dramatist inner voice for company, it is no wonder there is suffering.

Whatever your experience, it has been real, and yes it deserves its own name!  By putting a name to it we acknowledge that we have been through something, and we are still going through it. Worrying about our own health, worrying about the health of our loved ones, trauma after trauma circulating the press and social media, the health of the nation, the health of the economy, the health of our children’s learning, what happens next? Will there be another peak? Will normal ever come?

None of us has ever experienced anything like this, there is no road map to recovery, there is no known safe route out. We have been locked away to save lives, whilst this deadly predator roams freely invisible to us all and seems to be very much still at large, it is not surprising that we tiptoe out cautiously, holding our breath, where once we strode so freely. 

It is true that this has never happened before, whilst I do not have a robust step by step recovery plan to conquer Coronanxiety it does echo many other situations that I have dealt with previously.

For instance the clients who have been affected by trauma and those who were abused and mistreated in childhood, watching them learn to trust and dare to dream again. I have seen clients who have been so paralysed with the fear of riding the tube or a train that eventually they could not even leave their house, I have watched them slowly, bit by bit edge to towards the front of their invisible cage door and learn to fly again. 

The one thing they all have in common is that they have all known that very dark place where they were captivated by the iron bars of their own fearful imagination and they have torn down those bars and broken free.    

Whilst there is so much uncertainty out there, there is one thing I do know for certain, you can beat this, you can work alongside this hidden enemy and you don’t have to be afraid.