lockdown
‘We need to adapt in order to grow’: how to emerge from lockdown stronger, happier, healthier
Covid-19 has brought many changes: we must learn to embrace the good and learn from the bad
Julia Samuel
Sat 3 Apr 2021 06.00 BST
In the past 12 months, the overwhelming events of Covid-19 have turned our lives upside down. For some it has been the traumatic death of a significant person; for others, the devastating loss of their job; and for everyone, the loss of their usual routines, life events and ways of being. Everyone has their own unique response to change, which will be as true in the opening up of restrictions as it was in the lockdowns. Some may find it will take as much psychological energy to step back out into the world as it did to retreat from it.
For many, Covid-19 will be the defining experience of their lives to date, and it has inevitably changed us all. We may wish to resist that change and the fear it engenders. But, annoying as it is, it is through discomfort that we face our new reality. In fact, the things we do to block that discomfort are the things that in the end do us harm. The hard truth is: we need to adapt in order to grow.
The research in the field of lifespan development is robust: those who try to remain rigidly the same are more likely to suffer. On the other hand, research demonstrates that one possible outcome from loss, surprisingly, is what we term post-traumatic growth. This is not a shallow switch, simply turning something bad into good. Rather, when we allow ourselves to recognise and grieve the pain of the event we have lived through, experiencing and expressing the loss, we may also find that in the process of adjustment, we grow from it. It often means that we are more resilient than we expected, that our perspective on what matters has changed, and we take new strength from the meaning life now has for us. As a grief psychotherapist, I have been examining my own experience, and that of my clients, to identify the ways we can learn from it.
Covid-19 has brought many changes: we must learn to embrace the good and learn from the bad
Julia Samuel
Sat 3 Apr 2021 06.00 BST
In the past 12 months, the overwhelming events of Covid-19 have turned our lives upside down. For some it has been the traumatic death of a significant person; for others, the devastating loss of their job; and for everyone, the loss of their usual routines, life events and ways of being. Everyone has their own unique response to change, which will be as true in the opening up of restrictions as it was in the lockdowns. Some may find it will take as much psychological energy to step back out into the world as it did to retreat from it.
For many, Covid-19 will be the defining experience of their lives to date, and it has inevitably changed us all. We may wish to resist that change and the fear it engenders. But, annoying as it is, it is through discomfort that we face our new reality. In fact, the things we do to block that discomfort are the things that in the end do us harm. The hard truth is: we need to adapt in order to grow.
The research in the field of lifespan development is robust: those who try to remain rigidly the same are more likely to suffer. On the other hand, research demonstrates that one possible outcome from loss, surprisingly, is what we term post-traumatic growth. This is not a shallow switch, simply turning something bad into good. Rather, when we allow ourselves to recognise and grieve the pain of the event we have lived through, experiencing and expressing the loss, we may also find that in the process of adjustment, we grow from it. It often means that we are more resilient than we expected, that our perspective on what matters has changed, and we take new strength from the meaning life now has for us. As a grief psychotherapist, I have been examining my own experience, and that of my clients, to identify the ways we can learn from it.
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