Fighting Against a Pandemic of Dread [by Jacques Legault]

The psychological toll of this global pandemic is multi-layered, pointing us towards a reckoning with deeper layers of our psyche, obscured with distraction during normal pre-pandemic times. The lockdown measures have cut us all off from most sources of joy, engagement, meaningful pursuits, and distraction, leaving us to confront the rumblings of disowned parts of ourselves. [Read full article here]

The increased prevalence of depression and anxiety amongst all age groups are the check engine lights flashing on the dashboards of our bodies, revealing our struggles to adapt to this new and ever-changing inescapable pandemic. We humans function according to cognitive-emotional templates to help guide us through life, and this global pandemic is revealing how fragile these templates are, and how fragile we humans are in the face of these new uncontrollable and ever-changing circumstances.

Family, friendships, community, and collective rituals have helped us throughout the ages appease the challenges of adaptation. Under lockdown conditions, we have been cut off from these sources of both soothing and reassurance, the grounding power of being with others in moments of fear and trembling.

So we are left alone to confront the rumblings of self, thrown into this new reality without our accustomed buffers, naked before the dragon with nowhere to run.

Hell isn’t other people. Hell is yourself. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

In our clinical work, my colleagues and I have observed that the surface noise of anxiety and depression are pointing to something deeper and more arcane. That here in the West, among the worried well of first-world comfort, there is a crisis of inner dialogue, of deep dialogue with the self, which engages with disowned parts of ourselves that some have referred to as the shadow.

In the absence of incessant distractions through obsessive performance, be it professional, academic, social, economic, etc., and the illusions of safety and invulnerability, the groundings of individual identity begin to fragment. [Read Full Article]