Gerald Gersh wrote this article about a timely issue that has been used to describe PTSD from Covid-19. But the way in which he summarizes it may also apply to other areas which can produce this sort of emotional response as well.
A significant topic to read.
So, while I’ve read that a lot of us are victims of PTSD from Covid-19, The NY Times came out with one word they felt encapsulated the Covid experience for us.
That word is LANGUISHING.
They published this several months ago, perhaps even six months.
Our sense of time has been affected as well.
But I felt this was a fair and accurate term. As a result, I give a languishing lesson to each one of my patients, some more in need of it than others. I caution that languishing must be compartmentalized and kept separate from one’s mood.
If not, the slow motion, boring, depressed and hard-to-get-anything-accomplished-for-the -day aspects of languishing, can insidiously piggyback onto one’s mood making it feel much worse. As the days blend into one another, with Covid-19 one must be vigilant, from anywhere between hourly to daily, to tell oneself there are two boxes in one’s head and they must be kept separate at all times. Perhaps the more down or depressed one feels, the more vulnerable they are to blending the two, making one’s mood much worse than it is.
Freud taught us to ‘make the unconscious conscious.’
He was talking about insight and change. But I feel his phrase is applicable to the uncanny world we find ourselves in at this time. So make sure you put a conscious sentry at your emotional door and if the messenger, a wolf in sheep’s clothing doesn’t know the password, don’t let them in.