A
New Roller Coaster of Emotions
Last
week the world around us started to shut down. Country after country
implemented lockdowns, and by now about 37% of the world population is
experiencing some form of restricted movement and limited social contact. It
was striking when the German chancellor Angela Merkel remarked in her speech to
the country how for her, having previously lived in the German Democratic
Republic, freedom to travel was one of the most precious rights. It reflected
the seriousness and desperation of the Coronavirus crisis that she was forced
to take it away from her own citizens. Many other world leaders followed suit,
including India, where now over 1.3 billion people are prohibited from leaving
their homes, not even for work.
For
those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home it has meant
uprooting daily routines and workflows, re-arranging child care and other
family responsibilities, making household preparations for potentially extended
periods of limited access to goods and services, and so on. All this involves a
lot of uncertainty, which can generate anxiety, an intensive feeling that helps
up tackle challenges because it signals that stuff needs to be done. But in
addition, we are likely to also go through a range of other emotions, some
perhaps more unexpected, so it’s useful to look at some of the relevant
research.
In
a classic paper James Russell (1980)
grouped emotions along two dimensions, namely Valence, that is, whether the
emotion is pleasant or unpleasant, and Activation, that is, whether it involves
a high level of physiological arousal. The latter gets the body fired up to
deal with problems in life: The heart is pumping, hormones are rushing around and
overall we have a sense of urgency as we try to figure out the best course of
action. Many theorists view this as the main function of emotions, namely that
they propel us to act in specific ways. That’s why there are a whole range of
emotions in the upper left quadrant, where activation meets negativity. Feeling
restless, agitated, nervous and tense are part of this cluster.
Anxiety is an extended, lasting version of fear and
as such is high in negativity, and in activation. But because of this high
level of activation, at some point it will run out of steam: There is a limit
to which the body can sustain a constant a state of alarm because it’s
energetically costly, and wears you down. Then different negative emotions are
likely to kick in, namely those that are low in activation, further down on the
wheel in the figure above, toward deactivation. Sadness is the feeling of
having lost something. Its close cousin, grief, is also about loss, but on a
much larger scale. It occurs, for example, after having lost a significant
other, either due to death or separation (1). It reflects the magnitude of
losing something or someone that is irreplaceable, so it’s not just a temporary
feeling, but something more persistent and significant.
We can expect that people will experience grief for
having lost the lives they were used to. For many, the Coronavirus crisis has
meant the end of the world as we know it. This can be on a profound level, with
people losing jobs and therefore directly facing the possibility of no longer
being able to put food on the table. Already we have seen millions of new
unemployment claims in the United States, and this number is likely to go up
even more. Many people therefore experience a massive loss in life
circumstances for the worse. But plenty of others also experience upheavals of
various kinds, on a different scale, but the felt loss can still be very real
to them. For example, pupils and students whose graduation ceremonies might not
happen as planned, will likely miss the celebrations that usually mark the
transition from such a formative period to the next stages of their lives.
For many of us, thankfully, changes will be minor
and perhaps even trivial, but they still reflect a clear departure from daily
habits, routines, and all the little things we have been taking for granted.
For example, every now and then I catch myself making plans about the next time
I meet up with someone, only to then remember that this probably won’t happen
any time soon. It’s certainly not a big deal compared to what other people are
going through, but it does mark the fact that we’re living in different times,
and need to come to grips with something we have never dealt with before.
The Punchline:
The Coronavirus crisis has changed people’s lives
in so many ways, some that are major, and others that are only very minor. As
we adjust to our new realities and settle into new routines we are likely
visited by a mix of emotions. In addition to anxiety, the natural response to
uncertainty, sooner or later we might encounter more unexpected feelings,
namely a strong sense of loss, or even grief. Give yourself permission to
experience this whirlwind of emotions. It’s a tough time for all of us, so it’s
worth trying to be compassionate and patient with yourself, and with others.
(1) Many people will also experience intense grief
following the loss of a loved one to the COVID-19 disease. This is of course much more tragic than the loss of one's routines in life, as described above. I’ll discuss it in
a separate post.
