[Issue #36] A Pandemic's Worth of Resiliency
A short look at the larger implications of the COVID pandemic upon mental health and how building resiliency leads to recovery
PSA: Our cat ate the microphone cable (and the electric tape finally gave out :O), therefore today’s audio episode will be a bit late! My sincerest apologies.
"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it."
-Maya Angelou
The fuzz burns. The inkling doesn’t tickle as much as it presses against the under-layers of me. All of me. This is what my therapist meant when she said real every day human love is about blind faith. The same kind of blind faith we have in our deities or that no one’s gonna run that red light.
And it hits me.
First, a gut punch into the bricks and stones that have graduated from simple internal walled defense system to a fully functioning heavily secured compound, no visitors allowed. And now I know why I’ve felt so…lonely.
Then, the movement and flow of some receding wave of blue and purple roll back, and I’m soon flooded with the energy, the vision, of my whole fucking life. The one that’s just right there. But it’s not there. It’s here. And where have I been?
Stuck, caught in the traps and minefields of my own making. To some degree, the blame can be placed onto the hearts and souls of the adults, the parental figures, in my childhood that I trusted to protect me. And I can even point a few fingers in the direction of my PTSD symptomology because, mental health disorders are a very real thing.
But the heaviest load of blame no longer matters because blame won’t get me anywhere. Doing something will. But not just anything. No. We have to do it differently now. I remind myself that everything in my life will end someday anyway, regardless of convenience or if I’ve made my amends, said my peace. Instead of pushing away the very things I need and want, maybe I could try letting them in? I could try to be my whole true authentic Self again.
Glennon Doyle says “we can do hard things.” Fuck yes we can.
But how?
The Pandemic’s Role in the Current Mental Health Landscape
After looking at some research papers and studies, I’ve found that the pandemic’s role upon mental health was actually not nearly as terrible as I’d expected. Now, to clarify, this is true for people who hadn’t reported or been diagnosed with PTSD or other mental health disorders prior to the pandemic and lock downs.
That being said, there are some conflicting research conclusions, but I found it interesting that, technically we’re still in the pandemic (as of this writing), and yet we can see some of the intrinsic links between the pandemic, the lock-down policies, childcare, eldercare, and other major quality of life, societal, and household changes.
Loneliness was one of many commonly reported feelings during the first and second waves of the pandemic with the longer lock-downs. And it’s worth noting that different countries had different policies, which impacted each community differently (which makes it more difficult to really gather and study the impacts on mental health), but research supports some of what we already know: humans are social creatures. The loneliness reported was across the age and gender spectrum, with some studies reporting younger people being more negatively affected by feelings of loneliness during the pandemic lock-downs; A study by Allen, Darlington, Hughes, and Bellis (published in the BMC [Journal] of Public Health in August of 2022) explored the impacts of feelings of loneliness during the pandemic:
“Our analysis indicates that women, young people, people with a black or minority ethnic background, those with pre-existing chronic health conditions and people living in more deprived areas were more likely to report feeling lonely throughout the pandemic.”
And because I love science and going down rabbit holes, I took a peek around the corner of curiosity to find out more about loneliness. And what I found out about loneliness is fascinating - check out this well written essay by Jamie Ducharme (author of Big Vape), where she paints a well-framed answer to two questions: did people tend to feel more lonely during the pandemic, and what are the implications of chronic loneliness?
Stick with me through these few paragraphs by Ducharme and we’ll dig in further-
“For such a common experience, loneliness is surprisingly slippery to define clinically. Loneliness is not included in the DSM-5, the official diagnostic manual for mental-health disorders, but it goes hand in hand with many conditions that are. It's often lumped together with social isolation, but the two concepts are different. Social isolation is an objective indicator of how much contact somebody has with other people, whereas loneliness is "the subjective feeling of isolation," says Dr. Carla Perissinotto, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies loneliness. Being alone doesn't necessarily mean you're lonely, nor does being around people mean you're not, Perissinotto says. Loneliness is a feeling only the person experiencing it can identify.
It can also be difficult to untangle whether loneliness is a symptom or a cause of a larger health issue: Do people withdraw socially because they're depressed, or do they become depressed because they're lonely? In any case, studies show chronic loneliness has clear links to an array of health problems, including dementia, depression, anxiety, selfharm, heart conditions and substance abuse. People without social support also have lower chances of full recovery after a serious illness than people with a strong network, studies show. The health consequences of loneliness are often likened to the effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day—and they're far more common. While the most recent data show 14% of U.S. adults smoke cigarettes, a January report from health insurer Cigna suggested around 60% felt some loneliness before the pandemic.
After stay-at-home orders were instated, roughly a third of American adults reported feeling lonelier than usual, according to an April survey by social-advice company SocialPro. Another April survey, for financial-research group ValuePenguin, put the number even higher, at 47%. (Chronic loneliness may have seen a smaller bump. A June JAMA study found that 14% of U.S. adults "always or often" felt lonely in April 2020, compared with 11% in 2018.) If the stereotype of a lonely person is a frail, elderly adult living alone, the pandemic has exposed the truth that was there all along: anyone, anywhere, of any age can experience loneliness.”
It turns out that even the most hardcore of introverts need social connection - and not just online connection, but real human contact. Otherwise, facets of our inner lives flatline.
How Lonely Is Lonely
A study done in the UK in September of 2020 (by McGlinchey, et al.) found that loneliness levels were much higher for single young adults and the researchers place the percentage of lonely people anywhere from 49% to 70%, which is higher than the previously reported percentage of 27%:
“The overall prevalence of loneliness was 27%..In the past week 49% to 70% of respondents reported feeling isolated, left out, or lacking companionship some of the time or often.”
And this study found that loneliness drives suicide ideation:
“We found that suicidal ideation was 4.8 times higher during the COVID-19 pandemic; 16.1% of people reported suicidal ideation in 2020, relative to 3.4% in 2017–2018. In keeping with prior studies, we found that people living in low-income households are particularly at risk of mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic…”
and
“People who reported feeling alone were 1.9 times as likely to report suicidal ideation…”
In another paper by Sin, Shao, and Lee, published in the Journal of Aging and Mental Health in 2021, found that our personal feelings and perception of loneliness has real, physical implications:
“High loneliness is considered to be a major risk factor for major depressive disorder. Loneliness is also associated with impaired executive control functioning (ECF) including multiple cognitive subdomains, such as working memory, planning, response inhibition, and attention control.”
As we continued through the waves and lock-downs, constant policy changes and tense interactions at grocery stores, the implications of loneliness began to show, the ripples of frustration chomping at the bit. This study by Aljaberi, et al. looks at the impacts of the pandemic and lock-downs on mental health:
“…COVID-19 exacerbated the psychological symptoms in people with mental health problems. Psychiatric patients, for example, scored considerably higher on the overall depression, anxiety, and stress subscales during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic with strict lockout measures. More than 25% of psychiatric patients were found to have PTSD-like symptoms with moderate to severe sleeplessness. They had a significantly higher rate of moderate to severe clinical insomnia than healthy controls.”
While the lock-downs continued and the virus continued spreading, we became collectively shut out of hugs and hangouts, weddings and funerals, playgrounds and restaurants. Our sense of normalcy shifted in significant ways.
But then, at some point, things started to feel more normal again. More predictable. More rhythmic. Familiar. And we were expected to set aside our loneliness, our frustration, our grief, and hang our crosses on blind fucking faith that things would get better.
This weird and seemingly terrifying blind faith is what experts call hopefulness, which blends edges and views with resiliency and optimism.
Optimism vs Resiliency
How do we define resiliency? In the Harvard Business Review, Andrea Ovans quotes her colleague at the time, Diane Coutu, in defining resilience (check out Coutu’s full article here):
“Resilient people possess three characteristics — a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise. You can bounce back from hardship with just one or two of these qualities, but you will only be truly resilient with all three.”
Resilience is one component of our inner, wiser Self. Resilience keeps us looking for a job when we’ve interviewed 8 times. Resilience helps heal our bodies quicker after cancer remission. Resilience pushes us to get up again, and again, and again, while knowing the next moment may require us to do the same.
And yet, we must remember that everything needs balance. Having resilience does not mean being inherently optimistic - this is an important differentiation because while optimistic people tend to live longer, in situations of survival or danger, it’s not the optimists who make it out alive (not most of the time, anyway). It’s the people who have built in resiliency that make it through immense trauma or horrific events.
In fact, resilience is so imperative, so life-thriving as a life skill that Prisoner of War survivor (of the Vietcong) Admiral Jim Stockdale implored this simple truth during an interview with author Jim Collins, as recounted by Diane Coutu in her article How Resilience Works:
“…Collins recalls: “I asked Stockdale: ‘Who didn’t make it out of the camps?’ And he said, ‘Oh, that’s easy. It was the optimists. They were the ones who said we were going to be out by Christmas. And then they said we’d be out by Easter and then out by Fourth of July and out by Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas again.’ Then Stockdale turned to me and said, ‘You know, I think they all died of broken hearts.’”
It was resiliency that kept Admiral Jim Stockdale alive, not optimism.
In the same article by Coutu, we get a much better understanding of the power of resilience in reference to Holocaust Nazi camp survivor Viktor E. Frankl:
“This dynamic of meaning making is, most researchers agree, the way resilient people build bridges from present-day hardships to a fuller, better constructed future…This concept was beautifully articulated by Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and an Auschwitz survivor. In the midst of staggering suffering, Frankl invented “meaning therapy,” a humanistic therapy technique that helps individuals make the kinds of decisions that will create significance in their lives.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl described the pivotal moment in the camp when he developed meaning therapy. He was on his way to work one day, worrying whether he should trade his last cigarette for a bowl of soup. He wondered how he was going to work with a new foreman whom he knew to be particularly sadistic. Suddenly, he was disgusted by just how trivial and meaningless his life had become. He realized that to survive, he had to find some purpose.
Frankl did so by imagining himself giving a lecture after the war on the psychology of the concentration camp, to help outsiders understand what he had been through…As he put it in his book: “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.”
It was resiliency that kept Viktor E. Frankl alive, resiliency and blind faith.
Resiliency Reboot
How do we build more resiliency?
The good news for trauma survivors is - we’re likely already more resilient than we’re aware of. Childhood trauma, emotional neglect, war, natural disasters, emergency workers and ER staff typically equate to a higher rate of possible mental health disorder diagnoses. And while that’s true, that tends to mean higher levels of effective resiliency. Something bad happened and we got up. Something else bad happened. We got up. Something worse happened. We got up. Something horrific and heartbreaking happened. We got up.
And now, because we got up, here we are. The sunrise waits for us, illuminating the hazy halo silhouetted shape of tomorrow.
Will more bad things will happen in our lives? Of course. So will the moments that make a life worth living.
Remember, everything finds balance because balance is inherently neccessary for survival. Even our bad decisions and trauma narratives need balance. And everything changes - why stay stagnant when we can leap? Leap right into the murky, yet beautiful and hopeful abyss of right now, knowing we will need to get back up.
That means we’re alive.
Here are some great resources on resiliency and building it:
Building resilience from Cornell University
Build skills to endure hardship from the Mayo Clinic
A brief write up on building resilience from the American Psychological Association
And another great essay in the Harvard Business Review, this one is by Martin EP Seligman
From Harvard University, a resource directed at resilience in kids and youth
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"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo - far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance."
- Jodi Picoult
[Issue #36] A Pandemic's Worth of Resiliency
Fantastic piece. Resiliency is the cornerstone of survival, yet until I read this I'd not put enough thought into it. The idea that the optimists in war were not the ultimate survivors is so much food for thought. I think that the topic I'm always hitting upon, compassion, irritates me in public discourse, because it's not fortified with the truth of reality thus it falls more into the optimist's camp. But it need not be this way, of course. Thank you, for this read!
The biggest predictor of disease progression for people with parkinson;s is if you answer yes to the question "do you feel lonely"!