Finding your new normal
SHOCK, confusion and even denial accompanies the sudden death of a child or a loved one and causes grief.
However, I want to discuss a universal loss we are going through during the pandemic. It is an emotional roller-coaster that has affected just about everyone. It is time to take a deep breath and evaluate how you have been dealing with your loss and how you are going to come out of this.
If you have lost something of value, such as your job, your new normal is different from anything you have known. Some of you hold on to conspiracy theories as a coping mechanism. Some of you are hurt, angry confused and paralysed by fear.
You can’t disregard grief. It pins you down and demands its share of your life. Grief is a devastating emotion. It’s not unusual to respond to these intense feelings by pretending that your situation will be rectified. Denying it gives you time to process things. This is a common defence mechanism and helps numb the situation.
But if you are waiting for things to be the way they were before the pandemic, and you are not cultivating new habits of seeking opportunities and pivoting, you have not gone through the grieving process, because acceptance, not complacency, will help you to embrace your new normal and find ways to make it work for you.
Denial helps you cope, and anger is a masking effect. Anger hides your emotions and pain and is too often redirected at other people.
Your awareness is the vaccine to this stage of grief. In those moments of intense emotions, it’s not uncommon to look for ways to regain control or to want to feel like you can affect the outcome of your situation. Many of you would have done online courses as security nets for either re-entering the job market, or to add more value at work. Cultivating such new and healthy habits will carry you through the grief and to be useful when all this is over. Living your life day by day with no intended action or change is your recipe for disaster.
In the bargaining stage of grief, you may find yourself creating a lot of “what ifs” and “if onlys”. It is a line of defence against the grief. It delays confusion and hurt. This stage can be helpful when you also bargain with yourself and focus on statements (not feelings) like you are not defined by what you have lost and that you will rise again.
You may go through depression. If you can’t move past this stage, talk to a mental health expert to help you.
When you accept your new normal it is not always an uplifting stage of grief. However, it means you have embraced it and you understand what it means in your life. Most of us will get through this pandemic and will come away changed.
This is what the coronavirus moment is about. It is supposed to slow you down. A universal time-out and get you to consider that there is a major calling. An awakening. But you have to move out of fear. Don’t lose sight of new habits you cultivated.
South Africa’s “inappropriate legislation” is out of step with global Covid-19 opinion. The government has come in for some tongue-lashing for this, with some of the top social development economists warning that rather than bringing the pandemic under control, economic micro-management will, instead, exacerbate the suffering of the poor.