Covid-19’s Impact in the U.S.

Grieving, on the other hand, is a much quieter process. It requires us to sit with our pain, to feel a kind of sadness that makes many of us so uncomfortable that we try to get rid of it. In the age of coronavirus, a child might say: “I’m so sad that I’m missing seeing my friends every day” and the parent, trying to lessen the child’s pain, might say: “But honey, we’re so lucky that we’re not sick and you’ll get to see your friends soon!” A more helpful response might be: “I know how sad you are about this. You miss being with your friends so much. It’s a big loss not to have that.”

Just as our kids need to have their grief acknowledged, we need to acknowledge our own. The more we can say to ourselves and the people around us, “Yes, these are meaningful losses,” the more seen and soothed we will feel.

2. Stay in the present

There’s a term to describe the kind of loss many of us are experiencing: ambiguous grief. In ambiguous grief, there’s a murkiness to the loss.

With Covid-19, on top of the tangible losses, there’s the uncertainty about how long this will last and what will happen next that leaves us mourning our current losses as well as ones we haven’t experienced yet. (No Easter, no prom, and what if this means we can’t go on summer vacation?)

Ambiguous grief can leave us in a state of ongoing mourning, so it’s important for us to stay grounded in the present. Instead of futurizing or catastrophizing — ruminating about losses that haven’t actually happened yet (and may never happen) — we can focus on the present by adopting a concept I call “both/and.” Both/and means that we can feel loss in the present and also feel safe exactly where we are — snuggled up with a good book, eating lunch with our kids who are home from school, taking a walk with a family member, and even celebrating a birthday via FaceTime.

We may have lost our sense of normalcy, but we can still stay present for the ordinary right in front of us.

3. Let people experience loss in their own way

Although loss is universal, the ways in which we grieve are deeply personal. For some, the loss of stability leads to a reckoning with mortality, while for others, it leads to a rehaul of one’s closet or stress-baking.

In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all for grief. Even Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s familiar stages of grieving — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — aren’t meant to be linear. Everyone moves through loss in a unique way, so it’s important to let people do their grieving in whatever way works for them without diminishing their losses or pressuring them to grieve the way you are. A good rule of thumb: you do you (and let others do them).

Lori Gottlieb is a therapist and the author of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/coronavirus-updates-news-03-23