Dr Yousuf Ali Al mulla
People have lived through this pandemic for months and thousands in our community and millions around the world have suffered for a year of grief, anxiety, isolation and trauma. Of course, some will recover quietly, but for others the quiet moments after the stress subsides and the resumption of normal life can be unexpectedly painful. Thus we will notice that when they finally have the opportunity to exhale, their breaths may appear as sighs.
Sadly, this confirms to us that the COVID-19 pandemic is a unique disaster that has created with it a repeated series of traumatic events that have eroded social confidence, yet we see and hope that things gradually improve. So why, for example, do some people not feel better? Even many of them are confused, because they feel as though they have crossed the road and can see a little light at the end of the tunnel.
In some way, these recurring and tense events and medical traumas – if I could express it - have been exacerbated by social pressures including for instance unemployment, isolation and a year of missed opportunities. When we look at this pandemic and even call it a comprehensive and continuous crisis, we will see that it has produced two almost contradictory phenomena. First, people become accustomed and indifferent to suffering on a massive scale and experience what our colleagues of psychiatrists call (psychiatric anesthesia). Unfortunately, beside that people also become more sensitive to more traumas in their lives!
On the other hand, we may also notice that a number of people are resilient, often more than they realise, but they also agreed that the discourse of individual resilience can often be used to evade failures, especially institutional ones. The lack of support from employers and the societal tendency to mobilise grief, for example. Will the understandable societal desire to bypass the pandemic increase the alienation of people who still deal with grief or symptoms? Doesn’t this worry us? What if someone was really suffering and asked for help six months from now, and was told: What are you talking about? The pandemic was long time ago? What I’d like to point out here is that the loss for these individuals may last longer than expected, not to mention that the time frame for disaster recovery is not measured in months, but rather in years or decades. Will these psychological wounds remain wide open?
Here we may ask ourselves, why are so many of us still anxious, even when we gradually began waking up from this epidemic nightmare, do some people think that we have pressed the (pause) button temporarily and we will return to how things were before, as if we didn’t have all of these overlapping experiences and that year of 2020 did not happen, but rather as if we are hinting that getting the vaccine will erase our memories!
At end, my call to those who are just tired, who feel that they have reached the limit in their share of sadness and frustration and who only want to move from the pandemic, or who balance between talking about preparedness and promoting fear: that there is a difference between sitting in fear, that the worst will come and understanding the things for which we should actually be ready. Without a doubt, if we were more prepared, we wouldn’t have to worry too much.
Dr. Yousuf Ali Al Mulla is a physician, medical innovator and a writer. Any queries regarding the contents of the article can be contacted at: [email protected]
