Seeking solace, finding resilience in a pandemic

In times like these, it can feel wrong to feel happy. There is so much suffering in the world that appreciating the goodness that still exists can seem unempathic, if not altogether futile. A landmark study on happiness often mentioned at dinner parties and social gatherings (when we had those things) considered how people react to intense, sudden changes to their circumstances. The researchers found that people who had recently won the lottery were no happier after some time had passed than people who had experienced severe trauma that paralyzed their lower bodies. It’s a testament to stubbornness as our common lot in life — and the resilience we also share. The lottery winners seemed to lose their ability to find joy in mundane aspects of their lives, while the survivors of trauma had a different experience entirely: they focused more on idealized memories of their past, perhaps at the expense of channeling energy into appreciating whatever they could about their new life. In this year of the pandemic, there are very few literal or proverbial lottery winners. Many of us have shared in various forms of emotional, behavioral, and physical trauma. How have we, as individuals, coped? What happens when trauma continues to unfold? In many, many cases, we have not coped — or rather, we’ve coped to our limit, but the trauma continues. Many people, particularly the privileged among us, have never experienced the intensity and duration of the emotional toll taken by this ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Behavioral Health Coronavirus and COVID-19 Mental Health Source Type: blogs