We Can Never Go Home Again

Why we’re collectively — still — really fucked up by the pandemic, and worse off for not being able to acknowledge that in a meaningful way.

I probably shouldn’t waste my time on this one. I seriously doubt anybody wants to hear it (which is kind of at the heart of the point I’m about to try and make).

Unfortunately some thoughts, left unarticulated in my brain too long, burrow in like splinters and fester. This has been necrotising for a while, leaking poison, and I’m finally fed up enough to bite the bullet. Besides, based on the number of Notes I’ve read this week about ChatGPT therapists and the dangers of therapy that involves only validating feelings, the moment feels right to talk about the thing everyone would really like to forget and move on from.

Here’s the thing.

I think we’re collectively — still — really fucked up by the pandemic.

I also think the things we need to recover and heal and actually “move on” are the very same things that are much harder to find since the Covid years.

Any good hypothesis includes a list of limitations and disclaimers, so I might as well start by listing mine. I’m a focus group of one. I haven’t spent all that long out in the wild since the lockdowns lifted, because (1) one of the psychotherapy organisations I belong to made it clear that while we were technically allowed to meet people in person, this was not considered an ethical stance (translation: do it, and we’ll cancel your registration). And (2), because the end of lockdowns coincided with nine months of nausea, reflux, wicked backache and meth face (I still swear at the TV when somebody talks about “glowing pregnancy skin”). Staying online meant I could physically manage to keep working through the worst of it.

Essentially I’ve been a stay-at-home mother moonlighting as a therapist ever since, so in some ways “lockdown” never really ended for me. While this probably makes me biased, I also believe it means I’m “out of the loop” often enough that when I pop back in I can notice changes that might otherwise pass unremarked.

I’m also trauma therapist. And I can’t help but notice some striking similarities between the pathology I treat at an individual level and what I observe around me when I spend time online, make the odd blue-moon journey into the city, or spend time with the people closest to me.

Big-T, small-t, and load-bearing trauma

What even is “trauma” anyway?

Given the ongoing TikTokification of therapyspeak, “trauma” isn’t exactly a word with an accepted definition at the moment. Depending on who’s talking, it’s used to mean everything from not making the cheer squad in 1997 through to witnessing a murder.

Personally, I like Gabor Mate’s categorisation system: all things that “leave a mark”, so to speak, fall under the umbrella of trauma. But there’s small-t traumas and big-T Traumas, small-t being things like emotional neglect and early attachment ruptures and Big-T being … well, the really big, horrific, messed-up stuff.

Living through the Covid years and witnessing something on that scale of insanity probably counts as at least small-t for most of us. The endless scroll of bad news and death counters in flashing red font, for a start. The mass enforcement of stay-at-home orders, the unpredictable and volatile reactions of the public,¹ the rifts in close relationships, the looming spectre of sickness and death, the economic uncertainty, the relentless worry about variants and vaccines and mutations and mandates.

Additionally, many of us had Big-T experiences: a not-insignificant number of people watched a loved one die horribly over Zoom, alone in a distant room full of machines and masks and sick people. No bedside vigil. No holding hands. No body. No funeral.

Load-bearing trauma

There’s an additional consideration besides Big-T and small-t in my view — something I call load-bearing traumas. Load-bearing traumas are tricky to define. They often seem like nothing at all from the outside. But in a load-bearing trauma, something happens to tear the fabric of the collective illusion we’re all living in. You realise just how unsafe and fragile life is, that disaster can strike at any moment. That unfathomable horrors can happen to anyone, at any time.

It’s not the specifics of what happened that makes a load-bearing trauma, it’s the meaning of what happened. It’s what you know now that you can’t un-know. For example: that some people truly are malevolent on a level that makes it very, very difficult to trust anyone else — including yourself — once you’ve tangled with them. That choosing to leave the house, or not, can mean life or death. That you’re actually really, no really, going to die one day.

I think the pandemic absolutely falls under the definition of a load-bearing trauma for many of us, perhaps all of us. Something this collectively huge and mad and strange can really happen, because it did happen. It could happen again. Worse things could happen. Suddenly, any possibility is real.

I think this is behind a lot of current terror about eugenics and war and living in The End Times, and how “we are so fucked”.

Other Red Flags for Collective PTSD

I’ve talked to hundreds of people who have lived through traumatic experiences — as a psych assessor, I get to hear the stories of many, many people beyond my own caseload.

While nothing is universally applicable, almost inevitably my clients talk about a few things, most of which are listed in the DSM. For example:

In trauma-linked memories, time gets all weird.

Almost without exception, looking back on the immediate days and weeks post-trauma feels weirdly timeless. Foggy. Impenetrable. It’s hard to put together a coherent narrative. Memories shift. Nothing is where you left it. Was it even real?

Again: focus group of one, but this definitely fits my experience of looking back at the pandemic years (and I don’t think this can simply be put down to the repetitiveness of life at home).

Last week, my friendly neighbourhood dive was celebrating one year under new management, complete with mudcake. The owner cheerfully plonked a slab down next to my lavender sour and asked what I was writing. I told him a piece on how to Actually Be Perfect, and he told me I’m underqualified based on my shit taste in beer alone. Nursing wounded pride along with my pint (which, to be fair, tasted like the air in an old folks’ home) I changed the subject. “Wow, a year’s gone so fast! Time seems to have gotten really weird, but maybe that just happens as you age.” His face got really grim (imagine one of those grizzled old fellas with a big beard and tattoos, who would probably spit on the floor if I outed myself as a therapist), and he growled: “I’ve been around a lot longer than you, ain’t got shit to do with age. It’s the last five years, is what it is.”

Far be it from me to argue.

People in general seem to be more disconnected, self-focused, and insular

I say this not without the greatest measure of kindness I can offer: trauma makes a person self-focused. Necessarily so. Not only are you operating in a sort of protozoan survival mode, other people are not generally experienced as safe or trustworthy. You become an island, at least for a time.

Every so often, I head into the city to do a psych assessment. I put my fancy work clothes on, and I trek through streets of gleaming glass and $22 slices of cake, weaving my way through the crush of humanity all rushing to get somewhere important.

I swear each time I go, the pace gets faster. I notice the change in my mood: the further I need to walk the worse it gets. Nobody looks at anyone, other humans are annoying obstacles on the racetrack to productivity and the ticking off of to-do’s. Nobody’s wearing masks anymore, but it still feels like the days when we were. Claustrophobic, insular, rushing, no eye contact. Perhaps the city twas ever thus, but I don’t think so. I think a lot of people never really took off the masks. I remember how much I missed seeing faces, in the mad mad days of ‘Rona. I missed smiles, I missed catching a friendly eye, I missed being asked how my day’s going (even though it wasn’t ever a genuine question). I missed seeing, and being seen, as a human. I still do.

For the record, I’m not a “people person”. I do my best, but I’ll probably be socially awkward till the day they put me in the ground. I don’t delight in small talk … but I do, (quietly in my own way) love to make small moments of connection with people. This has gotten harder.

I don’t think it’s just about the economy and capitalism and the increasing struggle to get by, either. Sure, it’s part of it. But struggle does not automatically equal having no time for your fellow humans and the general “Ew, people” attitude that seems to be common out in the wild. Some of the most tight-knit, loving communities I’ve ever had the privilege of visiting involved Dickensian levels of poverty.

Split thinking and experiencing

One of the best insights I gained back when I worked in rehab (and I had plenty, it’s a hell of a job) came from my supervisor. We were discussing a situation that happened with depressing regularity every few weeks: a deeply troubled resident breaks a rule, and chaos ensues amongst the clinical team. Half the staff want immediate eviction, seemingly with zero compassion and a dose of contempt for the individual concerned. The other half have seemingly endless tolerance with no appreciation for the seriousness of the rule break, and think the other staff are being heartless bastards.

My supervisor, a very wise and experienced woman, advised me thus: the dynamics around trauma become split, because trauma splits everything.

Many traumatised individuals engage in splitting (a psychological defence mechanism where there’s no nuance, something is all-good or all-bad, people are either loved or hated with little ability to absorb complexity). But also: the people around that person become split, too.

Trauma causes collective splitting.

Is there a better term for what we’ve witnessed ever since March 2020 or thereabouts? I don’t think so. The polarisation, the hatred, the unwillingness to recognise the humanity of others, to engage in good-faith conversation, to reach across the divide, to hold nuance … collective splitting. A schism left by the load-bearing breakdown.

Often, this collective splitting occurs in relation to the trauma itself. By this, I mean that what happened is simultaneously both absolutely horrific, world-changing, heartbreaking, unbearable AND a complete nothingburger around which there are no particularly strong feelings. You’ll find both attitudes in plentiful supply in relation to the pandemic. Some people are, quite literally, still living in it, angry and hurt that others refuse to acknowledge that the pandemic never actually ended². Others, when reminded of those years in a way that threatens to touch feelings, say: “Haha, yeah. That happened, but whatever,” then quickly drain their beer and change the subject.

What needs to happen now?

Not all traumatic events result in PTSD, even seriously Big-T stuff. Nando Parrado, who survived the Andes plane crash detailed in the movie Alive, experienced unfathomable horrors. The death of his mother and sister for starters, along with many of his friends and team-mates. Eventually, the survivors had to resort to harvesting the bodies of the dead for food. Yet Parrado claims to have no trauma and says he’s never seen a therapist.

While normally I’d be deeply suspicious of such a claim, Parrado speaks of his experiences in a way that feels authentic and matter-of-fact. He seems to acknowledge fully the enormity of what he survived, but stresses that the meaning of his life is not found in what happened to him, but in what he created afterwards. He loves his family, and he loves life.

In my experience, the three most important things one needs to recover from trauma-brain are all strongly apparent in Parrado’s interviews: (1) human connection, (2) a sense of meaning, and (3) the capacity to acknowledge and integrate the impact of what happened.

Sadly, while I consider myself a cautious optimist more than a grim doomer, I think those are three things sorely lacking in the world. I’m not hopeful about our chances of recovery in the short term.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people came together. There were Zoom parties, group games, video calls, baking, writing groups, and much swapping of memes. By the end, two whole years later, I suspect the vast bulk of people were doomscrolling alone with their drink of choice and a double chaser of nihilism. As a particularly perceptive client of mine pointed out, “It’s funny how when you force an entire population to live like they’re mentally ill, a lot of them end up becoming mentally ill.”

One of the strongest protective and healing factors where it comes to trauma is the one thing it was very hard to come by when we were all barricaded in our homes: the support, attention, care, love and physical presence of other people.

In those early days, we also had shared meaning and a mission. We were going to get through this, support each other, come out better, use the time at home as best we could. Sourdough starters, kombucha slime pucks and all that jazz. Somewhere along the way, we lost that meaning and started just trying to get through to the other side, while also not really believing there was anything to get through for. Collectively, I believe we’re in a crisis of meaning and that it’s been building for a long, long time (though the pandemic hyper-catalysed it).

To heal, one also needs to know the shape of the wound: to acknowledge the enormity of what happened in a real, thoughtful, integrated, sane and self-reflexive way. Neither mindless hysteria nor mindless dismissal, but being able to really grapple with questions like: “What did it feel like?” “What did it cost?” “What have we lost?” “How are we different?” and “Who are we going to be now?”

To recover from trauma you need meaning, even if you need to make it for yourself. You need to re-integrate into life. You need things to aim for, stuff to hope for, and people to love.

We need to believe the world is worth returning to, even if it won’t be the same place we left behind.

Fearghal Kelly/Unsplash

This post was written and edited without the use of AI.

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A note on ADHD and Trauma: If you’re a regular reader, you might be wondering why I’m going on about all this when I usually write with a neurodiversity focus. While I accept I’m going off on a tangent here … I have ADHD, tangents kind of go with the territory, and (2) it’s (hopefully) relevant to everyone who lived through the pandemic years. I’ll return to form next week.

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Writing for a Cause

All subscription funds raised by Painting with Lightning go towards funding independent research in psychotherapeutic treatment development. My areas of experience and interest include suicide bereavement, sexual trauma, ADHD, addiction, and the use of AI in psychotherapy.

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1. Before you unsubscribe, please note that I didn’t take an actual stance here politically. I think no matter how you vote or what your views were during the pandemic, the statements I make still apply: it was shocking to watch what unfolded, and each “side” was broadly very reactive to the other.

2. Note, I’m not talking about those with chronic illness who are always, in a sense, living in 2020.