The Aftermath of Covid and Embracing Life’s Connections

Posted by Sylvia Graves, MA, LCMHCA

If reading another article about the aftermath of COVID triggers a reaction inside you, I wonder if it is similar to the reaction I had when considering how to write about this topic: irritation, fatigue, and––the subtler undercurrent––fear. We made it through the height of COVID, as far as we know; must we reflect on it? As a therapist, I know the right kind of reflection does in fact have its benefits. But like many of us, I shrink from the fear-laced work of healing. 

However, the negative emotions that accompany reentry into past experiences need not be seen as quicksand, if engaged at the right time and in the proper environment. Instead, such emotions can be a dark tunnel with a light at the other end, and––with the proper resources––we can safely venture through them. 

Only by doing so can we recover two fundamental needs left off-kilter for many in the wake of COVID: the need for human connection, and the need for meaningful agency within life’s limits. Often, trauma clouds our sense of access to connection and our experience of any real power in our lives. But through the hard work of healing, we can begin to recover these integral components of human flourishing. 

In this post, I will focus on the significance of social connection, what this has to do with our experience of COVID, and how this human need must be integral to our healing process. 

We cannot appreciate the gravity of COVID’s disruption, or the validity of our struggles in the aftermath, unless we first understand human beings. As Diane Langberg has put it, the best way to grasp the effect of trauma is to appreciate the human dignity it distorts. 

The pandemic jolted many of us with the awareness that without human connection, we starve. Such emotional starvation is not an experience unique to the 19-year-old whose once socially vibrant dorm room empties and stales as friends enter quarantine; the two-day-old infant knows viscerally––without the words to say so––that her body was built for connection. It is with appropriate symbolism that a baby must physically connect to her mother’s breast in order to feed, a process that both fills the baby’s belly and facilitates her sense of trust and safety in the world. In this process, it is not simply human touch, but ultimately human connection, allowing the infant to thrive: an infant’s brain is programmed to focus eight to ten inches away from her own face, meeting the gaze of her mother and beginning her first experience of human attachment.  

Both during infancy and in the years beyond, tremendous benefits emerge from the human process scholars like Stephen Porges refer to as co-regulation. On a physical level, social connection is a valuable resource for calming the fight-flight response triggered in moments of stress. The relational experience of being truly attuned to, according to Porges, “enables the…autonomic nervous system to support homeostasis.” Co-regulation is the process of my nervous system finding calm and stability in response to the stable, calm nervous system of another. 

In other words, humans are wired to learn and access the bodily experience of peace through the safe relational presence of another.  

On both bodily and cognitive levels of processing, human connection is fundamental to health––and antithetical to trauma. As scholars have pointed out, one major predictor of PTSD following a traumatic event is an individual’s experience of aloneness with the event. In other words, it is not the horror of the experience, but our aloneness with the experience, that is most likely to dole out lasting neural consequences. 

Given the significance of human beings’ relational constitution, it is no wonder many of us still experience displacement and loneliness in the wake of 2020. From exchanging face-to-face smiles to leaning in freely for hugs, opportunities for co-regulation shrank. Amidst social distancing mandates, many found themselves weathering the trauma of unprecedented crisis in isolation. Although humans have a tremendous capacity toward resilience, it is relational connections that bolster this capacity. Often, wounds inflicted in the absence of such connections are slower to heal. 

So, once we understand the way aloneness might have hindered our recovery from a jarring couple of years, how can we nourish that slow process of healing now? The answer is both simple and complicated: the deepest healing from moments of painful isolation will happen through the recovery of safe relational connection. 

At first blush, it might seem that the answer is merely to renew our connections by having any connections at all. And to an extent, it is better to open ourselves to a network of support, even if that support is imperfect, than to remain in isolation. The more people we can simply interact with on a daily basis, the more we thrive. After all, talking to strangers significantly increases life quality and happiness.

When it comes to processing the past pain of aloneness, we need more than just the restoration of broadened social interaction, positive and important as such a daily rhythm may be. In order to heal, we need not simply breadth of social connection, but depth: we need someone who will walk with us through the story of what has hurt us. Such a person will remind us that what happened is past, but that it still matters; and most of all, that we are no longer alone with the experience. 

One of the benefits provided by counseling is just this: receiving acceptance and attunement.  This acceptance and attunement can come from a variety of relational resources outside of counseling, too. But it is important to notice which relationships in our lives provide true attunement. Attunement does not simply mean another listens while I plough through various factual details from my past. Instead, attunement means another listens to truly understand––is willing to slow me down and remain curious about my emotional state in the moment as I share. Rather than passively listening while I rant, someone who is attuned will help me explore my here-and-now responses more deeply in a way that reminds me I am not alone. They will teach me to listen to my own experience with curiosity by modeling that curiosity with their presence. 

Processing the past with a safe person who truly attunes is a valuable cure for trauma experienced alone. Think about who you know, if anyone, who is likely to truly attune to the story that needs to be processed––whether it is your experience of the pandemic, or another unexpected and painful event. That is the person worthy of hearing it and able to help you heal. 

From the moment life begins, our minds and bodies are wired to respond to caring human presence. When our social resources wane, as they did for many during COVID, we are left emotionally and physically vulnerable. The path toward growth following such experiences of aloneness must involve not simply human presence, but attunement. 

Through relationship with others––however few––who attune, we can learn to be more attuned ourselves. And along the way we might find that, although the past is unpleasant to revisit, we are no longer afraid of doing so. We will learn to remind each other implicitly and explicitly that we can tell our stories without becoming stuck in them, and that the tunnel always gives way to light at the end. 

Bibliography

Ainsworth, M. S. 1979. “Infant-Mother Attachment.” American Psychologist, 34(10), 932-937.

Badenoch, Bonnie. 2018. The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Collins, Hanne, Serena Hagerty, Jordi Quoidbach, Micahel Norton, and Alison Brooks. 2022.  “Relational Diversity in Social Portfolios Predicts Well-Being.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(43): 

Langberg, Diane. 2013. In Our Lives First: Meditations for Counselors. Self-Published: CreateSpace Independent Publishing.

Porges, Stephen W.  “Stephen Porges - Polyvagal Theory: Co-Regulation in Therapy.” 28 May 2016. Indiana University, 8:21.

Southwick, Steven M., George Bonanno, Ann Masten, Catherine Panter-Brick, and Rachel Yehuda. 2014.  “Resilience Definitions, Theory, and Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 5(1), 1-14. 

Van der Kolk, Bessel A. 2015. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.