A Viral Existential Crisis – COVID-19 Pandemic- by Sergio Ocampo LMFT, SEP
Throughout history, humanity has experienced many a crisis that threatened individual and communal life. From food shortages, natural disasters, environmental shifts, disease, and tribal conflict, every generation has known the experience of having life and sustenance fundamentally challenged. When life itself is threatened, deep survival instincts are triggered. Mind and body respond with powerful threat responses; reactions which are defensive and highly charged. They can express themselves from anxiety to outright terror.
Our own experiences where have felt our life in peril remain in our psyche as well as in the nervous system. They become part of how we react to similar experiences going forward.
Our cultural and family past can, and is, just as impactful. Life threatening experience to our immediate family, and their family in turn, remain as patterns of behavior unique to that family. For example, disease, economic struggle, addiction, domestic violence, immigration, displacement, marginalization, martial conflict, etc. These experiences remain embedded in the family as a shared emotional charge which in turn can acquire its own life.
Culturally, the social and political history of our ancestors has a strong influence upon our own emotional well-being. For instance, if we or our ancestors have lived through economic and political turmoil, these experiences will remain recorded in our entire being. In fact, our ancestors have passed their internal angst to the newer generations.
The fear, insecurity, and anxiety from our ancestral, and more present past, strongly affect how we carry present challenges. These emotions are existential in nature; that is, they make us feel as if our very life may be at risk of being extinguished.
When a threat to life emerges, even if it seems like it cannot reach us directly, deep parts of ourselves are activated. Those regions of our mind which hold past emotional memories of struggle can emerge. They can make us feel as though our life is endangered in this very moment. Fear, anxiety, and perhaps even terror can be the result.
Calamities such as natural disasters, disease, hunger, war to name a few, not only bring up a present existential struggle, but also bring up old, deeply held, unconscious emotional memories. This can occur to the extent that past emotional memories could be more intense and more “in the here and now”. In other words, we may be suffering more feelings of anxiety and fear due to past memory than what may be happening in the moment.
Old emotional memories live in us. They are re-activated when we encounter experiences that potentially could endanger our very existence. Such feelings emerge underneath our awareness. Perhaps this is why so many experience a wide variety of symptoms such as fatigue, sadness, fear, anxiety, digestive issues, allergy flare-ups etc. for no particular reason.
Indeed, as we re-live our old fears and anxiety, we more intensely live our present. We come to feel more the experience of our larger society as it fans our internal fires of insecurity.
The COVID-19 Pandemic brings with it an existential crisis not only for those immediately affected, but also for the many who have their own unresolved past existential issues; It makes the epidemic feel more real, more present and more threatening. We can feel it inching towards us. Our fears, so human, come to the surface, to be felt, and our vulnerability to be experienced.
Our deep survival instincts are activated. We retreat to our dens and await the promise of sunnier days. It is helpful to know that much of it can be but echoes of the past
Sergio Ocampo specializes in the use of Somatic Experiencing and EMDR to help his clients resolve past traumatic and overwhelming experiences. His practice is located in Los Angeles, California.
Copyright Sergio Ocampo – 2020