by Danni Biondini, LMFT

A little moment of inspiration for us all: If Freud could get through the 1918 Spanish flu by working from home, so can we.

As we move mid-way into Gemini season, our new normal shifts again. States are easing restrictions and some therapists are planning when to return to the meatspace. Enough with the digital meetspace: we want flesh-filled rooms. We’ll take precautions: hand-stitched face masks will be the therapist’s new drapey scarf. 

But [to be read in a Carrie Bradshaw voice], as the country opens back up from shutdown, I can’t help but wonder: in what ways are we still psychologically shut down? 

Speaking for myself and most likely all of you, when we were suddenly plunged into a pandemic and had to let go of our usual defenses-against-feeling-anything-at-all, I plunged into a depresh. The sadness seemed like it was just chilling there, waiting for the moment my hypomania would falter. 

I know I’m not the only one. As we know, the unbearableness of feelings has put a run on flour at the grocery store. We’d rather watch bread rise than tend to an internal experience. 

Psychoanalysis is all about how well a person adjusts to the freakin’ unending losses and catastrophes of human existence. What is required of a person’s insides to weather catastrophe, adjust to their losses, and stay the **** home?

I can’t stop thinking about the gun-toting protestors storming the state capital to demand the country open back up for them. Why the insistence on a return to the status quo? Have they even tried baking bread? Or is it socialism to ask a neighbor for a cup of flour? [It is.] 

But, no, the demand to open back up seems like a manic denial, a refusal to accept our limitations, our interdependence, and our neediness-of-each-other. It’s a refusal to mourn.

More than feeling that, “We mourned and now we’re ready to move on,” the protestors seemed to be saying, “You want me to grieve these losses? Nah. I’m not really a mourning person.”