Category: Covid

Grim Reaper making selfie photo on smartphone. Photo of personification of death wielding a large scythe in silhouette.

Anxiety Covid Depression First Responder Mental Health Mind-Body Health Pandemic PTSD Stress Trauma Confined • Covid • Existential Needs • Intubation • Masks • PANDEMIC June 16, 2023 By Sawayer 0 Comments

Covid -The Ulimate Existential Battle- Part 1

Is Covid the Ultimate Battle for our existence?

As Covid 19 and all its’ variants has now managed to threaten us all and has killed over 800,000 individual prescious lives, we are facing the ultimate existential battle.

As a result we are left feeling anxious, depressed, angry and economically stressed out as a result!

We are fighting a biological battle that, with little warning, quickly rose to pandemic status world wide.

As a result, we are confronted with psychological, spiritual and emotional fallout challenging our faith that “the good life” is still possible.

The challenge Covid presents to our lives demands an Existential Response to our most unquestioned beliefs and values about life.

Existential beliefs or values are those values and beliefs that we don’t think about very much or very often, but which provide us with the road maps of how we cope with threats to our lives now, until we can get to back the land of meaningful living.

These Existential beliefs and values deal with the life events that every man and women must answer as a result of being human, for example, such things as birth, time, space, death, consiousness and the ultimate meaning of life.

Awareness of these various existential events and the beliefs we have regarding them, gives us the tools to develop courage to grow even in the midst of the vulnerabilities and anxieties that come from just being alive.

Covid 19 and its ever morphing variants are such a place of vulnerability.

What are the Existential challenges Covid 19 presents to us?

The challenges from Covid include:

the challenge to develop the capacity for self-awareness, alloeing is to experience the necessary tensions between freedom and responsibility
the challenge of creating a personal identity and establishing meaningful relationships with others
the challenge of searching for and creating the meaning, purpose and values of a life we did not choose.
the challenge of accepting anxiety as a condition of being alive.
the challenge to become aware of death and non-being at all times.

woman in black crew neck shirt wearing black framed sunglasses — Being Safe Means Being Smart and Being Ready

So what are the Existential Tasks we have before us?

The existential tasks that we all have before us are based on the five existential life tasks as follows:

I will develop the capacity for self-awareness, experiencing tension between freedom and responsibility.

Having personal freedoms means that I am responsible for choosing to cope with the things that fill me with anxiety and which overwhelms me.

That freedom also means that I am responsible for maintaining my connection to the world as a unique human being, whose job it is to make sense of the sensless things we experience.

Covid makes me chose to use my personal freedom to make decisions about self-quarantine, wearing a mask, practicing social distancing, and being mindful of and caring for those around me.

I commit to social distancing, personal sanitation and mask wearing when appropriate and necessary.

I choose to search for the meaning, purpose and values of a life confronted with Covid

Covid has forced us to experience a loss of the familiar and the predictable routines that we have engaged in automatically without questioning their value.

The reality of Covid provides me with an opporutnity to question and replace old ineffective routines and beliefs with new routines that contribute to my own safety and to the safety of those around me.

This act of questioning these routines may lead to me to modify or eliminate the old familiar and comfortable ways of responding to crisis. I will commit to seeing this as an opportunity for change and welcome that change as being necessary for my growth growth as a responsible and free human.

I will create an identity and establish meaningful relationships.

The loss of control I experience from Covid threatens my very identity and the existence of those I care about. I am frightened and angry at this loss of control.

My anger and my fears are evidence that I am still alive and that I have not given up my identity or accepted defeat at the hands of the Covid bully!

I accept anxiety as a condition of living.

I acknowledge that my experience of anxiety means that Covid and all of the changes that it has brought makes me anxious.

Anxiety makes me feel confused and robbed of my safe zone. I recognize that to be born is to be anxious and that to live, is to be constantly faced with anxiety.

I acknowledge that anxiety began with the first breath I had as a new life, outside the comfort zone of the womb when someone slapped my bottom and recognize that without the constant slaps of life there would only be the absence if human creativity and personal meaninglessness

I acknowledg the reality of death and non-being and face that reality every second by waking second.

Awareness of Death means that I recognize that Covid 19 is just one way of dying which I must acknowledge as a real possibility.

I have always know, in a remote sense, that death was inevitable. Covid unapolagetically brings the reality of death front and center to my life.

I simply acknowledge that although death is all of our personal fates, I will live life fully, until Covid or something else eventually takes my life.

There are several more additional stresses that have resulted from the Pandemic.

The Major Stressors from Covid 19

These stresses include distortions in time perception, limited movement and access to services, changes in mental, physical and spiritual energy, financial uncertainty, feelings of hopelessness about the future, spiritual doubts, social isolation and the lack of physical contact.

Let me discuss how we can face these issues with an existential perspective about them.

Time Distortions that are a result of changed personal schedules, family schedules, sleep patterns are a challenge to reorient myself in time.

I make the existential decision to establish a new schedule. I commit to being a structured person, who does not waste the gift of life’s limited time.

Covid means restrained movement and confinement that makes me feel robbed of my freedom.

The existential choice I make is that I will commit to challenging my natural beliefs about forced limits and confinement. I turn this situation around and make the confinement and limits of movements from Covid MY CHOICE.

Energy depletion means that Covid depletes me mentally with worry, physically with the inability to exercise, and spiritually by isolating me from my faith support groups.

In response I make the existential decision that I will dedicate myself to building alternative, new practices that give me physical, mental and spiritual energy.

Financial uncertainty means that Covid has magnified the thoughts around not having enough money to provide for myself and my family. I fear death, hunger, loss of my home, and loss of my job and becoming unsafe in the world.

I existentially commit to making a thorough and detailed assessment of my income, debts and spending habits. I unashamedly reach out to others and share my worry about finances and possible joblessness.

I listen intently as others share their own financial fears. I see no shame in asking for help. I have made the choice to survive and after I survive, I will pay my gains from survival forward when the opportunity comes.

Covid has led to massive feeling of hopelessness and a lack of vision for a safe future. Covid has caused me to lose hope in tomorrow. I recognize that a virus is not an intentional being that personally chooses only me to destroy.

I understand that unlike the inhuman Covid virus, I am an intentional being and that hopefulness is a choice that is up to me, independent of my circumstance. I am obligated to live fully in any circumstance.

Spirituality in doubt as I hear no answers to my prayers makes me question the love and concern of God. I am existentially free to ask questions and demand answers, knowing that God answers prayers in his own time and in his own way.

I am free to question why my God or my Higher Power would guide my life during this pandemic.

I accept that one of the consequences of questioning my faith includes the decision to be more faithful or walking away from my faith. My existential choice to walk away is made with the understanding that I am free to re-engage my faith at any time.

Covid has introduced confusion and a lack of trust in social structures including government, healthcare, policing, and financial institutions.

The apparent fragility of our system of education and mass communications is overwhelming. However I make the existential decision to understand that I am not alone in my confusion. I commit to finding inner peace in the midst of the confusion and lack of trust I may experience in governmental authority.

Finally, the lack of dependable, safe physical touch and the social isolation means I feel that Covid has forced a separation between myself and those people and pets that I love being in contact with.

I see others suffering from lack of physical contact and love and as a result I freely acknowledge that suffering is part of what all humans are confronted with.

I commit to using all other means to re-experience, through memory, those indestructible feelings. I existentially commit to writing letters, video chat, listening to songs and music that were shared together, enjoying favorite meals that were prepared together.

I hope that you now understand what existential powers you have with regard to your free will and the god-like powers you possess to survive the challenge of Covid and all future variants.

Anxiety Covid Depression Mental Health Pandemic Covid • Covid19 • Existentialism • How Covid Has Changes Us Part 1 • PANDEMIC August 9, 2020 By Sawayer 0 Comments

Covid-The Existential Battle -Part 2

This is the second installment on “How Covid Has Changed Us.” In Part One of this series, I discussed what our core needs are and how they have been altered by the pandemic and how we can re-think our core beliefs

https://sawayer.com/how-covid-challenges-our-beliefs/

Part 2 is a step by step chronology that shows how our exposure to Covid was not instantaneous and because of the slow developments of the virus, no unilateral effective planning was done between infected countries or within the USA.

At First We Just Keep Moving Along

In February of 2020, Covid was just a news item about a new form of influenza. We are used to dealing with influenza and controlling it without much difficulty for many years.

The Covid 19 virus emerged in Woohan, China and killed large numbers of Chinese people.

Influenza is nothing new. We have known about various strains of influenza in the USA for many years. We have been well educated about mutations of the viruses over time. Each mutation would lead to a new vaccine.

Influenza strains historically, have resulted in death for certain vulterable groups every year. It turns out that this was not your Mommas influenza.

As the months went on, the rates of transmission outside of China promted the World Health Organization to sound the alarms. Still, word “Pandemic” was held at bay, for now.

Our inconsistent information from local governments, the news, social media, and conversations with friends or our doctors concealed the truth that a world wide pandemic was in the making.

The Uninvited Guest

American ports on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, unregulated by governmental actions at first, were the first to unknowingly “welcome” the virus to our shores.

News stories about cruise liners held off in international waters, loaded with infected passengers dying on board became daily fare.

An American Aircraft carrier likewise made the news when the government relieved the Captain of his post after he become a whistle blower about the active Covid cases on his ship.

The virus was now here in America and not somewhere out there. As Americans we are use to winning battles on all sorts of challenging fronts. Why would this enemy be any different? Our personal daily routines remained unchanged foe many months.

Military resources were activated, from the Corps of Engineers, to the US Navy’s medical ships, to the various National Guards to assist the states in their efforts to control the disease.

The drumbeat became constant as we heard about the scarcity of personal protective equipment (PPE’s) Early on, those were just needed primarily for the first responders and hospital staffs treating infected patients.

Death rates began to increase for patients and for medical staffs.

person in blue denim jeans with gray and black metal padlock

Inconsistent Messaging from the Media and from Governments

We listened to the news about how the first newly named virus, Covid 19, killed quickly.

Then it was found to be difficult to control because of the incubation period that allowed it to remain stealth for an average of 14 days.

In the meantime, we continued to make close contact with each other and share the same air without the use of masks. We were learning about this trickster disease the hard way.

The words super-spreaders and a-symptomatic now became part of our everyday speech, and the word “Pandemic” was now understood in many languages worldwide.

By this time, national and state governments understood that they had a responsiblity to assess what was happening, notify their citizens, and develop a game plan.

In the absense of consistent messaging from the nations capital, the leaders in the State of New York became the voice of leadership, with their daily news briefings on the pandemic.

New York State formed coalitions with other neighboring states to contain the virus and share resoures.

Developing a game plan for an unfamiliar foe

The Ebola and AIDS epidemics were examined by epidemiological experts for any hints of how the lessons leaned from the successful conquering of those diseases could give us a battle plan for Covid.

For too long, the mistake of looking at the Covid virus as just another variation of the yearly flu “virus”, kept the alarm from sounding. This was not your regular gorilla, this was Godzilla!

Emergency rooms and ICU’s all over the globe filled rapidly. Medical interventions required speical techniques, equipment and interventions tall suddenly in short supply.

This virus was effectively and parasitically sucking away the capacities of our internal organs to process oxygen. We were dying now because we couldn’t breath. This mechanism of death brought by Covid was initially thought to be a more intense type of upper resperatory illness.

That perception would prove to be false. The virus was killing in ways that we did not understand from past pandemics. All of our decades of epidemiological research seemed useless. What was this thing?

And Then There Was The George Floyd Death

A perfect storm was forming, which in an ironic way, was fueled by the tradgic death of George Floyd. The irony of his last words as he pleaded for his life were, “I can’t breath”. Dying by suffocation was the birthplace for massive anxiety worldwide.

Now there are lots of crummy ways to die, and some are crummier than others. Suffocation of one man being choked to death by the knee of another man who represented governmental authority, was something we were forced to witness nightly for months.

When George Floyd was suffocated, we all experienced a hightened degree of personal truama, by repeatedly hearing about his slow merciless death. We identified so closely with this death cry of, “I can’t breath”, that massive protests blew up overnight, all over the world, demanding social justice for the oppressed.

In the meantime, as States and Cities tried to cope with the violent protests, Covid 19 grew exponetially. Protesters could be seen in mass gatherings, without social distancing and without masks. This was not isolated to America, but rather was a worldwide occurance.

Emotions ran high, and no one seemed to care or to understand how this group behavior would accelerated the spread of the disease and helped to overwhelmed an already stressed healthcare system.

Initially, governments’ only meaningful way to control the disease without a vaccine, was to enforce social distancing by shutting down those parts of economies where people gathered in large numbers.

Only later were personal protective items, such as wearing masks, “suggested” as a helpful way to prevent the spread of the virus. The mantra was, do what your local leaders are advising. It was also, stay in your own back yard, because our gates are locked!

The last virus experienced in America was the flu pandemic of 1918. Very few living Americans remained from that experience who could identify with the massive impact from such a devastating public health event.

The only information which local governmental leaders had about the 1918 pandemic was in the history books.

We were without a reliable game plan for an enemy we could not identify. Battles fought with enemies who don’t wear recognized uniforms have always put our miltiary forces at a tactical disadvantage. Now our medical first responders were experiencing the same tactical disadvantage.

Without an enemy to easily identify and vanquish, conspiracy theories, fake news items, and nefarious political party motivations, were credited as being responsible for letting the virus push us around and thereby allowed the mistrusted government to take away our personal freedoms of choice.

Yes, fear led to irrationallity, and confusion, and then paranoia.

How Presidential and Congressional Political Races Made It Worse

Then, the perfect storm had new winds flowing into it from the political season.

The American Presidential Elections seemed to complicate the ability or the willingness of politicians on the state level and nationally to take the lead in forming coherent, consistent, national leadership to fight the virus. This gave the virus another advantage….time!

Other winds developed to help the perfect storm grow in it’s intensity in many other countries.

The vast economic losses that the virus was causing as a result of forces social isolation meant business closure and unemployment.

National leaders were watching helplessly as their economies tanked. Unemployment and poverty increased by multiples, almost overnigt. Panic and anger was setting in.

The protests in the midsts of the pandemic continued and had turned into riots in some places. Polarizations increased politically, socially, culturally, sexually and educationally.

The political grandstanding in the midst of the pandemic continued by all political factions.

Testing, Social Distancing, Sanitizing and Masks

Mask wearing and social distancing were not mandated and large social gatherings of individuals who were not adhering to medical guidelines continued.

Once effective testing and effective vaccines were available the die of mistrust of the government and authority had become permanent.

Humans are social animals. Social isolation is known to cause many psychological problems ranging from anxiety to depression to suicide. Restricted movement, contsant testing of temperatures, constant wearing of masks, constant hand washing and the use of sanitizer, along with the constant social distancing are not easliy endured psychologically.

People find themselves crying out for the old normal, for the good old days, for predictability, for freedom, for hope, for peaceful thoughts, for touch, for hugs, and yes, for jobs.

Now enter the variants of Delta and Omicron and we again brace ourselves for another round of medical, psychological and existential assaults!

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