The New Normal

 

In North America, at the time of the writing of this article, most families are approaching their sixth week of living in accordance with stay-at-home directives and quarantining restraints.  Online learning programsfor children are in full motion, and most parents are deluged with a host of new and unexpected roles and challenges, in the home, with their children, with their own careers,and with each other.

 

The “new normal”consists of an unexpected arrangement of components; regular life has collapsed into a domestic bubble characterized by Zoom happy hours, garage exercise routines, TikTok marathons, and an undeniable alteration of time.  Days seem to fade into night and night into day, calendar dates fusing together in the blurred passage of time as our usual daily rhythms dissolve.

 

The profound psychological and emotional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are apparent.  A surge of anxiety-related responsesto the pandemic, as well as the symptomatic upheaval of previously well-controlled psychiatric conditions, have ignited a demand for psychological and psychiatric treatmentand the unprecedented use of virtual counseling appsand internet-based therapy platforms.

 

Moreover, in a recent article published in The New Yorker, Robin Wrightdescribes the acute and chronic effects of loneliness, a troublesome consequence of social distancing and collateral damage of prolonged stay-at-home orders.

 

In my own clinical practice, I have witnessed an influx of patients seeking therapy to address previously dormant issues of stress and worry that have been awakened by COVID-19.  Medical/physical vulnerability to infection appears to have enlivened specters of fragility, loss, and helplessness in other realms of life. Chronic marital conflict, the delayed mourning of a deceased loved one, regret concerning important life decisions made years ago, and unresolved family-of-origin tensions are examples of these emerging ancillary difficulties.

 

Even activity on dating appsis a testament to the pandemic’s far-reaching impact.  Accelerated user activity appears to be related to two distinct sources of motivation: users attempting to create new virtual connections that may progress to face-to-face meetings after stay-at-home orders are relieved, and users who want to establish a temporary monogamous relationship during the pandemic, primarily for exclusive sexual encounters, so as to limit exposure to COVID-19 infection.

 

The Mediating Role of Families in Response to Stress

Most of us find ourselves not confronting the pandemic alone.  Instead, we are intertwined with parents, siblings, husbands, wives, and children, our family unit being the fundamental group in which we are embedded, comprising our most important relationships and determining the primary roles and responsibilities of our lives.

 

With crises such as natural disasters and pandemics, scientific researchindicates that the quality and effectiveness of an individual’s capacity to cope interacts with, and is highly dependent on, the functioning of the family unitand the relationships between family members.

 

Sometimes the family serves a stabilizing, buffering function for its individual members.  And sometime the family system is activated in such a way during times of stress that it fails to be supportive and may even make matters worse, leaving each family member isolated and forced to rely upon his or her individual resources to address whatever challenge is at hand.  Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining,“based, of course, on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, features the attempts of a family system to calm the waters when “cabin fever” reverberates through the crazed father figure played by Jack Nicholson, an attempt that ultimately failed.

 

Families in Flux: 5 Trends in Coping with the Pandemic

The impact of COVID-19 on the parents, children, and families I have worked with clinically in my practice in recent weeks has re-affirmed the centrality of family-based coping dynamics in the face of stress.  Each family member, and the family as a whole, co-determine and mutually impact each other, in distinct and patterned ways that often supersede each member’s personal strengths and resourcefulness.  Here are the 5 major trends I am observing:

 

1.) “De-structuring”:As daily school and work routines gradually fade into new ones, typical family roles, responsibilities, and rituals correspondingly break down as well. These pillars of the family culture constitute the main organizing structure of the family, and when they dissolve the family becomes “de-structured,” catapulted into a state of flux, of entropy.

 

Here is a hypothetical: If a daughter was away at college, for example, she is now most likely back home; due to her return, Dad relinquishes his role of buying the groceries and hands it off to her, which in turn lures Dad into playing videogames with his son; rarely at home due to an intensive athletic schedule, the son is now bored and re-engaging  with his father through videogames after months of tension between them; with Mom, finally, gravitating toward attitudes and behaviors that are far more traditional and gender-stereotypical than typical, a persona she has not occupied for years since moving into an executive role in a prestigious company.

 

With de-structuring, there is this kind of insidious ricochet effect as shifts in one family member’s predicament set forth shifts in the predicaments of other family members.  Often these shifts are not consciously chosen and are not preferred, ultimately causing resistances and resentments as the newly-evolving re-structuring takes hold. And with the epidemic lacking a definitive predictable end, the assumption that things will return to normal when it does offers little consolation.

 

2.) Avoidance and Denial:  A common group dynamic that emerges in response to challenging scenarios including war, severe medical illness, and natural disasters, some families attempt to cope with the current pandemic by seeking to avoid(not talk about it, suppress emotional reactions, resort to drugs or alcohol to numb feelings, etc.) or entirely deny(resist social distancing and self-quarantining, rigidly maintain habits and routines, etc.) the crisis. You can think of denialas a kind of anti-de-structuring tactic; in contrast to de-structuring where shifts and changes bounce from one family member to another, sending the family into a state of flux, denial steadfastly resists all change. The 1991 film “The Prince of Tides“movingly dramatizes the abduction and rape of a mother, daughter, and son by two men in their own South Carolina home.  The three family members immediately resort to a denial of the incident ever having occurred, an urgent psychological solution to an intolerable situation that ultimately wreaks havoc on their long-term wellbeing.

 

3.) Polarization:Another psychological defense frequently employed by groups and systemsis for emotions, and behaviors in response to these emotions, to be split apart and divided across individuals.  When COVID-19 first emerged, numerous families in my practice would consist of one family member who held the “fear/doom and gloom card” (i.e., this was the end of the world), while another family member personified an entirely carefree, no-big-deal attitude, joking even about the over-reaction of other family members, the government’s involvement, and so on. While it is indeed true that everyone copes with difficult, challenging situations in their own way, the tendency to split apart, project,and exaggerate emotional reactions and responses to the point of caricature  (to polarize) undermines the meaningful, authentic processing of what’s really taking place.  To the degree that the emotional experiences family members need to grapple with in the current COVID-19 epidemic including fear, sadness, vulnerability, grief, frustration, etc. are parceled and personified by certain family members (i.e., daughter primarily “wears” vulnerability, whereas son “represents” frustration), potential areas of psychological growth are blocked.

 

4.) Strain:In a recent article on resilience in couples, I described how situations of stress including the COVID-19 pandemic often aggravate and strainweak or unstable bonds between marital partners, areas of tension or conflict that may have existed for years, were never fully resolved, and linger like a kind of Achilles’ heel in the relationship.  Day to day, these problem areas are generally pushed under the carpet and often have no direct bearing on the relationship.  Yet, when an inordinately difficult situation arises, these weak links existing between the partners suddenly become taxed and may begin to break.

 

Relationships between family members are marred with similar tension points. As the pandemic persists and families are sequestered at home for longer periods of time, confined in close quarters, the typical valves that release the pressure of subtle areas of contention become less available.  Confrontations that have been held at bay are now more likely to occur, potentially leading to eruptions of cloistered feelings, perceptions, and memories that, under more stable conditions, may never have been expressed.

 

5.) Regression or Progression:  A fundamental rule in “systems theory,”the primary set of psychological principles governing the dynamics of groups, couples and families, is that an external stress (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) compels the family system to grow and advance or to resist and regress.  Points 2 (avoidance and denial) and 3 (polarization) above represent systemic reactions to stressful events that resist growth and, conversely, promote regression.  With regression, the stressful situation cannot be absorbed or utilized for growth and progression.  Instead, a kind of paralysis takes over, motivated by an underlying need for the familiar, i.e., for things to remain the same forever (what is known in systems theory as “homeostasis”).

 

The more optimal response, especially in the context of the current pandemic, is for the family system to capitalize on the naturally occurring impact of stress as described in points 1 (de-structuring) and 4 (strain) to achieve positive change. By doing so, previously concealed problems and issues burdening the family can finally be disclosed and addressed, freeing family members to “try on” new attitudes, roles and behaviorsthat may refine the culture of the family and endow each family member with more advanced and versatile emotional and psychological skills.

 

A Time of Opportunity

 

This article has been an attempt to document the psychological and systemic dynamics that arise in response to stress and crisis, and to describe their relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic.  It is my hope that families tolerate the understandable fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that currently abound and approach this difficult time as an opportunity for positive change and growth.  For each of us, and for our families, the acute and long-term successful assimilation of difficulty and crisis relies on the capacity to innovate precisely at the moment when familiarity and retreat seem far more preferable.

 

 

References

 

Lee, E. & Roberts, L. J.  (2018). Between individual and family coping: A decade of theory and research on couples coping with health‐related stress. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 10, 141-164.

 

McCubbin, H. I., Joy, C. B., Cauble, A. E., Comeau, J. K., Patterson, J. M., & Needle, R. H. (1980). Family stress and coping: A decade review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 42, 855–871.

 

Stanton, M., & Welsh, R. (2012).  Systemic thinking in couple and family psychology research and practice.  Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 1, 14-30.

 

Walsh, F. (2003).  Family resilience: A framework for clinical practice.  Family Process, 42, 1-18.

 

James Tobin, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist based in Newport Beach, CA.  His psychotherapy practice consists of individual, couple, and family therapy, with an emphasis on interpersonal patterns and relational dynamics that obstruct one’s access to truth, fulfillment and intimacy. The executive coaching component of Dr. Tobin’s practice focuses on helping executives and teams identify and navigate psychological dynamics in the workplace.