The pandemic isn’t over yet, but life is opening back up again. For some of us reopening can feel like whiplash just as much as it did when everything suddenly shut down. This comes as a surprise for so many because who of us didn’t dream about what we were most looking forward to doing when the world reopened again? It turns out it’s not so simple.
With everything opening up so rapidly, it takes slowing down to reflect and notice what is bubbling up for us. In this episode, we explore windows of tolerance and how we can stay grounded and in our bodies as we test out the different facets of re-entry. We also hold tight to the lessons learned over the last year and question how we can be more intentional in how we redesign our lives going forward. There is wisdom in what we do to survive. For all the challenges, pain, and grief of the past year or more, there is also gratitude, joy, and possibly even a fear of forgetting. As Paola Bailey, Psy.D. says, “We have an opportunity and you have to claim it.”
This is our last episode of the season. We’ll return in late September with a fresh new season.
SHOW NOTES/QUOTES:
“What I’m hearing in my sessions is this confusion and judgment about ‘Why am I not feeling great when everybody’s out there at the park or doing whatever it is they’re doing? And why am I so scared still?’”
“It felt like whiplash, like it did in the beginning.”
“We start to realize how we don’t protect our own boundaries, how much we people please, how much we just go along with what’s supposed to happen and having this year be such a moment of reflection for most of us, sort of realizing how much of your life may not have worked before.”
“I think what everybody has been saying all along is this uncovered all the fractures in our society and maybe in our families and in our own personal relationships.”
“There is a place for mourning and for grief, for everything that has been lost and a space for even just gratitude for an awakening.”
“I think part of capitalism is just like get on with it and be productive. So, we don’t have a lot of models for what it’s like to not do that and to sit with the discomfort and the pain and the grief, and to not prioritize moving on.”
“It becomes tempting and reasonable to move very quickly through some of these feelings. I think it requires the capacity to slow down.”
“To be able to connect to what you’re actually thinking and feeling, and then to have any agency to make changes, to have the capacity in whatever circumstances of your life to adjust so that we can course correct, so many of us don’t have that option. So why wouldn't you shove it under the rug and kind of move on? Because you really have to get dinner on the table.”
“I’m so scared that we’re just going to be so excited to go back to life and then we’re going to be so busy in our regular lives that we’re going to forget and that this is going to feel like a fever dream. There’s so much here that is painful, but there’s so much here that is also full of potential and offers us such a different way of a possibility for a different way of living our lives.”
“We ignore what happens to our bodies, in our bodies. We sort of just move along and don’t make waves. And overnight, we were given permission to protect our boundaries. I found that to be kind of a revelation for some of us.”
“We have an opportunity and you have to claim it.”
RESOURCES:
Paola Bailey, Psy.D. is a bi-cultural, tri-lingual, clinical psychologist who works online with clients in NY and CA thru a feminist psychotherapy and trauma-informed lens. You can find her online at paolabailey.com and on Instagram @drpaolabailey.
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