The complex trauma of pandemic is an attachment pathology. The attachment system is the brain system that regulates anxiety, fear, sadness, and loss – including the loss of a way of life.

As a primary motivational and regulatory system of the brain, the attachment system is an anxiety-based system – it was formed by the forces of evolution in the context of predation – when there’s threat, a danger… come together. 

As a clinical psychologist with background in complex trauma, the attachment system, and the neurological functioning of the brain, my psychotherapy for anxiety is to build psychological support and psychological connection to other people, to loved ones, to family.  We are prey when we are alone, we’re predators when we are together – in response to threat… come together.

That is the attachment system.  When the child sees the parent become alert at threat, anxiety immediately activates for the child and the child seeks proximity, seeks bonding, come together. That is the brain’s response to threat.

Pandemic activates threat and our anxieties, the uncertainty in economic security adds additional threat and more anxiety.  The threat and anxiety will activate the attachment networks – come together.

Yet this is exactly what we must not do – there is usually protection from the predator, from the threat, when we are together – not this time. This predator preys on us when we are together, we must move apart, we must isolate.  Yet to do so will not release us from our anxiety – and it will make it worse.

We are vulnerable when we are alone.

Cyberspace & Internet Psychology

The challenge for professional psychology is to find an integration of social isolation with attachment and social bonding. This is impossible… except in cyberspace.  Professional psychology must turn to online interventions of social bonding and psychological support – fostering the anxiety reduction available from the attachment system – come together.

The school of psychotherapy for pandemic psychology is Humanistic-Existential psychology – growth.

Schools of Psychotherapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is too structured and will not touch the underlying attachment networks or anxiety, at best it offers superficial coping strategies for episodes of excessively high anxiety.  But CBT is not the model for pandemic psychology.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy can inform on deeper meaning, but again it is not a useful model for the immediate anxieties and attachment disruptions of pandemic.  The attachment research is, however, fully within the psychoanalytic school of meaning – and Meaning is a recognized domain in humanistic-existential school.

Family Systems Therapy will be important as parent stress and child stress increase the dangers for increased hostile-angry parenting will increase.  Supporting parents in developing patience and more relaxed responding rather than responding from stress, anxiety, and limited emotional resources will be an important focus for intervention, but family systems therapy will not address the individual’s complex trauma – the prolonged and unrelenting stress and anxiety of pandemic and economic uncertainty needs individual focus.

Humanistic-Existential Psychotherapy is the proper school for pandemic psychology.  Humanistic-existential psychotherapy focuses on the four primary anxieties of life:

• Death
• Loneliness & Isolation
• Freedom & Responsibility
• Meaning

These are exactly the domains affected by pandemic:

• Disease and death
• Social isolation and being alone
• Powerlessness and helplessness
• The loss of social support and social bonding

Healthy Growth

Challenges provide opportunities for psychological growth, the psychology of pandemics included. Large challenges offer larger opportunities for emotional and psychological growth.

There is a rhythm with pandemics of turning inward, this can be productive if properly expanded. But to expand on the potentials for growth, the disrupting influence of anxiety must be effectively managed.  Anxiety is a fragmenting force and prevents psychological integration, and anxiety directly captures the focus of attention that is needed for other domains of coping toward integration.

Psychologists must enter psychotherapy of pandemics on the empathy line of Humanistic-Existential psychology to establish the social connection of the attachment system. This will reduce anxiety and allow for a next-wave of psychotherapeutic interventions of personal growth and integration of the otherwise complex trauma of pandemic.

Interventions, including online therapy sessions, should focus on using social media and the psychological connection offered by cyberspace to reduce feelings of social isolation, loneliness , and anxiety in pandemic.

Through resonant affective attunement, the online therapist can reduce the anxiety of Isolation and loneliness, and then expand therapeutic considerations into the other primary domains – disease and death, powerlessness and helplessness, and Meaning – integrating the experience into a sense of meaning.

The psychology of pandemic has arrived, this will not be the last pandemic. Models and approaches to psychotherapy using the new technology of the Internet that are appropriate to resolving the isolation and complex trauma of pandemic need to be developed.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857