Pandemic is an attachment trauma, there will be grief and loss in abundance.  Grief and loss is regulated through our attachment networks.  Pandemic is terrible in grief and loss.  It is tragedy of sadness for everyone, rippling everywhere.

The home-front in World War II knew grief and loss, husbands, fathers, sons.  A soldier standing on their front porch, a name of someplace far away, no chance to say goodbye. Simply… gone.  Grief and loss in abundance.

People do not live alone, we are embedded in a family, when we die there is grief in those who love us.  A single loss creates a ripple of substantial grief.

Bowlby wrote three volumes on the attachment system; Attachment, Separation, and Loss.  When we lose someone we love, we grieve.  Pandemic will bring grief, a terrible grief, a traumatic grief at the loss… because they die alone.

Death rides with pandemic, a terrible death, a lonely death.  Those that remain cannot even say goodbye – the loved one simply vanishes – traumatic grief and loss with no resolution.  Pandemic is a horseman of grief and fear.

Infectious disease drives us apart into isolation, they will die alone, we cannot even say goodbye.  Traumatic grief, unresolved grief.

Most will be older, pandemic’s companion of death will sweep away a generation, suddenly.  Not simply one generation, others will be lost, friends, siblings, husbands, and wives, all grieved, all dying alone.  Pandemic brings a lonely death, complex trauma, and traumatic grief.

Pandemic is an attachment trauma.  It will be regulated through our attachment system.

How do we regulate our grief from loss?  We suffer, we cry, and mourn, it is a process of time.

But we cannot grieve, it’s not over, our loss continues.  Many have lost their jobs, many have lost their incomes and revenue, and we all have lost our anticipated futures, our security, and we have lost the world we knew.  There will be grief in abundance and it will not resolve quickly, global pandemic is a continuing trauma.

Fear and anxiety will be strong, and the social motivation will be both to come together yet stay apart, approach and avoidance simultaneously, this is immensely stressful because neither option satisfies.

Avoiding social bonding and isolating to manage the fears and anxieties will increase the grief and loss from loneliness and isolation.  Seeking social bonding and a return to the previous normal will increase fears of anxiety for personal infection.

Simultaneous social approach and avoidance, neither choice satisfies, the continuing stress of complex trauma.  This will not end soon.

The grief will not be local, it will be everywhere.  Traumatic grief.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857