I have a lot of worries about the current situation, but I think the one I want to talk about is a bigger, more abstract one. I’m scared that I’m missing out on an incredibly important time in my life – I am a third year undergraduate student. I feel so anxious that I am missing out on spending summer with my friends, revising in the park, and taking my final exams. The only time I have cried about the covid-19 outbreak so far was when my graduation was cancelled. I know there’s nothing to be done about this, and everyone is in the same boat, but how do I stop worrying that I am losing an important moment of my life that I will never be able to relive?
A final-year student
Reply from Professor Peter Fonagy, Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL and Chief Executive of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
Thank you for your letter. The way you feel is entirely natural and completely understandable. A crisis like coronavirus is so complicated and wide-ranging in its impact that it creates many different forms of grief. Some are more obvious, but there are many kinds of loss and bereavement, and what you are describing is a real loss: a well-deserved graduation and a precious memory has been taken away from you. The final stages of university form a rite of passage, and such rites of passage help give our life structure. One of the aspects of loss that can make it so hard to bear is when it feels random, unfair. And this is indeed the case for you – this event has hit your life in a way that is an undeserved and unexpected.
Sidney Zisook, one of the foremost researchers on grief, is clear that grief can be experienced at all sorts of life events and losses, and he has described four different aspects of grief that different people feel to a different extent. These are: Separation distress, which involves feelings of sadness, pain, anger and longing at the loss; Traumatic distress, which involve feelings of shock and disbelief; Guilt, remorse and regret, feelings about not having done more, or having underappreciated what one had, for example; Social withdrawal. You may have felt a range of these feelings, and you might find it helpful to recognise and acknowledge these different feelings and how you have moved between them, and accept them as a normal and natural responses to what you have experienced
Zisook, like all experts in this field, also emphasises that everyone will experience grief differently – there is no clear timeline for when you may feel different aspects of grief, and you will not necessarily feel all of these emotions in your current circumstances. But Zisook’s and others’ work shows us that grief is a process, not a single event, and it will take some time and involve different feelings as you go through it.
Going through this process should not be confused with the idea that you should reach an endpoint where everything has become “okay”, that you have to ultimately “get over” what has happened. Most people never feel okay about their loss, but they can come to accept and live with the reality of it. Thinking about this process of grief and recognising its shape in your life may well leave you with a different rite of passage – you may find you feel better equipped to cope with life and loss. And I hope you ultimately feel pride and pleasure at having achieved your undergraduate studies and completing them in such arduous circumstances.
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