A perspective developed with the advice and help of Lourdes Rodriguez, Nupur Chaudhury, and the Cities Research Group of the University of Orange
I’m a social psychiatrist, which means that I study the way
social structures affect mental health. In the course of my life,
I’ve had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a series of
epidemics that struck the inner-city in the 1980s and 1990s. That
era of “mad” plagues – as the kids used to say – included AIDS, crack, violence
related to crack, mental illness related to violence, multi-drug resistant
tuberculosis, asthma and obesity. Just as that was calming down, 9/11
shook things up again. The stress, trauma and sheer cussedness of
those times gave me lots of opportunity to learn about the structure, function
and outcome of social upheaval.
One of the aspects of churning that is essential to know is that
each moment is different from the last – we are moving through a rapidly
changing space of interaction and we are responding to what the moment
presents. Each moment is new and largely unpredictable. It is similar to the feeling I had in the Loma Pieta Earthquake of 1989 – the World Series Earthquake – when the building was moving
beneath my feet and each second was different from the last. Then it
stopped and we could crawl through stairways to the streets. Where
the next thing happened. And so it went for months, ending for me
when I moved back to New Jersey, onto solid ground.
We are in this process of rapid change from one unknown to
another, and we are and will be behind on getting our
bearings. There is, I have learned from watching many of these, a
strategy for getting through this that will help to stabilize or least calm us
as we are going through this. When we are calm, we can tend to
others, and they can tend to others and we can all get through this.
This strategy, which our team at the Community (now Cities) Research Group developed
in 2001-2002 following the collapse of the Twin Towers, is called “collective
recovery.” We identified four crucial group tasks in collective
recovery:
● Remember,
● Respect,
● Learn,
and
● Connect.
We must remember history, in this case, that massive disasters
have happened before. As one sage put it, the Renaissance followed
the Bubonic Plague. We must show respect for all
people. It is easy to stigmatize and discriminate, but those actions
intensify the disaster and push us away from recovery. We must
learn. We have never seen this situation before, therefore we must
be “citizen scientists” studying what it is about. And we must
examine the ecological situation for clues about its deeper origins. Finally,
we must connect. At every moment, we need to deepen, expand and
strengthen our connections to others. This was never truer than in
this moment when physical distance is the core of pandemic management.
In this phase of the pandemic, we can use collective recovery
principles for “getting through the disaster.” In public health parlance, this
is secondary prevention, in which we try to limit the harms unleashed by a
destructive process.
Getting through the disaster
Turn on the Love
The first part of getting through a disaster is to recognize the
difference between love and fear. This might seem obvious – and
perhaps it is – but there is a lot of each floating around. Fear is
normal in such situations but must be contained and minimized because 1) it
doesn’t help and 2) it can really hurt. Fear let loose on the self
becomes panic, let loose on others becomes stigma and worse.
Love, on the other hand, is profoundly useful in these
situations. It empowers us to do our best for ourselves, our families
and our world. People in disasters have a built-in need to “do
something” to help. This has gotten our species through many a hard
time, and it is needed now. Fear turns off love, makes us want to
retreat from the threat. Love turns off fear and helps us approach
the need that is presented to us.
An example of love at work: a man in Pennsylvania was getting
ready to close his distillery as a non-essential business, when he became angry at reports of skyrocketing prices of hand sanitizer. The distiller
realized he could make hand sanitizer with the alcohol he had on hand and give
it away for free or for at-will donations.
Turning on the love keeps you from overreacting and restores
your calm in those moments when you need it most.
Pay attention to this week’s needs
Our needs change every day in a disaster
situation. While going through the aftermath of 9/11, I found that
the cover of New York Magazine was the best indicator of the
feeling tone of the city. They really had their ears to the
ground. I learned from them that I could do that,
too. Each of us can do “citizen science” by watching our social
media feed, seeing what the newspapers are reporting, and listening to the
emotions our friends and family are sharing. A meme from NY Week 1
said, “Relationships aren’t cancelled.” Another from NY Week 2 said,
“It’s time to change from your daytime pajamas to your nighttime
pajamas.”
In this process, let go of the issues of last week – New Yorkers aren’t frantically buying toilet paper in week 2, they’re hysterical about
working at home with kids out of school, or worse, of losing their
income because they CAN’T leave home while the kids are out of school. Or they’re
hysterical because they must go to work and there are no adequate protections
in place, the complaints reported by those working for UPS and Amazon.
Note that I labelled the weeks by place, as we aren’t all on the
same page. Epidemics travel along a geographical hierarchy, meaning
they get to the flyover states from the coast cities – there
is a lag. The lag is often interpreted as “it can’t happen
here.” Don’t buy that line of reasoning. Use the time to listen to what
other places are going through, then buy carefully. You might skip
the toilet paper craze and spend your time planning balanced
menus. I didn’t have an appreciation of variety, but you could learn
from my mistake. And be sure to get lots of Vitamin C, D, and zinc
tabs to have on hand.
The point of this citizen science is that you need to respond to
this week’s challenges. Start numbering the weeks with your group
and sharing what you think are the big issues. Then, together, look
for strategies to solve the problems. And know that the problems are
time limited. This week’s problems will be solved, or they will go
away. We don’t know why there was a run on toilet paper, but we can
let that issue go and focus on the challenge of home-schooling our whole
child-age population. Did you ever think what a blessing the US has
so many homeschoolers who’ve been doing this for a while? What a resource
in this moment!
Fight injustice
It is essential to fight the injustices that are being
perpetrated at this moment in history. As I noted earlier, injustice
undermines secondary prevention, and expands the harms of the
disaster. Justice – love made visible – is the great force limiting
the harm this pandemic will visit upon us. There is injustice all
around and there has been a sustained outcry against it, which we can all
join. We need unemployment insurance for everyone laid off,
including all the “gig” workers without benefits. It doesn’t matter
if Uber drivers are so-called “independent” contractors: at this time, they’re
out of work and need our help.
We must turn on the money needed by people who will be or have
been put out of work. For the most powerful force fighting injustice, I recommend
connecting to the Poor People’s Campaign, which
is launching a national effort for a moral response to the pandemic, and
relying on guidance from key leaders in public health.
It is also important that local organizations use their clout
and their websites to share trusted public health information and ways to
access resources. Where I live, we’re using a health coalition
website to address these needs. It is a source known in the local
community and the many coalition partners can all help with linkages and web
development support.
Extend and strengthen your network
The US is a very fractured nation. We are divided by
race, class, gender, sexual orientation, region, political party, Coke vs.
Pepsi: you name it, we’re divided by it. This pandemic has fallen on
a very weak body politic. We aren’t looking out for one
another. Furthermore, our most important leaders have exploited our
division to build their political power, which they are continuing to do as we
move through this disaster.
Our networks are formed within our groups, with all-too-few ties
that might link one group to another. While we must care for our
families and our group – church, school and neighborhood – we must also seek to
reach across division to help others who are different from
ourselves. This is the hardest thing to do in our
society. We have found, however, that every one of us has some
connection across groups and each of these is unique. By pooling our
out-group connections, we can build a much wider set of
relationships. And if those people reach out, it becomes bigger
still. It’s like repurposing the webs of infection as the webs of
protection. In webs of infection, we want to cut face-to-face closecontact, increasing physical distance. In webs of
protection, we reach across the divisions to provide succor to everyone,
eliminating social distance. This is the moment to go
through every single contact you have – even if you don’t remember who it is! – and send a note saying, "How are you holding up?" Doing so may connect you to someone who needs
a hand or who may be able to help you get through this time.
As one example, Doug Farrand, who heads the Music Department at
the University of Orange, sent the UofO leadership a photo of a little boy
named Jordan whistling while standing next to his drawing of himself
whistling. It felt to me like a window into another world and it
lifted my spirits enormously that Doug was Jordan’s music teacher. I
can, in return, share with them, the ways in which I’m working with the team
that cleans my house to implement mutual safety. Doug doesn’t know
my team, but I know it will lift his spirits to hear about this collaborative
work we’re undertaking.
We, the people, are very big and very powerful, if we but knew it.
We, the people, are very big and very powerful, if we but knew it.
Build a personal foundation of spirit
We need spiritual support in these times. In the
aftermath of 9/11, our collective recovery work took us to labyrinths and art
sessions, hikes and meditation. On the first anniversary –
September 11, 2002 – we spent the afternoon on the stairs at Union Square,
sitting in the sun, and taking in the impromptu festival that was unfolding
there.
There is spirit everywhere – that is the point of
spirit. We need to pause to remember that! We can build
our confidence in spirit in many ways. It could be that you choose
to darn all the socks in your house, remembering all the places those socks
took you and all the places they will take you. It could be that you
will practice trumpet, as Doug has been doing, very pleased with the sound he’s
been getting. It could be that you want to read War and
Peace, as people
convened by Yiyun Li are doing. I
am taking daily photos of my lilac bush, documenting its coming into bloom. I
love this time of year, as I always think of Whitman’s line, “when lilacs last
by the dooryard bloom’d.” It reminds me that this time next year I
will look back at all the things that I couldn’t see and couldn’t imagine, like
this pandemic and who knows what else?
Spirit is one resource that is available to each of us, no
matter how rich or poor, sick or well. My teacher, Dr. Michael O.
Smith, once told me that anyone could sit on a bench, recognize the harms of
addiction, and stop using drugs. He was then working in the South Bronx at
the height of the synergistic plagues of disinvestment, crack cocaine, AIDS and
poverty.
An invitation
Along
with my colleagues at the University
of Orange, and the Cities Research Group, I extend an invitation to you
to join us in a journey of collective recovery. We will be
annotating the weeks and reminding ourselves and you to REMEMBER, RESPECT,
LEARN AND CONNECT, as we move through this disaster with LOVE.
