Discover Your Personal Meaning in the COVID-19 Experience

• Each individual’s life experiences and view of personal meaning have helped determine how they experience the pandemic.
• Specific behaviors or lines of work do not necessarily correlate with increased levels of anxiety.
• The crisis has created an opportunity to look inward and learn about ourselves.

This post was written by Maureen O'Reilly-Landry, Ph.D.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstance, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” These words were written by Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, in his 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning.

Is Frankl’s insight one we can call on now as we reflect on the past year of this worldwide health crisis? It is commonly believed that the Chinese character for ‘crisis’ is the intersection of ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.' This pandemic has clearly been a crisis for many and the dangers have been overwhelmingly apparent. But how can we locate opportunity amid such chaos and fear? Is there any opportunity to be found? Perhaps, as Frankl suggests, the answer lies within each one of us.

As a clinical psychologist with the opportunity to hear what people really think and feel, I noticed that there were many varieties of the coronavirus experience. Subjectivity is a complex phenomenon influenced by many factors. Life circumstances surely set the stage for how we experienced this terrifying moment in history. But the ultimate determinant was something more subtle, yet compelling: the personal meaning this worldwide upheaval has had for each of us.

Source: Grant Jacobson/Unsplash

In March 2020, I shifted from conducting psychotherapy in person in my office to holding sessions via video or telephone. I listened attentively to each person, expecting to hear anxieties and concerns that matched what I was learning from the news. I expected that age, health status, living and work conditions, and exposure to the virus would determine how upset or afraid people would be. But what I found was quite different.

As a psychoanalyst, I am trained to look beneath the surface and to understand psychological phenomena at their deepest levels, so I really should not have been surprised. Yet I was. Apparently I had become so caught up in the news reports telling us what to think and worry about that I forgot what I had trained for so many years to pay close attention to: the uniqueness of each individual and the role we each play in creating our own internal experience and reality.

I noticed that it was not only life circumstances, but also the personal meaning with which these were imbued, that was determining how people were experiencing the pandemic. For example, one man in a “vulnerable” group, 70 years old with multiple health problems, told me he was not yet worried: “I’ve been around a long time and lived through a hell of a lot. I know what a crisis is and this just isn’t one yet so I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying.” Someone else focused on the online togetherness that was bringing her family closer together. She felt more connected and secure than she had ever felt. This sense of connectedness provided an emotional insulation from the vast amount of insecurity that seemed to be taking over the world.

Sometimes even identical behavior can have more than one meaning. A common reaction to this health crisis had been to compulsively consume vast amounts of pandemic news and virus information. Frequently, those who did so were unable to tear themselves away from the screen or newspaper despite the enormous anxiety this news created in them. In some cases, people were flooded with anxiety and a sense of helplessness in a world that seemed out of control.

But I saw that others who were equally consumed by the news reported different experiences. Several felt empowered by the information they were getting because it enabled them to figure out how to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. And for one pregnant woman about to give birth, that same compulsion to watch the news reflected a determination to find positive, hopeful information about the world into which she and her husband were bringing new life. Her exposure to distressing stories and information in the news was an unfortunate side effect of her search for hope.

The “heroes”

From the outside, it would seem likely that the medical “heroes” on the front lines—doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel with repeated exposure to the virus—might have the highest levels of anxiety. But this was not necessarily true. It might also seem that the rest of us who were helping to “flatten the curve” by staying at home—“couch heroes,” as one of my sons playfully called us—would feel less anxiety. But this was also not true. For instance, what accounts for why some medical professionals treating COVID patients in infected hospital settings experienced fear and dread as they traveled the subway to work, whereas others felt a sense of emptiness or even guilt on their days off? My belief is that it was the meaning of going into the hospital and treating the patients held for them.

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Finding your own meaning

Alongside the many experiences of danger in our virus-infected external world lies the opportunity to look inward, to reflect on our own unique experiences of COVID-19 and the personal meaning it holds for us.

The questions may be simple; the answers, perhaps not.

• What do I most fear? This may tell you where your values lie.
• What do I most fear losing? This will tell you what you hold most dear.
• Has anything brought me comfort or joy?
• Has the meaning been there all along and I hadn’t seen it?
• How can I create meaning now?

Perhaps we can emerge from this crisis knowing as much about ourselves as we do about the virus that has given us this opportunity to reflect.

Finding my own meaning

My own personal meaning became apparent to me through writing this piece. I realize now that one way I create meaning in my life is through helping others to discover what is meaningful in theirs.

Dr. Maureen O’Reilly-Landry is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and couple therapist with expertise in psychological trauma in medical settings and the interpersonal dimension of modern medicine. She co-chairs both the Psychoanalysis and Healthcare Committee (Division 39, APA), and the COVID Task Force group sponsoring this blog. Her edited book, A Psychodynamic Understanding of Modern Medicine was deemed "essential reading" by Contemporary Psychotherapy. She is on the clinical faculty in the Psychiatry Department of Columbia University Irving Medical Center and teaches a course on medical illness and physical suffering at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.