We’re stuck in a collective trauma right now - and that can lead to all kinds of possible responses, feelings, and behaviors. The tricky part? That response can change rapidly and frequently. Sometimes its hard to know where your mood or state of mind is coming from, or how it might change. It might feel like you’re bouncing around from emotion to emotion and like your head is spinning. It’s pretty easy to slip into being frustrated with yourself for not handling things better. It leaves us irritated and confused about WTF is going on inside our heads.

I’ve been explaining these trauma responses to people in one of two ways: either a fight/flight/freeze response or a grief response. Both of these concepts are pretty basic Psych 101 principles, but they hold true. It’s pretty important to understand WTF is actually going on in your head (our stress/trauma/grief responses and where they come from) in order to work with them and not against them. It might provide some relief just to know the why behind how you feel and that, unfortunately, those feelings are pretty common right now.

Fight/Flight/Freeze

Classic stress response here. All of these options are basic reptilian old school brain functions. A threat approaches, and your sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear, offering you one of three options: fight, flight, or freeze. This video gives a great quick rundown of these responses and the function that they serve. The important thing to remember is this is your brain trying to protect you. It’s trying to keep you out of danger and alive. These responses also happen super fast, so it’s tough to avoid them.

So what might that actually look like?

You’re probably not getting up and literally running away from your computer when you read a stressful article. It can sometimes look like arguing with people on the internet (fight), shutting down from your family (freeze), or feeling anxious and like you’re crawling out of your skin (flight).

Stages of Grief

Another possible response? Grief. You’re grieving a lot right now, whether or not you realize it. Normal life (predictability), breaks from parenting, going to work, food shopping without a face mask, etc. are all things that have been whisked away rather swiftly. That leaves us stunned and entrenched in a kind of grief response. There are five stages of grief: depression, anxiety, bargaining, denial, and acceptance. They can occur in any order and any frequency. Not everyone experiences all of the stages of grief in the course of one grief response.

This video pretty succinctly (and humorously imo) illustrates the five stages and what you might experience in each:

Again, what does that look like in real life?

Denial: I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s fine.

Anger: Yelling, rage, etc.

Bargaining: If we just do everything right we won’t get it. We’ll be safe.

Depression: Sadness, crying, hopelessness.

Acceptance: This is how things are right now and I will get through it.

For most of us? We’re experiencing BOTH kinds of responses, and the specific response may change day to day or even more frequently. When a new situation or new information arises, you might kick back into the fight/flight/freeze response temporarily. Then when things calm you slide back into your “normal” state right now, which might be flipping back and forth between grief stages. Some days you might feel OK, then the next feel intense anger, or intense anxiety, and that can be really confusing. But all of that is OK. This is what we expect your brain to do in this situation. Your brain is trying to figure out how to help you survive, and with extended stress like this it’s hard for your brain to figure out what to do.

So what the heck can I do about it?

Use your coping skills (walk your dog, deep breathing, art, etc). Calm your nervous system.

Work on meeting your needs (all of them!) For some quick info about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs click here, but the basics are that we have to meet the needs lower in the hierarchy before we can get to the top ones. You can’t reach a goal for growing as a person (that top of the pyramid) when you don’t know if and when you’re going to eat again (bottom of the pyramid).

Accept how you feel in this moment, knowing that your brain is doing exactly what it is supposed to.

Meditate.

Talk to a friend.

Talk to a therapist!

Check in with yourself about how you’re feeling from time to time.

And most importantly of all - give yourself some grace. Be kind to yourself. You’re human and some days are shitter than others. Forgive yourself for what felt like a failure today - and try again tomorrow.