A Case Study In Dealing With Negative Emotions OR How I Coped When My Cat Barfed on My Laptop
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Despite my best intentions, sometimes I just don't get to everything on my To Do list. This week has been especially bad in that regard. With a sick child, a sick dog, and a laptop that is dead because my cat barfed all over it, I'm ending the week with lots of important things undone.
I've decided to take this experience as an opportunity to try to learn something about myself. So, upon reflection, I've identified the following internal experiences related to my undone tasks:
- First up is anxiety. I'm jittery and tense. I feel a lot of impulse to be active.
- Some of the anxiety becomes anger. That damn cat! He did this on purpose! I should take him back to the shelter. Why did everything have to go wrong at once! Why can't I ever get a break?
We have video funerals, like we have video conferences, and video doctor visits. We’re starting to gather, in some cases, with 6 feet between a handful of local mourners. It doesn’t feel like enough to me. Even the most satisfying funeral for a single COVID death isn’t the place to address the connection between all the deaths, and all the mourners. All the common threads among the lives that will never be the same after this pandemic. I feel a need for an additional way to mourn that acknowledges the global community of mourners, and honors the collective nature of our losses. One that enables mutual support among mourners who perhaps have different losses that are all part of the larger phenomenon.