“Our very existence is being threatened due to climate change and I don’t recall any other time in history when the survival of our planet was at stake,” retired Jungian psychologist Kathy Martone said. “We have certainly faced pandemics, political upheaval, and civil rights protests before. But never has our Mother Earth been in such dire danger as she is facing now. Certainly, never in my lifetime have I faced any of these challenges, not to mention all at once.”
Considering the possible impacts of multiple challenges, Martone said she would be surprised if people were not experiencing at least some depression and anxiety. She said stress and upheaval, illness, loss of loved ones, are all situations that often elicit reactions such as despondence, melancholy, or apprehension.
Martone shares some time-honored strategies for coping:
- Meditation and/or prayer.
- Exercise.
- Eat healthy foods regularly.
- Get plenty of restful sleep
- Seek professional help.
- Talk to your doctor about possible medication.
- Spend time with friends and family, distanced, online or by phone.
- Join an online support group.
- Find a creative project.
- Finish home projects.
- Spend time in nature.
- Snuggle with your animal companion(s).
- A great way to get your mind off your own troubles is to volunteer to help others.
- Limit exposure to the news.
“It is worrisome to see people being careless as they can easily infect other people,” Martone said. “This virus is contagious and in order to protect ourselves, our families, friends -– as well as healthcare workers – we must take precautions. Otherwise, it is not only ourselves at risk, but anyone we come into contact with. What affects me could affect you and the consequences can easily become catastrophic.”
She said some of the risks people are taking in regard to social needs reflect the fact that humans are indeed social creatures. But she also thinks some of the risky behaviors are driven by other motivating factors.
“We are being bombarded from every direction by chaos, political upheavals, violent behaviors, divisiveness, hatred, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, sexism, and scary and unusual climate events,” Martone said. “People are confused and acting, I think, from fear. Whenever people act out of fear, their behaviors tend to deteriorate and they often don’t act in their own best interests. Other people get hurt. On top of all this, when you have people in positions of power distributing false information, everything gets muddied and people don’t know who or what to believe.”
“Healthcare workers are faced with so much trauma, pain and heartache and when the system gets overloaded with patients, they don’t have enough resources to provide the assistance for which they have been trained,” she said. “It can be traumatizing for people trained to relieve pain and suffering when they are unable to do so and instead, have to watch helplessly as those in their charge deteriorate.”
Dream on
Martone does a lot of dream interpretation work. But she is only seeing occasional dreams about Covid-19 among the people she works with.
“Some professionals do think dreaming is a way for the brain to process what is going on in our waking life world,” she said. “Even though there may be some merit to that philosophy, I tend to believe in the more symbolic interpretation of dreams, the belief that dream images are an ancient image language that prompts us to look deeper inside for more soulful messages.”
For example, if someone dreams about Covid and sees him or herself in a group of people not wearing masks and feels very anxious, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are processing their concerns about the actual virus. Instead, Martone said it could likely mean they are dreaming about something they perceive to be foreign to their psyche and that they view as dangerous to their health, when in fact it could be something very positive.
“There is something trying to infect them with material that is spiritually positive,” she said. “And the masks could be seen as a way of preventing that spiritual transmission. Interestingly enough, there are also multiple different possible meanings for the image of a mask. From my forty-plus years of working with dreams, I have found that these deeper, more spiritual interpretations provide more insight and promote more psychological and spiritual evolution than simply looking at them as a reflection of our waking life world. This in turn offers more profound tools for processing whatever might be troubling us in our outer life.”
“Professional help provides assistance and often enables the person to recover and heal much more quickly than if they had tried to cope on their own,” Martone said. “We have come a long way in terms of mental health and it is wonderful that the stigma previously associated with psychotherapy is rapidly being erased.
“Consequently, people are able to resume fulfilling lives without being hampered by unresolved issues which in turn means they are able to reenter their community and function at a much higher level. It takes a great deal of courage to ask for help, but the advantages are well worth it.”
Martone’s website is dreamagik.com.