It was truly bizarre reading this article on 'Surge Capacity' today

[Abrin]

I encountered this article today on how to deal with the 'ambiguous loss' that healthy people have been encountering because of the pandemic and it truly caught me by complete surprise that the advice that the article gives is essential the same advice that I've received through the years through ME/CFS forums.

https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c

It is so strange to imagine an entire society struggling to deal with a type of grief that people with ME/CFS have had to have dealt with their entire lives. But, we had to deal with it while being told at the same time by society that we weren't trying hard enough.

Maybe a subset of healthy people will finally understand how hurtful it has been when they used to tell us that, "It must be nice to be able to stay at home all day."

They now get to experience how 'nice' it is to be cut off from the rest of the outside world.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Maybe a subset of healthy people will finally understand how hurtful it has been when they used to tell us that, "It must be nice to be able to stay at home all day."

My coworkers used to harass me- because I was excused from some mandatory meetings. Because they made me so sick.

But do they understand that? No. so I would get the Oh AREN:T you so lucky remarks. Often in very very hurtful ways.

"You should get to spend one day feeling like how I feel", thinks I.

When I might go out to lunch with a friend, they don't realize I"ve not seen a single person- beyond shapes walking past windows- for the last, oh Year or so. The last lunch with someone was- 6 months ago. I don't even see clerks in stores.

When my daughter leaves, I'll have resume going to the store. If I am to ever eat again.

yes- our Surge Resistence is a bit depleted, had to use some of that up...to survive this.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I thought this excerpt from the article above was interesting...sometimes its OK to be irrational. So we have greater power to make adjustmentw in our thinking and allow for- an escape route.

"Experiment with “both-and” thinking
This approach may not work for everyone, but Boss says there’s an alternative to binary thinking that many people find helpful in dealing with ambiguous loss. She calls it “both-and” thinking, and sometimes it means embracing a bit of the irrational.
For the families of soldiers missing in action in Vietnam that Boss studied early in her career, or the family members of victims of plane crashes where the bodies aren’t recovered, this type of thinking means thinking: “He is both living and maybe not. She is probably dead but maybe not.”
“If you stay in the rational when nothing else is rational, like right now, then you’ll just stress yourself more,” she says. “What I say with ambiguous loss is the situation is crazy, not the person. The situation is pathological, not the person.”
An analogous approach during the pandemic might be, “This is terrible and many people are dying, and this is also a time for our families to come closer together,” Boss says. On a more personal level, “I’m highly competent, and right now I’m flowing with the tide day-to-day.”
It’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s existence, but when you can’t change the situation, “the only thing you can change is your perception of it,” she says.
Of course, that doesn’t mean denying the existence of the pandemic or the coronavirus. As Maddaus says, “You have to face reality.” But how we frame that reality mentally can help us cope with it."

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I was going to make the Schrodinger comment, but you beat me to it.

As posited in Schrodinger's Box, the cat is both alive AND dead, until you open the box.

Maybe the rest of the world, or at least the rest of this country, having to live as we have for so long will be the grand Opening of the Box ....

Whaddaya wanna bet that anything they learn from this self- and pandemic-imposed seclusion is forgotten within two months of their being released back into the wilds of shopping, restaurant, nightclub, and partying availability ....

DAMN !!! Edited, again, for witless typos, and I'm sure I've still missed some .....