COVID-19 A Care Package Of Comfort For Mental Health.

SUMMARY

Collective crisis — whether a pandemic, a period of political upheaval, or any of the other large-scale stressors that have shaped recent years — activates our nervous systems in particular ways. This post, originally written during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been expanded to address what we’ve all learned about navigating uncertainty: the clinical framework for understanding collective trauma, the particular ways it affects people with relational trauma backgrounds, and a care package of genuine support for trying times — whenever you find yourself in them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. When the World Becomes Uncertain
2. What Is Collective Trauma?
3. The Nervous System in Crisis: What’s Actually Happening
4. The Care Package
5. Free Guide
6. The Both/And of Trying Times
7. The Systemic Lens: Why Collective Crisis Hits Differently for Trauma Survivors
8. Building Resilience for the Long Arc
9. Frequently Asked Questions
10. References & Related Reading

When the World Becomes Uncertain

There are periods in our collective life when the usual scaffolding of certainty — the sense that tomorrow will resemble today, that the systems we rely on will hold, that we can plan for a future we can roughly predict — becomes unreliable. We’ve lived through several of these in recent years: a global pandemic, political upheaval, economic uncertainty, the ongoing crisis of climate change.

In those periods, I watch something particular happen in my practice. The clients who have relational trauma histories — who grew up in environments of unpredictability, where safety was never guaranteed — often have a more severe response to collective uncertainty than those who didn’t. The external crisis plugs directly into the existing neural pathways of early threat. Their nervous systems recognize the feeling. They’ve been here before, in miniature, in their own homes.

This is not weakness. It is, in a strange way, a kind of accuracy: they are the ones whose nervous systems were already calibrated for a world where things don’t go as expected. And that calibration has a cost.

This is a care package for those times — and for the residue of those times that can linger long after the acute crisis has passed.

DEFINITION

Collective Trauma

A traumatic event or period that affects a community, society, or group simultaneously — disrupting shared assumptions about safety, predictability, and social functioning. Collective trauma is distinct from individual trauma in that the usual support systems (community, institutions, social connection) are often themselves destabilized by the same event, making it harder to access the relational co-regulation that typically supports recovery.

The Nervous System in Crisis: What’s Actually Happening

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, MD, psychiatrist and trauma researcher at Boston University School of Medicine, has written extensively about how trauma — including collective trauma — is fundamentally a nervous system event. When we perceive threat, the sympathetic nervous system activates: cortisol and adrenaline flood the bloodstream, the heart rate rises, attention narrows to threat signals, and the capacity for nuanced reasoning and future planning is temporarily reduced.

In acute, short-duration threats, this is adaptive. We mobilize, respond, and then — ideally — the threat passes and the nervous system returns to baseline. But in prolonged, ambiguous threats — a pandemic that lasts years, an ongoing political crisis, chronic economic instability — the nervous system doesn’t get the all-clear signal. It stays activated. And chronic activation has real, measurable effects: disrupted sleep, irritability, difficulty concentrating, immune system suppression, and a flattening of what researchers call “affect tolerance” — the capacity to tolerate a full range of emotions without being overwhelmed.

Dr. Laurence Heller, PhD, psychologist and developer of Neuroaffective Relational Model (NARM), adds that for people with early developmental trauma, collective crisis specifically activates what he calls “core states” — the deep, early-forming nervous system responses to threat that underlie many complex trauma symptoms. In a collective crisis, many people are experiencing what feels like a very old fear in a very new context.

“For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.” — William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

The Care Package

This is what I want to offer you for trying times — not a prescription, not a five-step plan, but a collection of genuine things that help:

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Permission to not be okay. In times of collective crisis, there is often pressure — from social media, from our own internalized expectations — to be coping well, to be productive, to find silver linings, to emerge transformed. If you’re not okay, you are allowed to say so. Naming the difficulty is the first step toward processing it.

Normalizing your response. Whatever you’re feeling — anxious, flat, irritable, grief-stricken, weirdly numb, alternatively panicked — is a normal human response to abnormal circumstances. There is no correct way to feel during a crisis. Your nervous system is doing its best with information that would challenge anyone.

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The basics, scaffolded. When the nervous system is activated, the basics become harder and more important simultaneously. Sleep, when possible. Movement of any kind — even ten minutes of walking can shift the nervous system state. Food that is nourishing rather than just convenient. Water. These aren’t luxuries or self-care tropes — they are the literal substrate of your nervous system’s capacity to function.

Curated information intake. Collective crisis produces enormous volumes of information, much of it alarming, much of it contradictory, much of it designed (often unconsciously, sometimes deliberately) to activate rather than inform. Setting intentional limits on news and social media consumption is not avoidance — it is nervous system stewardship. You can stay informed without marinating in the anxiety of the scroll.

Connection with other humans. The nervous system regulates through connection — this is one of the most robust findings in trauma research. Text someone. Call someone. Sit near someone, even if you’re not talking. The co-regulation that happens through genuine human contact is irreplaceable, and it is particularly important when the nervous system is under sustained stress.

One small thing you can control. In times when large things feel out of control, one small domain of agency — a corner of your desk that is organized, a daily walk at the same time, a meal you cooked — can provide a modest but real sense of ground. This is not about toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. It’s about finding the small handholds that help the nervous system feel less at sea.

Permission to grieve. Collective crises involve losses — of safety, of normalcy, of specific people and things, of a future that looked different from what is now unfolding. Grief is not weakness. It’s the appropriate response to loss. Allowing yourself to grieve, rather than pushing through, is part of what allows the grief to move through rather than accumulate.

Compassion for your capacity ceiling. In times of sustained stress, your capacity is genuinely reduced. The things that felt manageable before may feel harder. The things you expect of yourself — productivity, patience, emotional availability — may not be what you’re able to give. You haven’t become less capable. Your resources are being consumed differently. Adjusting expectations accordingly is wisdom, not failure.

The Both/And of Trying Times

Sarah, a 40-year-old educator I worked with through the pandemic years and beyond, put something plainly that I’ve been thinking about ever since: “I feel both more broken and more real than I ever have,” she said. “Like the crisis stripped away a lot of the performance. I can’t maintain the facade of having it together. And weirdly, I’m starting to realize I didn’t want to anyway.”

The Both/And of trying times: they are genuinely terrible and they sometimes clarify what matters. They bring genuine suffering and genuine solidarity. They reveal real fragility and real resilience. They are not opportunities for growth in the toxic-positivity sense — you don’t have to be glad about them or find silver linings. But they do have a way of burning off a certain amount of pretense, and in that burning, some people find something more honest about themselves and their relationships.

This doesn’t redeem the suffering. But it is worth noticing.

The Systemic Lens: Why Collective Crisis Hits Differently for Trauma Survivors

Collective crises are not experienced equally. Research consistently shows that people with trauma histories, people from marginalized communities, and people with fewer socioeconomic resources experience collective crises with greater severity and with less access to the buffers that support recovery.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, research published in JAMA Psychiatry documented significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD in individuals with prior trauma histories compared to those without. The pandemic’s particular combination of isolation, threat of illness, and disruption of routine was, for many trauma survivors, a near-perfect activation of existing trauma patterns.

Dr. Judith Herman, MD, psychiatrist and author of Trauma and Recovery, writes that recovery from trauma — individual or collective — requires three conditions: safety, mourning, and reconnection with ordinary life. Collective crises disrupt all three simultaneously. Understanding this isn’t defeatist — it’s accurate, and accuracy is the starting point for appropriate support.

Building Resilience for the Long Arc

The long arc of healing from collective crisis — or from the individual trauma that collective crisis can activate — is not a sprint. It’s a gradual process of nervous system repair, grief processing, and meaning-making that happens in relationship with other people and, often, with professional support.

A few things that support this long arc:

Ongoing, regulated connection. Not just the acute reaching-out of crisis, but sustained, predictable connection with people who know you. Therapy, long-term friendships, community — these are the relational infrastructure of resilience.

Somatic practice. The nervous system heals through the body as well as through the mind. Regular somatic practices — yoga, breath work, dance, martial arts, anything that brings you into the body with a degree of intention — build the physiological foundation for emotional regulation over time.

Narrative processing. At some point in the arc of recovery, there comes a time to put words to what happened — to tell the story, including the hardest parts, and have it witnessed. This can happen in therapy, in writing, or in careful conversation with trusted others. The act of narrating experience is part of how the brain integrates it.

Professional support when needed. For many people, the post-crisis period — when the acute crisis has passed but its effects remain — is actually when the most therapeutic work becomes possible. If you find yourself still activated, still grieving, still carrying the weight of recent years, this is a reasonable time to seek targeted support.

Whatever trying time you’re navigating — whether it’s a global crisis, a personal one, or the residue of collective difficulty that lingers long after the headlines have moved on — you are allowed to still be affected by it. You are allowed to need support. You are allowed to take it one small day at a time and let that be enough.

We get through hard times together, even when together looks different than we expected. Reach out. Let someone help you carry it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annie Wright, LMFT is a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and founder of Evergreen Counseling in Berkeley, CA. She specializes in helping driven women navigate collective and personal trauma, build nervous system resilience, and heal relational wounds. Licensed in California and Florida. Learn more about working with Annie.

Medical Disclaimer

Medical Disclaimer