A colleague suggested I write a blog about my artistic style and biography.

“I grew up in Bulgaria, in an environment of a long and agonizing transition between communism and democracy,” I started writing. “Modernism was used as a way to demolish the harsh canon of socialist realism with its idealized, naturalistic style. Although I grew up and progressed as an artist in a time technically far removed from socialist realism, this was the artistic spirit I inherited.” Then I pondered making parallels between psychoanalysis and art. Was psychoanalysis in Bulgaria also encapsulated? Was it too modern-classical as opposed to postmodern-contemporary?

You are intellectualizing, I imagined my analyst saying.

How do I really feel?

Angry. I am angry.

We all have many different feelings about the pre-Oedipal-monster-coronavirus that threatens to engulf, suffocate, devour, and swallow us up. “It’s a war,” they say. We are all emotional. We are scared, frozen, numb, in denial, bargaining, or angry. How do we bring the fragmented paranoid-schizoid anxieties into a depressive cohesiveness that we can all integrate and tolerate? Our lives as we knew them have stopped in their tracks. We are adjusting to a new reality. We therapists so often tell our patients to take care of the little inner child. Who is going to provide safety and reassurance to the global inner child now?

What will happen to the profession? How are we going to lie on a virtual couch? How will the virtual encounter differ from the in-person one?

Just before I started writing this blog, it was announced on the news that if we as a society are all compliant with social distancing, quarantine, and other measures, then only 100,000 people are expected to die in the United States. Did I hear correctly? 100,000 deaths would be considered a success! And if we are not compliant, then more than 2 million Americans are expected to die.

One of my patients texted: “They talk about you and want to see you fall apart. It is really sad.”

“They” are the voices she hears. They want to destroy me. I am realizing how important I have become for her. I am the internalized good object. The internalized abuser and persecutor do not want to destroy her anymore, but me. She was scared.

Holding an awareness of my longstanding positive countertransference to this patient, I called her. “They are just voices!” I said. “All their power is to talk and nothing more than that. They are not stronger than you are! They talk about me because they know that I can help!” What did I just do? Did I act out my desire to rescue her?

She was worrying about me. Could she feel my anxiety? They want to see you fall apart, she said. Or did she feel that I was worrying about her? I was. I know she has compromised immune system conditions that put her at risk. I urged her not to come to the clinic in order to protect herself. I was providing services from a distance that nobody was paying me for, as the clinic I work for transitioned to tele-sessions much later than other businesses did.

We all need to hear that the pre-Oedipal-monster-virus is not strong. It is the exaggerated fear of a child and if we have an adult conversation about it, it will disappear. Unable to tolerate two co-existing, contrasting ideas at the same time, we jump from “This is not serious” all the way to “This is a disaster,” a real split.

It is both. For some, it is not a serious disease, but others will die.

It is surreal…

The shelves in the grocery stores in NYC are empty; prices grow. This reminds me of a particular period in my childhood when Bulgaria was struggling with the shock of her painful metamorphosis between communism and democracy. Now I realize why I started this blog with a description of the political situation in Bulgaria during that time. The little girl inside wrote that. I remember that time of agonizing transition that affected all aspects of human life and led to a severe financial crisis, inflation, economic decline, and widespread crime. Scary times. The store shelves were empty. People were only able to buy one loaf of bread and one packet of flour per family, with a coupon only. There was humanitarian aid for us coming from the U.S. in boxes – clothing and beans.

The little girl inside is worried.

It is surreal.

I was worried about my patient. She was worried about me. She felt my pain. I felt hers. We were together in separateness, despite the social distancing.

How can we wake up from this bad dream we are all dreaming together? This simple chart from The Washington Post answers this question: by helping each other and being together. Together in separateness.  

 

Irina Simidchieva is an artist, therapist, and third-year psychoanalytic candidate at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis.  

 

To contribute to the special series on COVID-19, send blog posts of up to ~1,000 words (read full submission guidelines here) to Analysis Now blog co-editors Justine Duhr at justinetduhr@gmail.com and Robert Levin at rob@robertlevinlcsw.com.

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend:
Special Series on COVID-19 by Justine Duhr, MFA, and Robert Levin, LCSW
Thinking Analytically in the Time of COVID-19 by Sandra Green, LCSW
Minding COVID-19: Re-establishing Communication Through Mentalizing by Troy Becker, Psy.D.