Bonding over shared Covid trauma

Shared trauma where people who are traumatised in similar ways by an event they go through, may often bond through it, even get enmeshed with each other romantically, sexually and otherwise.
What can happen is that one person heals from the trauma faster or better than the others, and then, it feels like the clouds have parted and you can see clearly now.
What can happen is that one person heals from the trauma faster or better than the others, and then, it feels like the clouds have parted and you can see clearly now.

BENGALURU: In the aftermath of the Covid second wave, a scriptwriter friend was talking about wanting to register prospective movie ideas such as Corona: A Love Story, or Viral Love with plots of how in the heart of the pandemic, people find each other and start relationships. 

“The story begins like this,” my friend said, “In a medical college hospital, senior residents are showing freshers how things work and who is who, and a couple of general college fun episodes later, the first Covid cases start coming and soon, it is hell itself. It is all hands on deck and everyone is working themselves to their bone, and guess what happens next?” “A song and dance sequence like the Rasputin number that the Thrissur medical college students did?” I replied drily, at which the script writer part of the friend sparked up as if taking a mental note, and then continued, “Well, sure, that will be nice. The senior and junior residents are working endlessly for months together. We throw in some flashback stories about their backgrounds, maybe one is a poor farmer’s child wanting to serve-the-people and the other got a paid seat and is trying to please a parent they were never close to, and then these two people fall in love. Then, maybe both fall prey to the virus themselves, and there is a tragic ending. We will end with the survivor now walking into a virology institute as a senior researcher trying to discover a vaccine. It will be a super-hit film, don’t you think?” Such a film, if it ever gets made, might well become a super hit but whether relationships born from a shared trauma will be super-hit and last forever is questionable.

Shared trauma where people who are traumatised in similar ways by an event they go through, may often bond through it, even get enmeshed with each other romantically, sexually and otherwise. Being able to support each other feels wonderful, and can seem very much like love. Only, it really is not love in the way we would understand it. The shared experience and the feeling that this person really gets it can be very alluring, especially if others don’t get it and react far less emotionally than you do. It is very easy to mistake mutual trauma survivorship and support as love.

Labelling this as love can be a mistake. What can happen is that one person heals from the trauma faster or better than the others, and then, it feels like the clouds have parted and you can see clearly now. That there are no real common values, goals or interests and not needing support leaves the bond vulnerable. Then, the person still hurting might try to pull the other back into that trauma support bond, by creating situations that cause hurt and pain so you might seek to support each other. It can get messy, painful and traumatic in itself. Let the scripts be for the movies. Our lives are different.

(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)

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