3 April 2020

“Giving up” in the time of Covid-19

On the third appointment with Theoria Talks, the psychologist and psychotherapist Ilenia Sussarellu talks about the difficulty of elaborating the experience of forced imprisonment due to the emergency and the problems that are emerging in many of us.

The central theme of his speech is that great variable that unites us all in this period: the “giving up”. We give up our job, our hobbies, our own escape valve, our social relationships, our time spent away from home and, in the obviously wider sense of the term, we give up our freedom.

Dr. Sussarellu explains how the absence of a very important moment, a path that in cognitive terms is called “processing”, can destabilize us in this forced seclusion. That is to say, there is no continuity between a before and an after which helps our brain to pack a given experience and integrate it in a way that suits our identity. This emergency has effectively catapulted us into a new reality and has brought about substantial changes in our lives, overnight and without our choice. Thus, in our brain between the beginning and the end a chasm has been created, a cognitive hole difficult to process that puts us in a position to live everything with greater stress.