Most of us cannot wait for 2020 to end. The year has seen more distressing events than any before, and while we have the weight of those memories to carry forward, we can reclaim some of it and derive useful lessons from those experiences. Here is Dr. Achal Bhagat explains how he has managed to do it.

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As the year 2020 comes to a close, most of us are still quite stunned by the events that we have experienced. We have faced isolation, adversity, anonymity and trauma. We have lost dignity, we have lost a sense of purpose, we have lost friends and we have lost our identities. We have not been able to touch people we love. We have not been able to share their grief and we have not been able to share our own fears with anyone. We have stood alone. Lonely, hypervigilant, predicting the worst, and fearing the uncertain, we stood squirming, yet still, as the reality of 2020 engulfed us.

We have had a sense of a common fate with those around us, and yet we have nurtured individualism to the extent of being paranoid. We have been afraid of others; hoarded food, medicines and tissues. We have blamed people. We have recognised how fragile we are! It has been exhausting and we have been paralyzed by our helplessness and our yearning for the familiar.

It is not a surprise then that we want to write off this year. Cross it out! Erase it! Or at least neutralise it! We want to quickly move on or move back to what we know to be ‘normal’!

Time is neither a friend nor an enemy! It is not a book which ends or a journey where you reach a destination!

Time is a cycle, a rhythm we live through. Beyond the universal rhythm of days and nights, weeks and months, we build our own rhythm. Our interactions with our world embellish our rhythm. Our interactions are a way of marking time with memories. Through these memories, we create a past, a present, and a future! We will try to do it this year too, except that we have lived through a period of traumatic inertia in our lives and it would be difficult to outgrow 2020 and leave it in the past.

The difficult experiences of 2020 will stay with us for a long time and no amount of platitudes are likely to make us forget them. You cannot have a balance sheet approach to time and experience of trauma. We cannot counter the trauma that we experienced by saying, ‘we saved on travel time’, ‘the air was cleaner and we could see the Dhauladhar range of mountains from our rooftops’ or that ‘we learned how to knit or cook’ or ‘take photos of the shooting stars’ or remember trivia like ‘which film had three songs picturised on Helen’ for the quizzes on the WhatsApp groups. This will not bring back our rhythm and resonance of our rhythm with the universal rhythm of time.

Is it possible to reclaim time and particularly the year of 2020?

For reclaiming time, one has to understand that that when we interact with a memory of our experiences from the time that has passed, we create a new version of it. The skill that one requires to use for reclaiming time is called reframing. Reframing is finding another valid way of explaining the experience.

For example, whenever I used to remember my father’s passing away in 2003, I remembered my sadness and to some extent the anger and guilt that I experienced at that time. But as I have reframed that experience, I am able to automatically remind myself of a different meaning which I attribute to the experience. I think about the mortality of each person, the need for humility and the fact that I love my father and miss him. So, we have a choice that each time we interact with a memory from our past, we reframe the experience and value it differently. It takes time but it is possible.

Some of the experiences that have been traumatic cannot be reframed without the acceptance of the anger, sadness or anxiety that is linked with that time. Without the acceptance of the feelings as valid, the reframe is not believable. When we accept and validate our feelings and then reframe the experience, we reclaim time. This is only possible when we view time as a cycle, as opposed to something that is adversarial, or an object that is lost or something that makes us feel helpless.

I am in the process of reclaiming the year 2020

I have reflected every day for a short period of time. I am sharing with you my early reflections.

1. I acknowledge my sense of loss. My sense of helplessness, my regrets, my loss of identity, and my anger are overwhelmingly real.
2. I have reviewed my key memories. As my reflection about my experiences in 2020 evolves, I will continue my conversations with myself and gradually build on these ways of understanding my experiences.
3. My thoughts will change, some will grow and provide me meaning, and some will stay as they are presently for a long time.
4. Unprocessed raw emotions. But one memory at a time, hopefully, I will reclaim the year 2020.
5. I lost a few friends to COVID 19. It has reminded me that we are fragile as people. Our fault lines, as a society, were exposed. So, I need to build my resilience and I need to contribute to strengthening institutions.
6. I saw people going through the same pain that I experienced. I realised that we are more similar than different. I need to respect the others, not demonise them.
7. I had to start doing so many things on my own, I realised how many people were contributing to my life. There is nothing I did on my own or could do on my own. I acknowledged that we are interdependent. I need to value all around me and remain humble.

Every day when I got up this year, it was hard to find a purpose in what I was doing. The inertia could get the better of me and it did on some days. I discovered I needed to continue to find purpose and meaning. I also discovered that the search for meaning is not an elusive end point of a journey, it is an everyday process.

Meaningful things are small and in the here and now! Perhaps, participation in life provides meaning to it. One cannot pursue meaning, one can discover it as one lives through the time.

Each person has to discover their own way of reframing and revaluing their experiences. Remember to be accepting of yourself! You have strengths, you have limitations and you have the capacity to enable your strengths. Perhaps, the greatest strength that you have is that you can think about your feelings and thinking. Reflect now! Take care!

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of M3 India.

The author, Dr. Achal Bhagat, is a Senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at Apollo Hospitals, Delhi, Chairperson, Saarthak, Chairperson, AADI.