In his 2017 book The Catholic Guide to Loneliness, author Kevin Vost cautioned readers not to let virtual conversations take the place of real, face-to-face meetings with friends and loved ones.

Today, as society is in its third month of enforced social isolation precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Vost notes the irony of social-media platforms such as Facetime and Zoom actually becoming invaluable tools to help people stay connected and feel less lonely.

“So, now those have become valuable things that we do need to cultivate, perhaps even with people we didn’t cultivate before,” Vost said in a telephone interview from his home in Springfield, Illinois. “Show those people that we do care about them. If you’ve just texted them in the past, pick up the phone now and talk to them. This crisis can prompt us to interact in more significant ways.”

Show people that you care about them, says Kevin Vost. “If you’ve just texted them in the past, pick up the phone now and talk to them.” (Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels)

Moreover, the crisis may also lead people to realize that they had been taking their friendships for granted. “I hope it will really help us to realize what we are missing – that absence makes the heart grow fonder,” says Vost, who holds a doctorate in psychology.

Vost is one of several faith-based experts contacted by The B.C. Catholic in recent weeks to offer insight into pandemic-related psychological issues that society in general and Catholics in particular might be experiencing. The latter focus arises from the fact that, as members of a faith whose essential features include a regular “mass” gathering at which a physical “communion” with God is celebrated, Catholics might be especially hard hit by the loss of social interaction resulting from the quasi-quarantine that officials imposed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

The good news, however, is that the same faith uniting Catholics in communion also tends to position Catholics to better take advantage of the imposed isolation, as well as to make us more resilient in the face of adversity. It’s one of the fruits of the virtue of hope.

Michael Hryniuk, a Toronto-based theologian, author and educator, says it’s certainly true that Catholics may be grieving the loss of their physical faith communities – and that such sorrow may be especially acute when compared with a general, non-religious population that has not suffered such a profound disconnection.

Catholics may be grieving the loss of their physical faith communicaption, but believers can draw on the strength of their faith, says theologian Michael Hryniuk. (Adobe)

However, Hryniuk believes that loss is more than offset by the strength that Catholic believers can draw on because of their faith. It starts with a deep connection to the Church’s 2,000-year history. “It’s not something we think about consciously, but we feel it – we feel it in the depths of our psyche,” he says. Combined with our embrace of “that sense of the sacred,” it’s a powerful defence to loneliness.

As well, “really fresh research in the last five years shows that, in terms of resilience, how children who have experienced a sense of connection to a higher power – not just belief and values – but a real experiential grounding in faith, their outcomes are just vastly better,” he says.

Hryniuk explains this through an analysis of “attachment theory,” which is usually cited to show the importance of the connection between parents and children. “What the infant needs most, to fund their human development, is the foundation of primal trust in their caregiver,” he says. “And what that amounts to is, ultimately, a sense that the universe in friendly.” Similarly, a strong relationship between God and his children produces the same beneficial effects.

Rev. Dr. Nathan White, the executive director of the Institute for Faith and Resilience, based in Lafayette, Louisiana, says a number of factors explain why people of faith are better able to endure and prosper in difficult times. “At the personal level, faith can provide things like meaning and hope, and kind of a larger meta-narrative in which we can understand our lives,” says White, a former U.S. Army chaplain.

“There’s also the community side, where being in a faith community – being surrounded by others who help support us and who have similar views of life, and with whom we can process our own emotions and thoughts – produces a powerful [effect].”

White has also said that his most recent book, Biblical and Theological Visions of Resilience, is designed to encourage readers by explaining that the Judeo-Christian tradition “has a wealth of resources to help individuals understand and resiliently navigate experiences of adversity.”

Author Vost says his book, on Catholics and loneliness, has multiple goals. The first is a message to those who are feeling lonely. “There is one thing you can be sure of,” he says, “and that’s that you are not alone, because one of the great ironies of loneliness now is that it is extremely rampant around the world. So this book is for people who are lonely, to help them find ways to bear it, to endure it, or possibly to reach out and overcome it.”

The book is also aimed at people who want to reach out and help those who are lonely. “Another of the big ironies of the book is that the things that people should do to help other people who are lonely, some of those are exactly the things that the people who are lonely should be doing to reach out to other lonely people,” he says.

A senior watches from the window of her residence as her family visits. “Christ himself experienced loneliness on earth,” writes Kevin Vost. (CNS photo/courtesy Caritas House)

In one of the book’s chapters, called “The Loneliness of Christ,” Vost describes how “the Gospel itself shows us how Christ himself experienced loneliness on earth … where Christ endured loneliness, not only on the cross but also during the night of his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

He also provides practical advice for overcoming loneliness, including a list of “Thirty Ways to Love Your Brother.” These include such activities as praying, playing, smiling, greeting, reconciling, sharing meals, submitting to God, slowing the pace of one’s life, and listening.

An important chapter in the book deals with something Vost calls “The Solace of Solitude.” It draws on the examples of saints “to show us, in times when we must be isolate, what positives can come from that – in what ways we can use that time to grow closer to God, to grow more careful in our thinking about how we can relate to others, once we are finally set from our restrictions,” he says, noting that the advice is especially relevant during the current COVID crisis.

Hryniuk agrees. “I think the greatest gift of this whole [pandemic] is not just about expanding our tools and platforms for connecting. It’s about solitude, and I think what’s going on here is that people are learning how to connect in a more deeply, prayerful way, with God and with themselves, and with their families and friends.”

He continues: “It’s remarkable. When I talk to people now, I am interacting with people who are not tired, who are not wiped out by the pace of their life, who are not too busy, who are taking walks in nature, playing with their kids. It’s a different world, and I think it has helped people to kind of go deeper into their faith.”

Ultimately, Hryniuk believes we will emerge stronger from the current crisis. “I think we are going to adapt and maybe even ultimately expand our repertoire, so to speak, of how we express our life in the body of Christ in the world,” he says.

“We are a global church, and we’re connecting with people from all over the world in ways we probably never would have. But this [pandemic] has kind of rocked our world. So I’m hopeful that we’re going to adapt, and then, when we meet again, there’s going to be some new awareness of how we can connect in other ways.”

This adversity, then, should end up bringing us together and, in so doing, make us stronger – just as the Church’s “National Prayer for Canada in the Wake of the COVID-19 Crisis” envisions “the more together we are, the better and stronger we will emerge.” If so, it will surely be a strength built on a foundation of a faith, animated by the virtue of hope, and sustained by an ever-loving God who promised never to leave nor forsake us.


Exercise is good, but sharing is better

Psychologist and counsellor Denis Boyd, a member of All Saints Parish in Coquitlam, offers some useful advice to people who are suffering increased stress, sadness, or anxiety during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. In fact, he says there are two simple but important ways to release stress and grief from your system.

“One is to talk about it,” Boyd says. “And the second is to write about it. So, I would be encouraging people to talk out loud with somebody they consider a reasonably good listener – and hopefully they also listen well to them – about that they’re feeling overwhelmed, or bad, or frustrated, or whatever it might be.”

Two ways of releasing stress and grief during this crisis are talking about it and writing about it, says psychologist Denis Boyd. (Negative Space/Pexels)

He continues, “Or, if the people they’re with are already stressed or are not available, they can become short-term journal writers, where they write down what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, and they’ll get a nice release from doing that.”

Boyd notes that another outlet which is often talked about is exercise, but he believes exercise doesn’t really release a lot of stress. “Walking is very good, but it can’t compete with writing and or talking,” he says. “So I would get people thinking out loud about what they’re going through, even if it gets repetitive. It helps them unwind.”

Psychologist Denis Boyd says having a grateful attitude can help people overcome negativity. 

He also believes that people can help themselves overcome the negativity in their lives through a shift in their attitude. He points to the example of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived concentration camps in the Second World War, “because he came to the conclusion that we have no control over what happens to us. Our only control is how we deal with what happens to us.”

This attitude is connected to being grateful for the things that you have. For example, those who are finding it difficult to endure the current quarantine-like conditions could focus on the beautiful spring weather and scenery. “There are many things we could show gratitude for – just the beauty around us, the fact that we have good food to eat, and more people aren’t sick.”

He continues, “That attitude – and if you’ve written a bit about how sad you feel, or that you’re feeling frustrated or overwhelmed – puts you in a better place to then look at the things you are happy about. So there’s a one, two sequence there.  Because if the stress level is very high, it may be hard to see the good, and yet if you release some of that upset, you’re going to notice the good a little more. And actually, if you focus on what you have gratitude for, you’re less likely to get stuck thinking about the negativity as well.”

Boyd also recognizes that, even after the crisis ends, some people will be bothered by negative memories. “Historically, you and I and many of the readers were raised with, ‘you put your feelings away and push on.’   You know, ‘survive, tough it out.’” That’s not healthy, though, because “you accumulate a lot of leftover emotion from old events, traumatic or otherwise.” 

What happens, then, is that “the memories tend to be stronger and more upsetting, because, when you went through them, you just stuffed the pain away, didn’t dance with it, didn’t deal with it.” The solution is to act now – to “take time to write and talk about what we’re living now.”   What that does in the long term is diffuse the memory, “so in the future the memory will be less intense if they’re negative, or more vibrant if they’re positive.”

Denis Boyd is a registered psychologist, practising in Coquitlam. His name and contact information appear on a list, compiled by the Archdiocese, of professionals who say “they are Catholic or a practicing Christian from another tradition and will support clients that want to adhere to the Church’s teachings in the area of life, marriage and family.”

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