To a Promised Land: Viral Dreams and Collective Trauma in the Era of COVID-19

As of this writing, most therapists in the United States and in many places throughout the world are working exclusively via telehealth as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been excruciatingly painful for a number of patients, in some cases triggering severe separation anxiety responses and attachment-related trauma as weeks of physical separation turn into months which threaten to become a year or more—the story is still being written. One patient in particular feels that she has lost me, and in the countertransference, it feels like I've abandoned her. What follows is an exploration of this treatment as it illustrates clinician-patient collective trauma, especially in light of an enactment that forced me to confront our overlapping histories.