Courage and Healing in a Time of Cognitive Dissonance

I often think about the world in “pre-COVID” and “post-COVID” terms. The COVID lockdowns have negatively impacted the collective mental health of everyone. To recap, in March of 2020, we all signed on to the two-week draconian lock-down measures because we supported “flattening the COVID curve” concept. It was never the intent to decrease the area under the curve, which means to decrease the total number of illnesses (as if that might even be possible with a highly infectious disease). Rather the idea was to change the shape of the curve; spreading out when new cases occurred so they would not all happen at the same time. And we didn’t know exactly how lethal the virus was, but the projections were terrifying. We watched in real-time, major devastation. We all felt we were doing our part and two weeks did not seem unreasonable to manage this unknown contagion.  

We are now in 2022 and have a lot more data points. Tragically, our once beautiful and open society that welcomed all information and trusted its individuals to think autonomously and independently, now censors data we are allowed to hear. We can still source a diversity of data; it just might require a bit more work. That work is worth doing. As a physician scientist in the area of the mind, I started noting odd things. Concepts in medicine, tenets of medicine were changing. We were in a mass casualty situation with COVID, so all forms of treatment should have been front line and center in an informed consent capacity. To this day, that remains shockingly absent. Ever the optimist, I believe it’s not too late to change. The world is trying to come back. Almost all of Europe is opening to tourism (among other things) to varying degrees with or without vaccination and with or without masks.  

Here is where the term cognitive dissonance, developed by Leon Festinger is relevant. Encyclopedia Britannica provides a useful definition.

“Cognitive dissonance, the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in people is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves…”

Let’s start with a few basic points. I believe with my heart and soul the majority of health care providers want to do what’s best for their patients. I believe with my heart and soul the majority of parents want to do what’s best for their children. I believe with my heart and soul the majority of people living in the community want to do what’s best for each other.  

I also believe:

- In times of stress, we want simple solutions, even if these solutions don’t necessarily continue to make sense when the fog clears

- Constant fear impairs clear thinking

- We want to believe our designated “scientists”

- Good people can be led astray

It’s time for a straight chat. The thing that makes psychiatry, psychology, all therapies, all science, powerful is the ability to ask questions. Any questions. Uncensored questions are sourced from a place of unabashed curiosity of understanding our patients’ and our own worlds. We are living in a time of perpetual cognitive dissonance, and we are trying, to varying degrees of success, to manage this dissonance. We all came on board for some pretty severe measures we thought were short-term, and we agreed because we thought it necessary, and we felt it right. We thought we were taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other. Changing endpoints combined with data censorship and lack of diversity of information leads to confusion and feed a perpetual fear state which feeds perpetual confusion. People cling to old solutions because of cognitive dissonance despite contrary new data.  

What questions about COVID are you afraid to ask yourself or others? What answers used to work but are now confusing or inconsistent? What are the whys that maybe once made sense but no longer necessarily connected? Why should any opinion be censored from you? What is doing the censoring? Should you not be the arbiter of your own information? Did you know science is never settled, it's the nature of science to hypothesize and test the hypotheses? None of us know what COVID variant tomorrow brings, to be particularly myopic, or what life brings to really get to the heart of the matter. This is bigger than just us. Much bigger. Think about the world into which children are born today with no basis of comparison. A so-called “normal” world of masked people. Think about what our children are non-verbally taught, what they see, don’t see, and hear. 

Don’t take my word for anything, but I’m happy to go on a curious and courageous journey with you. One where we don’t know the answers, because I love these kinds of journeys. Especially, the very hard ones. Into the questions, people are afraid to ask but know they are ready to explore. In their personal lives and now we’re on a more societal level. You are the arbiter of your information. No one else. It’s okay to ask those questions to diversify and satisfy your thinking. There are often multiple scientific perspectives. It may offer a solution to the cognitive dissonance of these challenging times.

Or at the very least,

Another question.