In many cases, a new space was required to continue the therapeutic “routine” under the new guidelines. This was obviously a significant challenge for group work. Therapists were forced to demonstrate resourcefulness, flexibility, and creativity. An excellent example is described by Sheerie, who is referring to her movement therapy group with patients of a psychiatric hospital:
I decided to maintain the group and change groups’ location to the basketball court outside. It is springtime, and the weather is comfortable… I have my mask on; it is not easy to breath and move. We get together in a circle, music in the middle, a person (patient from another unit) looks at us. Others lie down on the grass, stating that they are tired from the morning medication, while others want to go back to the unit as they feel weak. How do I start? …. I guided them to breath in and out, inhale and exhale while the attention was on the rhythm of the breathing, like the body playing music that they are aware of how no music is being played. The breath was like waves that can move away; thoughts were not ignored but rather put aside and breathed away…. In fact, we skipped from stage one of the model to the last stage and engaged in a breathing exercise. The reactions were good; they did not manage to verbalize their experience, yet their body seemed less restless, they all stayed together, breathing, looking up to the sky to the trees above, quietly loosening up.
With respect to the contents of therapy, it might have been expected that more therapeutic attention would be devoted to the emotional experiences of Covid and especially the anxiety that it evokes, in addition to masks and social distancing. In fact, most participants reported less direct work on the Covid reality. Martha described this as follows:
The entire team mentally prepared themselves for how to treat regression, how to talk to children about fears, about what was going on at home. We were all surprised that, when they arrived [at the zoological setting after the lockdown ended], the children were not inclined to talk about what was going on at home…I saw it in the children’s eyes, eyes that darted across the animals’ enclosures…what they wanted was to connect with the animals…and they re-connected as if these two months were erased, and therapy continued [according to the therapy plan defined before the pandemic], and that was something that surprised us all. I would say that this was a case of positive dissociation.
In the Covid era, it is interesting to note that one of therapists’ challenges is the new sense of “shared destiny” of clients and therapists: Both clients and therapists are affected by the threat of Covid, all are forced to deal with dramatic changes, and share the experience of existential and economic anxiety, and personal and employment instability, among other things. As Judith commented, “this is a challenging time, a very challenging time for me.”
Gil’s quote above demonstrates how the shared feeling of loneliness and intensity of changes in daily life changed the therapist’s attitude. In Gil’s case, the effect was a positive one, as he felt more empathic to his patients. Gil concluded that “…Therapy sessions were affected by the interaction between Covid’s effect on them and on myself.”
That is to say, beyond the individual differences that affect therapy, success in therapy was largely dependent on the mental state and resilience of both parties — therapists and clients — and their ability to cope with the situation. Although a sense of shared fate contained another challenge, but it is possible that, as Gil wrote, it also afforded an opportunity for more precise empathy for clients. Orit also addressed the issue of shared fate from the perspective of loss of control, and she explained by describing how she uses the same techniques to help her clients that she uses for herself. Orit stated that the use of fantasy and long-term goal-setting helped both her and her clients overcome their sense of uncertainty and loss of control:
