How Lockdown Helped Rediscover Pack Connection

During the Lockdown, I remember taking walks every day, waving at neighbors, chatting in driveways, and making sure everyone in my neighborhood had enough supplies in their pantry. I found myself arranging FaceTime calls and playing online games with friends. I spoke to my mom more times each week than I had since I before I left for college. It all felt a little scary at first, and at times I felt a little over-exposure to those in my life. But it quickly became something I was deeply proud of.

I noticed how connected I began to feel, and how focused I became on the relationships I truly valued. When the restrictions slowly began to lift, I was a little nervous. And not just because of the virus. I was nervous to lose this new-found sense of community and connectedness. Then something else unexpected happened. I wore the little masks when going out. Putting on my mask was at first a little suffocating, but quickly gave me permission to stop my chronic Midwest Smile and just let my face relax.

I became more focused on my pack, and much less involved with strangers. I only expressed my emotions to those I trusted, and I stopped having to "fake it" with outsiders. I must say, there is a part of me that will forever miss those days.

Knowing who our pack is and spending time with them gave us something that we’ve lost in the last century or so. Focus. We only have so much time, so much energy, and so much mental bandwidth. How we allocate those resources can either leave us energized and content…or stretched way too thin. I would argue that we have become too spread out. Our pack has become too big. This isn’t to say we should isolate ourselves and only speak to our family and friends. Just that we re-define our relationships with people in our lives.

We are designed to empathize and care for a certain number of people around us, and the degree to which we care varies based on our relationships with people. For example, we care very deeply about the people we truly love. Their stress and joy become our own. We are also emotionally responsive with our children’s teachers and schoolmates, but much less so. And when we see suffering on a newsfeed, we feel our empathy and emotional responses stretch to accommodate this knowledge, at times leaving us consumed by why we don’t feel deeper sorrow.

There is nothing inherently wrong with limited emotional responding. We are just as able to act on our charitable values without feeling a deep emotion. In fact, this is by design. If we were to deeply feel for every person in the world, we would all be crippled by our emotional responses rather than helped by them. Our logic and rationality help us to see the world as a whole and plan for improvements to various flaws, threats, and needs. Our emotions, however, are mostly reserved for those who touch our lives directly: our Pack.

We simply need to recognize who is in our pack and who isn’t, careful not to get caught up in “Us versus Them” thinking. When we recognize who exactly is in our pack, we can focus on who to give our time to. Who to be interested in. Who to give support to. Our energy and empathy are more finite than we’d like to admit. More specifically, the amount of empathy and energy we can expend on others without encountering burnout is finite. As our world expands, we must realize that our minds and emotions haven’t had time to catch up. It is good to have value-driven empathy toward those in need, but our deeper emotional responses are reserved for those close to us.

Empathy is, after all, a finite resource. Emotional burnout is a genuine risk for those who strive to extend their care indiscriminately to all. The concept of "compassion fatigue" is well-documented among caregivers and those in helping professions, but it can also deeply affect anyone who overly extends themselves emotionally. By accepting the limitations of our emotional resources, we can protect ourselves from becoming desensitized or indifferent due to overwhelming exposure to global suffering.

In an age where global connectivity has made the woes and joys of distant strangers as accessible as those of our neighbors, the moral and emotional landscapes of care have become complex. The inundation of global news and the accessibility of social media have created an environment where the sorrows of the entire world can weigh upon a person’s shoulders. Amid this tide, it's important to recognize that it's okay, even necessary, to prioritize boundaries in emotional investment, caring more deeply for those in our immediate lives than for the broader community or world at large.

Human beings are hardwired for deep emotional connection, and the bonds we form with those we interact with daily are the bedrock of our emotional world. These connections, from family members to close friends to daily acquaintances, are characterized by shared experiences, mutual trust, and a reciprocal exchange of care that is deeply personal. The emotional depth of these relationships often naturally surpasses the more abstract concern for humanity at large. This prioritization is not only normal but psychologically healthy, enabling us to form secure attachments and stable emotional environments.

In order to ensure a mindful, intentional approach to empathy, let’s divide our empathic responses into two categories: Emotion-Driven Empathy and Value-Driven Empathy. Emotion-Driven Empathy is activated when someone in our daily life (our pack) has an experience or story that elicits an emotional response in ourselves. When our mother undergoes knee surgery, when our best friend goes through a break-up, when our child gets their first A in Math. These situations are near and dear to our hearts, and so they produce natural, highly emotional reactions from us.

Conversely, we have an entirely different experience when someone outside our pack needs help or support. This is Value-Driven Empathy. When we see pictures of a mother suffering in Gaza, when our child’s teacher is diagnosed with cancer, or when we see a man begging for change alongside the highway exit, we don’t react in the same way. These examples are actually much more harsh than the examples I gave in the paragraph above, but you may notice much less of an emotional reaction in yourself. This is because these terrible events don’t affect your pack.

Rather than wallow in guilt or shame, or even label this lesser reaction as emotional numbness, we should instead recognize that this is where our values come to the rescue. Value-Driven Empathy elicits action not through our emotions, but through our own standards and moral principles. This style of empathy means that we act to help others because it satisfies our own sense of right. Our own sense of justice or fairness. There is an interaction of emotion, but it is typically one of pride in ourselves rather than of deep emotional connection with the person outside of our pack.

Try this: Make a list of the people in your life that truly and deeply touch your emotions. Next, make a list of events, political concerns, and wider social issues that deeply touch your value system or personal ideals of justice and fairness. Use this exercise to help separate, but value each as a separate part of your mental and emotional processes.

We can and do feel for those in our pack, but we think about those outside of it. This is no less of a behavioral activation trigger, but it does need to come from a different place. And we need to let it. Asking yourself what you can do for someone else might be really asking what would make you feel proud. But this doesn’t mean that you’re being selfish. It only means that you’re motivated to help someone outside your pack, and you can’t rely on your emotional connection when none really exists. You have a sense of right and wrong so your pride, guilt, and satisfaction can help motivate you to act despite this lack of emotional connection with those outside of your circle. My advice is to lean into it. Embrace this natural, helpful workaround.

The pandemic was in many ways like tapping the "reset" button for society. For a brief time, we lost all connection with each other, left alone in our homes separated from others. Lonely and confused, we immediately reached out to others, even if it was to yell hello across the street or to bang pots on a fire escape. Then slowly we started to reconnect. We re-evaluated who we actually wanted in our lives. Who we would reach out to and who to make time for. I hope you continue to do this. Use your longing, loneliness, joy, eagerness, and excitement to help seek those who can build your pack, keep you grounded, and make you happy.