Like chronic illness, COVID is a biographical disruption; there are parallels between these two experiences.
We want to believe that our identity stands separate from our hardships.as a “biographical disruption” in the 1980s. This description and the theory Bury developed around it continue to be relevant in understanding chronic illness experiences today. I recently re-read Bury’s seminal paper and was struck by how the COVID pandemic both illustrates his framework and also provides a way to facilitate understanding of chronic illness.
As a way of clarifying this for people who have not experienced chronic illness, I’d like to remind you that you have lived through a version of what Bury is describing. Remember when the world shut down due to COVID in March 2020? You likely felt shock, disbelief, and vulnerability. You’d probably never thought about living in a world where you couldn’t go to work, travel, see friends, or share air with strangers. It was beyond anything we'd imagined to experience.
For many, the emotions felt at the onset of chronic illness are similar to those we collectively experienced in response to COVID. Bury describes the onset of illness as “a situation of great uncertainty, where may have little or no idea what is happening to them.” What had been known and relied upon so thoroughly that it was not even consciously thought about disappears, leaving a vacuum in its place.
Again, addressing people who do not live with chronic illness: What do you remember about your emotional experience as it became clear that COVID wasn’t going anywhere? For many of us, despair and fatigue set in. What had seemed doable in the short term became tiresome. We did not know how much more we could take, and yet we had no choice.
What resources helped you during COVID? What resources do you wish you'd had access to? If you live with chronic illness, what resources do you possess and what resources do you lack?We are living in a time in which it feels increasingly difficult to hear and understand each other. Theoretical frameworks like Bury’s biographical disruption offer a way of describing complex processes like the emotional experience of living with chronic illness.
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