Where is love?
Take a moment and breathe.
Just now, concern yourself with yourself, bring your focus inside and notice your breath.
I work with and in everyday life engage with people who find this simple exercise extremely difficult. It’s not their fault though.
The more I study trauma, emotion, behaviour and essentially myself, the more I realise that we are a tribe of people who live in a state of trauma, a constant state of trauma.
I am not offering a political opinion here when I say ‘we’ I mean Northern Ireland and the UK – The news on my TV, Radio and social media is mostly UK based and influenced.
Now back to the trauma that I believe we are suffering from and dealing with. Peter Levine in his book ‘Waking the Tiger’ describes the first symptoms of trauma to develop and the core of traumatic reaction as;
1. Hyperarousal
2. Constriction
3. Disassociation
4. Feelings of helplessness
There are, he goes on to say, many other symptoms that show up including but not limited to hypervigilance, intrusive memory, exaggerated emotional and startle responses, mood swings, temper tantrums, feelings of shame, reduce ability to deal with stress and difficulty sleeping. These are the symptoms or traits I see being played out throughout our society today.
We see, and are reminded often, of people panic buying, hoarding and generally looking out for themselves. This is completely understandable. This is how you behave when trauma is present in your body. The really frightening thing about trauma is that it also hides itself. It’s very difficult to realise that it’s present until it’s recognised and pointed out to you by someone outside yourself and then it often offers anger, or another adaptive behaviour, to protect itself.
Trauma believes its job is to protect you. It wants to be hypervigilant. It wants to be on the lookout for perceived danger. So when we try to dismantle the trauma it sees this as a danger to the organism it is protecting, that is why we can receive an angry reaction from our friends, family or colleagues when we ask for calm.
If we consider our society, province or country to be that organism, then its trauma will behave in exactly the same way. We will see a whole society in a state of trauma and we don’t have to cast our minds back so far to get to the source of recent trauma in Norther Ireland, and in the lack of our recent history being dealt with, the re-traumatising of our society. Is it any wonder when a danger like Corona virus comes along we are so easy to startle and frighten and manipulate and control.
I had a really great friend of mine message me yesterday to tell me ‘they could feel their fear build’. I had another friend call me today to ask for my advice on ‘how to stop the panic they felt around Corona virus’.
My answer to them both was the same. Be in your body, be present, be aware and be here now. Yes, I agree these are difficult and unusual times. Have you stopped to check in with yourself today? How does your body feel? Can you recognise and name the body sensations you are having as you watch the news or scroll down through your social media feed?
Can you recognise and name the emotions associated with these body sensations? Be careful too of labelling your emotions as perceptions we often say or hear others say; I feel anxious, paranoid, panicked, pessimistic, or alarmed but these are not feelings, these are perceptions. There is no such feeling of anxiety, what you’re actually feeling is fear that you perceive to be anxiety.
So first of let’s call the feeling what it is – you are feeling fear and when we are feeling fear we live outside our bodies.
Think of the people we have been chatting to over the last few days, the quickened speech, darting eyes, jiggling knees, anxious questions and feelings of helplessness. These people are feeling fear.
Now if you knew someone was feeling fear how would you treat them? You would be kind and compassionate and understanding and helpful. You would offer reassurance that things will be OK, things will be good in time. You would offer support, encouragement and comfort but most of us don’t do that. Most of us berate, condescend and mock these people and that is certainly not doing to help. In fact, that is the very thing that is going to push them towards more fear and the perception of paranoia and panic.
I’m reaching out to anyone who reads this and asking the question, where is the love? Can we as families, friend groups, communities and ultimately as a society be kind to one and other? Of course we can! Do we need to be told by a higher authority when to or how to do this? Of course we don’t!
If you are able to offer a comforting word to a friend or family member who is feeling fear and reacting from it offer them a kind word of assurance, of comfort. Connect with them and tell them we are here for each other. It’s going to be OK.
If you would like to join me over the next few days I am holding a morning meditation session, on line, each morning at 8am. It’s free, it’s inclusive and non-denominational, and it’s a compassionate space where you can come to just chill out and listen or ask a question. You can ‘bring’ a friend or just come along with a cup of tea and see what happens for you in your body. I promise there will be no fear. There will be only love.
You can access the morning sessions via this link.
Please, please be kind to each other and know that when people are frightened they are capable of a whole raft of things they wouldn’t normally do. It’s not personal don’t fight fire with fire you just get a bigger fire.
Best thing you can do for you right now is breathe, slow down, be present in your own body and be here now.