This has been a rollercoaster of a week. We have experienced both tremendous tragedy and experiences that calls for celebration.
Our week began with tragic news about son’s friend who died at 15 years old. For an hour after the news arrived, my husband and I sat with our son, shoulder to shoulder on our couch, in shock and silence. If it were me trying to process, I would have talked to get at what I was feeling. But for my son, like many young men, he needed to process it non-verbally. It is also what happens when we are in shock, verbal processing is not available because of the state of the nervous system.
What unfolded naturally was us just sitting, resting shoulder to shoulder and connecting physically. It was as if our presence let him know that there was something in this world that was steady and reliable even in this moment. We did not plan our response. We just paid attention to him and to what we were feeling.
Shock in the nervous system can look like a lot of things, even serenity, but, it is actually shut down, freeze, or disassociation. When a person has received too much at once and there is no way to digest it all, the body takes over, ensuring that the person can still ‘function.’
To come out of shock or freeze takes time.
As a person begins to process and thaw out of freeze, they feel their feelings, and can learn to ride the waves, instead of fear them as the nervous system and brain digests and integrates the experience.
But there is no guarantee that one will just thaw – especially if a person has been trained to value a different response or of their culture values a different response.
For example, many of you, myself included, have practiced meditation. The way many of us are taught these practices is that we are to train ourselves to be observant of what we are thinking, and feeling, but not to join what we observe. If a thought or emotion comes up, we watch it, but are encouraged not join it. And because we are human, the thoughts just keep coming, and we just keep practicing how not to join. Eventually you may find yourself quieted. That can be good, and it can also be traumatizing.
Perhaps the way some of us are taught to practice meditation in the west gets conflated with other cultural messages?
There is a reason the signs “Keep Calm and Carry on.” are popular in western culture. It is how western culture collectively decided to respond to trauma.
Learning not to act impulsively and to observe ourselves is an incredibly valuable skill in life, but it is not everything.
If all you do is sit and track your state of freeze – most people will not come out of it. They will just get stuck in the groove of disassociation.
If you are a person who is already out of tune with your body and feelings, and you prefer to live in a place where you don’t feel too much – then certain forms of meditation or other cultural advice reinforce this.
Do you know the phrase “the only way out is through?”
But how do we do this? How do we go through?
Observing ourselves, our emotions, sensations and thoughts, is one very useful skill, but it is not the only one we need to live full lives. We have a nervous system that needs to process. We are animals. Domesticated ones, but animals, nevertheless. We have biological drives and needs for expression of a range of emotions and feelings. Yet we don’t roar or moan or beat our chests much in western culture outside of sports. We rarely feel like it is okay to audibly cry at a funeral. Instead, we muffle our cries in a tissue. Not every culture on the planet does this.
I know the thought of wailing audibly at a funeral is terrifying to many of you, and I really appreciate that. I am by no means suggesting you buck the cultural agreements you have in your community if you are not called to do that and express yourself that way (as I have written about in other blogs working with your pack and community is important and so is trying to move the dial in the pack).
Regardless of what the social customs are where you live, and the agreements you have, finding ways to join our nervous system response and to process our emotions is vital to living a full healthy life.
After my Dad died, I took up long distance running. At the time, I didn’t know it, but it was my way out of shock and freeze. I went from not running at all, to 5 miles to 18 miles at a time.
When running, I was no longer in freeze, I was in flee. Flee (like fight) is one step higher in the nervous system cascade to processing what has landed in my body. Running enabled me to process the trauma consciously and unconsciously.
I could not have meditated my way through my trauma if you paid me a $ million dollars. I had to move it through my body.
My son went with a group of men and dug the grave for his friend. They expressed their anger and grief as they dug. They moved with what their bodies wanted. When my son and husband came home, he said, ‘that was exactly what I needed.” He knows very little about the nervous system cascade, he doesn’t need to, he just tracked his impulse and went with it.
We can all learn to follow the cues our body gives us and to find appropriate ways to express those cues. Mine told me to run, and even though I was not a ’runner’ at the time, I listened. Coming out of freeze, gave me a chance to eventually cry and feel. And… to feel joy again too. We all have tremendous capacity, sometimes we just need help tapping into it when our culture doesn’t teach us or support this.
Yesterday, we got incredible news about my husband’s job. While we are all still processing our grief, we were also able to be available to celebrate the good. We all can move through the waves when we understand and trust in our capacity for experiencing a wide range of things. We all can learn to build our capacity too.
Our lives are full of experiences both beautiful and tragic. Sometimes it is necessary in the moment to “Stay Calm and Carry On” but it is only one possible response to life. I wish for us to live our lives fully – feeling and experiencing what life has to offer. When we know how to follow our body’s cues, life gets richer. Give it a try.
Love,
Astra
PS The pictures is of my friends the night before a viewing and funeral. One of my best friends lost her mother-in-law, and her partner my other dear friend, lost his Mom after many years of her living with cancer. She was an amazing woman who we all loved dearly. A group of us spent the weekend preparing for the funeral and service. We cleaned and cooked, moved chairs and set up tents. We cried and laughed. This photo was taken one night – after a long day of setting up and preparing. We ate dinner on the beach, watched the light change and jumped in the cold ocean. You really can move through it all. Just like waves on the ocean.
