No doubt one of the best things we can fuel ourselves with at this crazy moment in time is a dose of realistic hope. Dr. Brené Brown is one person who consistently offers that for me. So much so, I took a few notes from one of her recent podcasts…
“We have collectively hit weary. This is especially true for the brave folks on the front lines of this pandemic and for the people who love and support them. And it’s also true for all of us… we are nearing kind of an exhaustion that we need to talk about.”
We have collectively hit weary. You can almost feel the sighs. Yes, let’s talk…
“The adrenaline surge of crisis is never as long as we need it to be, but it’s often long enough to get us through the immediate danger… you know… the flood, the hurricane, the landslide… the death of someone we love.”
Right. And the challenge with this time is the crisis-mode is lasting longer. We have lost our sense of normal. Or as you say, “sweet, wonderful, normal life.” So how then do we do this well?…
“We’re going to need to create a new normal and grieve the loss of normal at the same time. And I think that’s going to require focus, breath, and moving from fear and anxiety to proactively developing a strategy with solid information.”
So good… speak more to that solid information, please. We’ve been discussing here some of the current fueling of fear, wanting to be realistic and cautious, but not fear driven…
“Limit your news intake. Limit your screen time. Find one or two reliable sources that you trust that are around science and epidemiology… and even within a good science and epidemiological crew, there are calm spreaders and fear mongers. So find the right folks and lean in…”
[I’d like to believe the Intramuralist is always one of the calm spreaders… I’m leery of those Brené references later, who unfortunately, “pour gasoline on the anxiety fire”…]
You speak, no less, of our nation’s need to “settle the ball” a little bit — utilizing the soccer term in which a player intentionally, briefly pauses for the purpose of getting control of the ball… “Bring it down, get it between our feet, read the field, be more thoughtful about where we’re sending things next.” Hence, you encourage two strategies… first…
“Put together a family gap plan, and start naming where you are. When we can’t come up with 100, what’s the gap plan?”
Meaning, sometimes there’s only 20% left in my emotional and physical tank; I have little left to give in a day. And if there’s only two of us in our household, for example — and he’s at 35% — we’re barely treading water. That far under 100%, there’s a gap. So do a family check in. Name your number. What do each of us need to get our collective team back to 100%? Sleeping, moving the body, and eating well — each are vital. So to the second strategy, which totally fits…
“Strategy #2 is around comparative suffering. So fear and scarcity are driving a lot of our thinking and feeling right now. We all know what fear is; scarcity is a first cousin of fear — born of fear. It is the ‘I’m not enough,’ ‘we don’t have enough,’ ‘when is there going to be enough.’ You can see scarcity manifesting itself right now in the grocery store aisles… you can tell a culture is deeply in scarcity when the conversation at a cultural level revolves around ‘what should I be afraid of right now’ and ‘whose fault is it.’ And so, you can see a lot of scarcity leadership right now…
Unfortunately one of the things that’s immediately triggered when we go into fear and scarcity is comparison — comparison and ‘who’s got more,’ ‘who’s got it better,’ and ‘what are they doing.’ What’s crazy about comparison in fear and scarcity is that even our pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked.”
Wow. We all do it; it doesn’t sound helpful. We can’t deny how we feel, but no need to rank and diminish…
“The entire myth of comparative suffering is that empathy is finite. That empathy is like pizza. So when you practice empathy with someone like yourself, there’s less to go around.”
In other words we might have less to give the person who really needs empathy?…
“False. When we practice empathy with ourselves, we create more empathy. Love, y’all, is the last thing we need to ration in this world… empathy is the antidote to shame.”
So what do we need to be more empathetic?…
“What’s helpful is perspective. Complaining is ok. Letting ourselves feel these hard emotions is important and mandatory to be empathic people. [But] Piss and moan with a little perspective.”
So sounds like whether wrestling with the latest cancellation — my one son perhaps now in danger of never wearing that celebrated cap and gown — my relative who lost his job — or one of my BFF’s who’s weary walking out in the world being in the high risk category — having perspective is necessary and wise.
I admit, friends; this is hard. We’re experiencing a collective weariness. But even with this new normal, I’m determined to persevere, no matter good days or bad — acknowledging both exist — and as my buddy, Brené, says, putting more empathy in the world.
Respectfully…
AR