Receiving What This Moment Has to Offer

We might consider that every moment has gifts as well as challenges to offer. We may find that we more readily categorise some moments as offering gifts and others as presenting only challenges. What does this pandemic moment offer you?

So many of us are feeling extremely challenged. Fear is everywhere, whether acknowledged or not. For example, going outside with a mask on and maintaining social distance are signs of fear, which may or may not be reality-based. The truth is that we don’t really know what the reality is just now. We still know very little about this virus. For most of us, the unknown is frightening. For some it sparks curiosity and wonder. For many of us, being relatively isolated in our homes is unbearable. For some, it is a welcome retreat from the over-activity and over-stimulation of our usual lives.

I recently saw a message posted on Facebook, stated to be from White Eagle, a Hopi indigenous person, which included this advice:

“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.

If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal.”

I love the idea of this moment being both a hole and portal. I believe this is true of every moment. The choices we make about how to interact with this moment clearly determine our experience, but they may not be so easily made.

Reacting from Trauma

For someone who has a history of trauma, this moment is likely to be perceived as offering more potential trauma. The changes in the brain with trauma cause us to meet life as if the trauma is continuing. We engage from a state of defensive nervous system activation, ready either to fight or flee, or freezing and dissociating.

If our tendency is to be in sympathetic fight-flight over-drive, we may be spending time working hard to learn about Zoom, set up online courses to help others, or taking courses to better ourselves, walking or running for hours each day, or heroically working long hours to take care of others, to shop and deliver groceries, etc. etc. Of course, these things are all wonderful and helpful and can be done from a calm, centred state, but they can also be ways to channel excess sympathetic energies.

If we are in a more parasympathetic freeze/dissociation state, we may be feeling hopeless, helpless, victimised, immobilised, depressed, or anxious. We might sleep long hours, feeling like what’s the point of getting out of bed. What’s the point of doing anything?…We may spend hours glued to the screen of our television, computer or other device, taking in more news horrors or watching programs that resonate with our inner state of fear and overwhelm. Or we may spend time meditating in ways that take us farther and farther from our own bodies and emotions.

These behaviours are not exactly choices, although choices can be made about them. They are ways to fall down the hole that is like all we have ever known. They are reactions to what life presents based on neurological patterns that we needed back then, when the trauma happened.

What needs to change in order for us to perceive and move through that portal?

Being Present in the Present

Coming into present time enables us to accurately perceive safety in this moment. Even with a pandemic raging outside the door, I can acknowledge that in this moment I am safe. What Stephen Porges has termed the social engagement nervous system can take us out of defensive states where we can orient to present-time safety instead of perceiving life as dangerous.

The social engagement system can come online when we are engaging socially with friends, family, pets, etc. Even if we can’t get together physically with those we feel safe with, we can talk with them on the phone or preferably through video where we can see each other.

Orienting to what supports us, resource, can also help us to come into present time and settle our defensive nervous system activations. Try asking yourself the question, “What speaks to me of wellness, or tells me I’m ok in this moment?” What happens for you when you ask this? Does anything change? Look around the room you are in? How does it look? What do you see? What colours do you see? This is where you are now.

I find a quick and usually easy way to come into a more resourced state is to orient to gratitude and appreciation. What is one thing you can feel grateful for or appreciate just now? What happens for you when you think of something? It can be anything. It can be something about you or someone else, your home, your life, your belongings, a place you love to go, that you were able to brush your teeth this morning… What can you find to feel grateful for or appreciate?

These are simple ways to support ourselves. When we have a history of trauma, we usually can benefit from the support of a trauma-sensitive therapist who can help us to shift our orientation, our nervous system and therefore our perception. Then what has appeared as a hole becomes a portal.

What might be on the other side of the portal? Where might it take us? Do you have curiosity? Do you have longing? Are you willing to let go of what you might need to let go of in order to cross through to a different way of being?

What does this moment have to offer?