Ever watched the evening news and experienced that sinking feeling, a sense of despondency, a tinge of despair? It might be for the victims of the brutal Russian-Ukraine war, the record flooding wiping out lives and livelihoods in Lismore and elsewhere, another bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef, the brutal famine in Ethiopia, yet another mass murder in the US, the corruption and weakening of representative democracy across the globe. It seems these issues, and many others that are not reported, are the new normal, more common an occurrence than they were a decade or two ago. Our collective indifference, lack of care, and/or overwhelm about these, along with our own challenges, is perhaps the real challenge for addressing the threat of ecological, climate, social, and civilisational breakdown.
Dealing with the frustrations, anger, despair, sadness in bearing witness to the various ‘bad news’ events and the systemic breakdown, as well as the political ineptness and corruption, is difficult when the deep care is felt but the capacity to not be overwhelmed is not. Too many times until recently I have resigned to a common strategy labelled ‘psychic numbing’, simply putting up a psychological filter or shield to not too deeply feel these uncomfortable emotions. Its not that I consciously spurn feeling or expressing feelings but rather I tend to unconsciously feel, primarily when watching the war or famines or clear-felling on TV, the ‘lite’ form.
This defence mechanism is natural, we all have our particular forms of this. It makes sense to de-sensitise or not dwell on the hurt and move onto the next thing, to distract from a fuller emotional response. Its superficially safer, a way of imposing a sense of control on what is beyond my control in relation to these external events. As I reflected on the wholeness, especially the integration requirement, I realised that this numbing ‘lite’ format suppresses my agency to fully express the depths of my responses, it undermines my ability to hold these dark emotions in a way that permits me to fully accept and feel into them. It demeans my wholeness by not being able to fully express and integrate the fullness of these ‘dark’ feelings within me, to allow the honest flow of this heart-based energy.
I learnt mindfulness during my PhD years and this helped me cope with the flow of dark feelings and emotions from my then mid-life crisis and witnessing the devastation, hearing about the extinctions and clear-felling and cruelty. It helped me to recognise that the constant flow of thoughts and feelings were not me, were something that I could detach from and more neutrally observe. This helped substantially but my exploration of wholeness, becoming consciously whole, offered me a more nuanced perspective for safely feeling and acknowledging these dark energies.
Dealing with this challenge, to fully feel and embrace the despair, confusion, sadness, anger and so forth was less about detachment and more about inclusiveness. Yes, sure, I needed to detach from various limiting beliefs and habits but not detach from fully and wholly feeling the inner darkness. This empowering, integrative perspective helped to free me from hesitancy from really going into the depths of ‘negative’ emotions, especially loss, grief, and sadness. In feeling these without being able to share, to express was part of my problem.
One of the lessons from my wholeness journey, as I discuss in my new book, is the importance of creating the psychological holding spaces as you encounter distressing or disturbing scenes on the TV, directly in your life. To be able to fully engage these particular scenes or narratives that evoke ‘dark’ emotions and trigger those defence mechanisms we rely on to protect or deflect requires the presence of you mind to mindfully support the free flow of your honest responses.
The perspective of wholeness, combined with the regulating hand of mindfulness, offers a way to remain an empathic witness without triggering defensive patterns, without fearing losing control of emotions, or the suppression associated with unconscious numbing. It was a matter of engaging the scene, digital or imagined, more fully, more empathically and just let the responses flow, the ‘nice’ and the ‘uncomfortable’ emotions and feelings in a safe space within where I could more honestly feel them without fear or numbing. It takes practice, regular reminders and recognise the same old reactions but then venture into that space while witnessing what is that brief, distant window into others sufferings, its the least I can do as a distant witness.