Our Inability To Accept Trauma; I’m Okay Even Though You're Not

If somehow you hadn’t noticed, we are on the verge of an international health crisis with COVID-19 altering the way almost everything is done.

Grocery aisles are becoming empty. Community gatherings, concerts, sporting events, and meetings are cancelled. Schools are closed. We are quarantining, isolating, and battening down the hatches as this virus sweeps into our lives. Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy says he thinks there will be a subsequent loneliness epidemic "because it affects a great number of people in our country but also because one person’s loneliness can have an impact on another person.” This effect could be long lasting. Certainly, everything we have discovered about trauma makes this seem inevitable.

I am reminded of the book I’m OK - You’re OK by Thomas Anthony Harris which was a bestseller 40 years ago. It was pop psychology that introduced Transactional Analysis to the public along with a communication model which was embraced and used by professionals as well as would-be therapists for years. I was a young behaviorist at the time and scoffed at the whole concept as nativistic nonsense.

Lots of rather silly and tongue-in-cheek publications followed. But there was part of what he wrote that was quite useful. Dr. Harris promoted the concept that trauma has a lasting impact on neurological formation. Extreme experiences definitively shape subsequent behavioral responses or patterns. Brain science has exploded with evidence to support this theory.

So, during this health crisis it would be wise to accept that our wounding and trauma will be practically universal.

Business as usual has been suspended. We cannot happy talk ourselves into being OK.

Spiritual teachers throughout history have asserted that brokenness is our common bond. Jesus points to salvation through his own suffering and resurrection. They tell us that trauma is overcome by accepting, embracing, and sharing it.

“The only way to avert or minimize chronic trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic will be to develop an ongoing strategy of reaching out to one another”

Yet, our overwhelming response to pain and adversity is to maintain that “I am perfectly OK” despite evidence to the contrary. While we might view those who struggle with sympathy, I will man-up and get through on my own. Disastrously, by exerting this response we remain disconnected.

The only way to avert or minimize chronic trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic will be to develop an ongoing strategy of reaching out to one another. It's no time for individualism and ruggedness.

A notion of “I’m OK even though you’re not” has to be abandoned. We must openly share our worries, fears, hopes and needs. The way to survive and get through this is hand-in-hand. Who knows, we might just come out the other side of this with an awakening that all of us are fragile, somewhat broken, and quite alike. Maybe we will finally realize how much we really need each other.

A Time For Encouragement; What the World Needs Now

I was reminded by a friend that September 12 has been designated as a National Day of Encouragement.

It took a group of high school students to come up with this idea more than a decade ago. They identified a lack of encouragement as the biggest problem facing them. First, the governor of Arkansas and later the United States Senate recognized the wisdom of these young people by proclaiming an annual observation to uplift one another by reaching out a hand of compassion and friendship.

As simply stated by the teenagers who got this movement started, "Encouragement Matters." The date chosen was no coincidence. Following our remembrance of 9/11 each year with a day of encouragement is quite fitting. We certainly needed something like that. Right now, it seems like every day should be dedicated to such an important endeavor.

We can do so much better. If only we could begin to see one another as God sees us. The prevalent urge to judge and condemn leaves in its wake a deep and lasting loneliness. It is evidenced in rising suicide rates among kids and cops. It fuels the addiction epidemic. I have been working with a young man who is suffering a dark night of the soul. He told me that he has made grave mistakes and failed over and over to do better. Now he is certain that nobody could ever believe in him again. People have even told him this is true.

So, he isolates at home in his room touched by no one. The only light that shines comes from a computer screen. My job is to help him discover the fact that despite everything, he is loved. It will take other hands reaching out and encouraging him forward for his life to regain meaning.

There is a wonderful tune from the musical, Dear Evan Hansen called “You Will Be Found”. The theatrical production has swept Broadway and is now touring the country. It deals with feelings of abandonment, forgottenness, and hope through the loving intercession of friends. The lyrics of the song are inspiring. They offer encouragement so longed for by those who seem lost.

Even when the dark comes crashing through

When you need a friend to carry you

And when you're broken on the ground

You will be found.

Fr. Gregory Boyle, who works with and loves gang members says that; "Nothing can move the dial on God's love for us. After all, that is already fixed at its highest setting." God's gaze is filled with infinite tenderness and mercy. When we grasp just a smidgeon of this reality it becomes possible to envision and encourage the goodness in every person we encounter. We can lift each other out of our despair. I guarantee this as the outcome…The world will be a better place.

An Inconvenient Truth

“The call to the margins, led by those we find there, is exhilarating and life-giving and renews our nobility and purpose.  For this, we all long. The time is now, as never before, to put terror and defense to one side and find our human connections on the margins.” ~ Gregory Boyle (Founder of Homeboys Industries)

It isn’t more power, more prosperity, more armaments or closed borders we need. None of these things will give us long-term security.  None of these things will keep us safe. We become more vulnerable to destruction from within when we isolate from ‘the other’ in self-woven cocoons.  Instead, we need to reach out for the hand of those on the margins, those who are broken, and those who understand how interdependent we really are. We go to the marginalized not to make a difference but for them to make us different.

Martin Luther King called us to serve “the last, the least, and the lost.” Jesus instructs us to include not exclude as he invites tax collectors and prostitutes to his table.  He tells us “that which you do to the least of my brothers, so you do unto me.”  Buddha dedicated his entire life for the cause of others, for the uplift of humanity at large. He was the first to revolt against the caste system which was firmly rooted in the soil of India. One of the great reforms that the Prophet Muhammad brought was the rights and treatment of the poor. And so we struggle with an inconvenient truth.  We must drop our moral outrage and pick up compassion in its place. When we do that wonderful things will begin to happen in our lives and in our world.