TRAUMA V DEPRESSION AND THE COLLECTIVE

I learned something yesterday that I really want to share.

What I learned is that there is a different way of feeling between being depressed and experiencing trauma. I learned that Depression is most often an internal job, whether it be chemical or our own thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. However, TRAUMA is something different. With trauma, we experience feelings in response to an external cause that we cannot control. Now, if you’re a therapy professional and that’s not exactly on target, just hear me out.

I have heard one person use the word “trauma” in reference to the pandemic and the context was how it affects children- emotionally and socially. There is tremendous loss our kids are feeling, and uncertainty, and that makes them feel un-safe. So tantrums and meltdowns will be fast and furious and frequent. I don’t know about you, but the goings on in my household supports that hypothesis.

What the WORLD is experiencing now is TRAUMA. There is an external, invisible force out of our control, threatening us and forcing us to change our ways- how we think, how we interact with each other, how we view ourselves, how we notice our own thoughts and behaviors.

Lately, I have been experiencing a lot of APATHY. I am NOT MOTIVATED to do anything. No writing, no creating, no meditating, my spiritual practice has been completely thrown off. In fact, if it weren’t for my 2 elementary aged kids that needed homeschooling, I would probably be in bed for most of the day, or staring out the window thinking about all the things I could be doing, but don’t b/c I just don’t feel like I give a shit anymore. So I thought I was depressed. Thing is, when I’ve been low before, I tend to not stay there very long. This however, has felt like an eternity. It feels much heavier.

Also, as an empath, as an intuitive, as someone who works with the frequencies of energy in a super sensitive way- I also experience the feeling of “the collective”. We are all connected- deny it all you want, but it’s there is a collective consciousness. And right now, there is a COLLECTIVE MOURNING.

So what I’ve been experiencing lately is trauma on both a personal and collective level. The mourning, the loss, the inability to feel, the lack of passion with an underlying level of major stress, manifested physically through the skin on my hands that look “burned” with psoriasis or something like it.

So here’s the deal. We, the people, don’t seem to know anything. We don’t know when this is going to end or how. Will schools open up in the fall? Will kids just forever learn to not hug people anymore? We have no control. That said, I feel strongly that we need to live responsibly. Masks, social distancing for ourselves and for our neighbors. But that’s pretty much all we can do.

So you know what I want to do? I want to live NOW with LOVE and COMPASSION and KINDNESS—yea, to you, but to ME FIRST!! It all starts within.

I have adapted the strategy of looking forward to the other side of this pandemic. What’s my new vision going to be? How will I get there? Where will I go? Who will I visit first? Will I make a hug chart and try to log in as many hugs as I can?

This all reminds me of the Tower card in the tarot deck.

The Tower brings with it disaster, fast. It pulls the rug out from underneath us, threatening all of our beliefs- everything we thought to be true is challenged by the Tower. We are living in the times of the Tower, for sure. We have been sitting safely in the confines of our own life, and now that is gone. We realize that our comfort was based on false beliefs and actions. We are faced to see the truth; a cleaner earth when we humans are confined to our homes, the undeniable connection that we are all connected b/c this virus does not discriminate. Now, we see the cracks in our foundation. We see the parts of it that were built upon blindness, excess, fear dressed as “security”. At the very least, the experience is intensely humbling.

As in nature, and all creation cycles, we know that from chaos and destruction comes birth, new life, creativity. So the choice is ours. On the other side of this, will we choose to revert to old patterns of fear and behavior that keep us in the dark? Or do we create a new vison, something more meaningful and connected. I realize now how much I DON’T have to do in order to feel happy.

Ringing in my ears a lot lately is some advice given to me by an old Cherokee medicine woman I’ve visited a couple of times. She said that whatever the problem is, love is always the answer. You can never go wrong when you infuse a situation with love, kindness and humility. With that piece of wisdom in mind during the upcoming months, I look forward to discovering my new vision and also the new vision of the collective.