Living in the quiet as the world grows new

? Carolyn Lunsford Mears, PhD

 2020 . . .  

Who could have imagined the world of today? I mean really . . . a pandemic? Combine that with unemployment, global economic downturn, political conflict, social unrest, personal financial worries, wildfires, toilet paper shortages, killer hornets – seriously? Has our world gone mad?

This can’t be happening . . . not to us! We know there have been pandemics before -- plagues in the Middle Ages, smallpox, tuberculosis, the Spanish flu, Ebola, polio, AIDS, and more—but those things happened to other people, in other places, in other times. Diseases have been cured. Preventions discovered. Treatments developed. Right? How could our world be coming apart like this?

I’ve had my world come apart before . . .

 I’m a Columbine Mom, and 21 years ago the shattering of my peaceful, protected world introduced me to the deep uncertainty of a life turned upside down.  

I was in a meeting when a friend called to tell me there had been shooting at Columbine. My younger son was a sophomore there that year; my older son had graduated several years earlier. I dismissed my friend’s concern, thinking it had to be a mistake. This can’t be happening at Columbine. And even if there had been trouble near the school, my son was either in the library doing his homework or in the cafeteria having his lunch.

Anyway, this couldn’t be happening, not here – not to us. Columbine was a safe school.

I drove to Leewood Elementary School, a few blocks from Columbine, where families were told to wait for their children. I edged my way into the gymnasium with hundreds of other anxious parents and found my husband quietly waiting for me there. It was hot, crowded, chaotic, and totally frustrating. We waited for more than three long hours.

Every now and then, someone would stand at the front of the room and read a list of names of students and staff who had been reported as safe, but no one could hear. The audio system wasn’t up to the challenge, so the lists were printed up, passed around the room for parents to read, and a copy was posted in the hallway. Occasionally, I would walk out to the hall to check the list, hoping to see my son’s name. . . . I never did.

One time when I was walking back through the crowd to our little group of friends, I was struck by the range of emotion I saw. Some parents were on their mobile phones trying desperately to reach their children, some were crying, some were praying, some were angry at the lack of information, some were almost catatonic and being tended by counselors. It was a kaleidoscope of emotion, and I was suddenly struck with a blinding realization -- so, this is what it’s like to be human. 

I felt on an almost physical level, a deep connection to every woman who had ever waited for a loved one, not knowing if they were alive or dead; would they return from the battlefield? from the hunt? from streets over-run by insurgents? from a quick dash to 7-11 for a jug of milk?

It may sound a little strange right now, but at that moment, I was filled with a quiet sense of peace. I felt completely connected with humanity across all time and distance, and that gave me hope – I wasn’t alone. I suddenly understood much more fully what it meant to be human . . . and the incredible sense of connection that it brought me was one of the most transcendent feelings of my life. 

This recognition didn’t make my concern for our son go away, but it gave me a deep sense of kinship -- a sense of awe, a full realization that we weren’t alone in this, that other people had lived with fear, dread, loss, and had mended their broken-ness . . . and reclaimed their lives.

After what seemed an eternity, my son walked stiffly through the door; he was among the last to be evacuated from Columbine.

He had indeed been in the library but had gone downstairs for lunch shortly before the shooting started. He and 17 others hid in a small closet for over three hours. Friends he left behind in the library were shot.

After a while, we went home, where our older son had been dealing with phone calls from anxious family and friends across the country. We turned on the tv, desperately searching for news, and that’s when we learned that one of the shooters was the son of dear family friends, Sue and Tom Klebold, a family we had known and loved for many years. They had been our backyard neighbors in an older section of Lakewood. They had two sons; my husband and I have two sons. We celebrated birthdays and holidays together, the kids had sleepovers and play dates, and when they moved to the family-oriented Columbine community, we soon followed.

Dylan, the shooter, was a loveable cuddle-bear of a child. I have fond memories of bouncing him on one knee and my younger son on the other.

When the kids were little, I would watch Sue with the boys, and I would wish I could be as good a mom as she. We are still good friends. I admire her greatly -- her world was shattered in ways I cannot imagine, and yet she goes on, with grace and integrity.

The more I learned about the shootings, the more confused I became. I felt I had lost my place in the world -- nothing made any sense. Trauma had ripped away the very world that we thought we lived in, and all our plans and expectations were shattered. We had no idea of what the future might hold. We felt lost . . .

Psychologists refer to this feeling of disorientation as the loss of the assumptive world. I love that term—it perfectly describes the feeling of having your world is swallowed up in a heartbeat.

We all navigate life relying on predictability and assumptions. We need that in order to function. Assumptions are the very foundation of our life. We expect things to work a certain way, that weekends are fun and Monday mornings are not, that we can drop our child off at school and pick him up in the afternoon, that we can go to a birthday party for a friend and not worry about catching a deadly virus. We depend on predictability, and when that’s gone – as it is now -- life feels fractured and strange.

Our family struggled in the aftermath. Most of us did, for a long time, just trying to find our way on a twisting and tortuous path. Family and friends from across the country would call every now and then to ask, “Are you over it yet? Are things there back to normal, yet?” They wanted so much for everything to be okay for us, but they clearly didn’t understand that “back to normal” was a place that didn’t exist anymore. They lovingly gave us gifts and well-intentioned advice -- just forget about it, move on, get over it. But conventional wisdom that might have been useful before, only made us feel more isolated and misunderstood. When I talked with others in the neighborhood, we’d often end up saying, they just don’t get it.

 One day, after talking with another Columbine mom, I decided that if people didn’t get it, it was because no one ever told them what it was really like to live through a rampage shooting in your community. I enrolled in a doctoral program the University of Denver, specifically to do dissertation research on what helped communities and families move forward after a school shooting. I thought I’d do the research from inside the Columbine tragedy, share what I learned with the experts, then go back to my old life, which was writing and managing federal grants for education. But that’s not what happened. Instead, trauma awareness and research became my life.

I now study what happens when devastating situations or incomprehensible events turn people’s lives upside down, throwing hopes and plans into disarray and leaving behind an uncertain future. I research the impacts of violence, terrorism, natural disaster, assault, suicide, and abuse. It’s not pleasant to think about these things, but I believe by learning how people respond to shattering disruption, better support can be given.

I’d like to share with you some of the insights I’ve learned from my studies. Trauma awareness isn’t an easy topic, but please bear with me . . . after considering what trauma is and how it affects us, I’ll offer some proven strategies that you might find useful.

First of all, trauma is a natural human reaction to any experience that leaves a person feeling overwhelmed by circumstance and powerless in the face of life-threatening or life-changing forces. It is a universal part of the human experience. All sorts of traumatic situations occur everywhere, on a daily basis. Broken-ness, tragedy, conflict, uncertainty, and loss are simply part of being human.

Previously, whenever I would give a talk on trauma, I would cite the statistic that over 60% of all U.S. males and over 50% of all U.S. females experience at least one traumatic event in their life. Studies also show that more than half of school-age children and youth have already either experienced or witnessed a traumatic event.

I would rattle on about major life disruptions -- car accidents, poverty, hurricanes, domestic violence -- losses that leave people feeling helpless and victimized. Today, now that a single virus has spread around the world, I can safely say that everyone is experiencing traumatic exposure.

Trauma doesn’t require suffering a physical injury – anything that overwhelms us, threatening the life that we’ve lived, reveals a great uncertainty, and that can be traumatic.

When we perceive a threat, trauma signals the survival brain to take over, and as a result, stress levels soar. Watchfulness increases as we anxiously scan for further risk, and that makes it hard to focus on other things. The term pandemic itself is almost enough to traumatize us. It is so much bigger than anything we have personally experienced before.

We are not alone in this one—it’s global trauma.   

For now, the world is quite simply closed. No one expects to experience the entire world shutting down, and we are all being impacted. But regardless of the scale of the event . . . the intensity, or the duration . . .whether it’s a single child suffering abuse . . . a family living in poverty . . . a school erupting in gunfire . . . a community ravaged by a hurricane . . . or a world reeling from a pandemic . . . trauma is always personal.

There is no single trauma reaction—there are many, and how they manifest will differ from one person to the next. Our response will always be shaped by our uniquely individual prior experiences and ways of thinking. 

How you relate to this pandemic will be influenced by what has happened to you in the past:

·     . . . how you dealt with challenges

·     . . . how you deal with ongoing stress

·     . . . what support you have

·     . . . your spiritual beliefs and personal worldview—

Have you had a prior trauma?  What else is happening in your life right now? Have there been other family losses?

All these things shape your response. And since we’re all having our individual responses in the middle of a worldwide situation, conflict can result when our narrative doesn’t match the collective narrative or experience of others. It’s possible, even in the midst of a worldwide phenomenon, to feel very much alone in our thinking and distanced from friends and family who see things differently.

In a pandemic, everyone is living with turmoil, and that in itself is stressful. As you know, stress is cumulative: each stress adds to another, and it will build up until it is released. It easily spills over onto others—it’s contagious. Basically, it is stressful to live with stressed-out people! That affects how we think, how we behave, and how we relate to others.

While a trauma will elicit a stress response, I hasten to add that that doesn’t necessarily lead to PTSD, which is, in fact a clinical diagnosis.

Trauma can show itself in a myriad of ways. People who have lived a trauma can experience anxiety . . . difficulty sleeping . . . physical symptoms . . . change in eating habits . . . avoidance . . . complicated grief . . . addictive behavior . . . confusion . . . fatigue . . . hypersensitivity . . . frustration . . . anger . . . relationship issues . . . loss of joy. . . aggression . . . trouble focusing . . . hopelessness . . . depression. . . hypervigilance . . . fear . .

These reactions are all the result of normal, neuro-chemical responses as the brain attempts to adjust to and learn from the new situation. Do any of these feel familiar to you? Are you seeing any of these indicators of heightened stress in family or friends?

Learning what precipitates and feeds into behavior has helped me understand and be more patient with others. There’s a progression from crisis to response to anxiety and troubling thoughts, which elicit a variety of responses. For example, some people turn the anxiety and stress outward, possibly exhibiting a quick temper, edginess, aggression, anger. Others feel weakened and vulnerable; they withdraw, turning their energies inward, becoming more isolated, quiet, and solemn.

Angry people used to unnerve me quite a bit—but now, not so much now. I understand that anger and anxiety may have nothing to do with the immediate interaction or with me.

Compounding global trauma, we have a sense of personal loss when we think of what we’ve missed out on, and all of our plans that have been put on hold. We may be experiencing grief for loved ones that have been lost to this or other disease or accident. A stressful situation that existed before the pandemic is not put on hold until the pandemic ends, and its effects on us are only made more painful by the increased stressors we are facing. 

We’re witnessing a remaking of the life we’ve always lived—old ways of doing things are being replaced by new, still uncomfortable, and uncertain practices. We’re learning about this as we go, and our mind has a great way of imagining the worst.

Our brain is hard wired for survival. That’s its most important job. It scans the environment for imminent risk and for anything that potentially could pose a risk. When the known world has turned strange, everything can feel threatening.

Being on continual alert, while problem-solving situations we’ve never faced before, is beyond exhausting. And, when we are trapped in a perpetual state of dread, doomsday thinking can be on the horizon.

While the new landscape for our life is in the making, though, remember that, as in the past, we are not completely helpless, and that life challenges can be withstood.

Plagues of the past, when less was known about controlling infection, contributed to the downfall of empires, decimated over half of the population of Europe, weakened the colonial forces in the Revolutionary War, and devastated the military in World Wars I and II. In fact, wartime disease has killed more soldiers than battle injuries have. The ratio of disease-to-battle casualties was almost 5-to-1 in the Spanish American War and 2-to-1 in the Civil War.  

With research, efforts to find a vaccine began to meet with success. But, until vaccines were proven effective, the only way to limit outbreaks involved wearing masks; closing schools, churches, and theaters; and banning public gatherings. Sound familiar?

The public reaction back then was pretty much what you are seeing now—some people were angry at being told they had to wear a mask and that they couldn’t go places they used to go. Others acclimated to the restrictions in the hope of seeing a quicker end to the outbreak. Today, many are wrestling with decisions on how to navigate this new world, one where going to the grocery store feels risky and staying at home, while safer, feels oppressive.

We are right to be wary about a pandemic. Yet, we know that the world has recovered before and that life has moved on each time. So how do we deal with very real concerns and life changes, without getting swept away with what life is asking of us?

One strategy that has proven helpful is to turn away from the disruption and find ways to refocus—maybe gardening, reading, knitting lap robes for the VA, painting that spare bedroom you’ve been wanting to re-do for years – a contractor told me last week that he has a 6-month waiting list! Evidently home improvement projects are popular right now. All of the things we’ve enjoyed or wanted to do in the past but have set aside because we didn’t have enough time, are there just waiting for us.

I, personally, have been spending quality time with my ancestors – genealogy has always been a passion. I’ve found that learning about the lives our ancestors lived and the struggles they faced – whether it was an epidemic, or settling the frontier, being trapped between warring armies, or losing their children to cholera or whooping cough – I am reminded that we are here because they made it through conditions far worse than what we are experiencing now.

Their resilience made us possible. And we carry within us the tools for our own resilience.

Quieting your mind, even for a little bit, can help you manage stress and anxiety so you won’t be overcome by it all. Here’s a strategy that has worked for some people . . .

Think of your life as a house, and your house has lots of different rooms. All of your experiences are in there, and at the very center of your very beautiful house, is the essence of you – your spirit, your soul, whatever you choose to call that interior “self” that you are.

A new room has been added to your house . . . a pandemic room -- one that you didn’t want, but there it is, filling up with all of your worries, your stress, everything that unsettles you right now.

You get to choose how often you go into that room, how often you think about the things in the room, how often you distance yourself from those things by chatting with a friend, reading a novel, or engaging in a hobby.

Things in the room won’t go away if you ignore them, but you don’t have to stay with them all the time.

However often you need to go in and root around a bit, is okay, just don’t stay in there for long. Deal with the issue at hand, then consciously shift your focus and come back out of the room. Notice when the worries start clinging to you, trying to sneak out into the rest of your house. Usher them quietly back to the place of their keeping.

Focus on other rooms of your house, the ones filled with the joys you’ve felt, the laughter you’ve shared, the challenges and losses you’ve overcome. Yes, life is hard at times and messy, but also there’s loveliness. That’s goes with being human.

Turn within to your quiet space of calm and comfort -- don’t get lost to the worries, take a slow deep breath or two, and contemplate the good that’s in your house—the good in your life. If new troubles arise, usher them into the pandemic room and turn your attention to the inner core of your house, which is the sacred essence of who you are. There you may find strength, and peace.  

With time, your pandemic room will become smaller and smaller as troubles are resolved and as worries become memories, livable routines are re-established, and your vision for the future becomes more clear.

Right now, it’s especially important to find balance and see life as a whole, not just as a series of events and actions that shape the plot of your life story. You are more than that.

One important tip . . . make sure your house has windows in it. You don’t want to close yourself in and forget about the world outside.

In fact, being outside expands our perspective beyond our-self and our limited vantage point of the world. We can find peace in the majesty of Nature and in the beauty of the changing of seasons. Just being outside is grounding and renewing. . . .

You may have been taking walks in your neighborhood, or hikes in the mountains. You may find weeding your flower bed helps turn your focus away from “head-worries” – but maybe it’s yoga for you, or meditation, playing your bagpipe, petting your dog, trying to pet your cat . . . just something to pull you away from the litany of concerns and “breaking news” updates on cable news.

You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s good advice, so I’ll repeat it: Each day, acknowledge at least three things you are grateful for or take joy in—receiving a phone call from a friend, cooking a meal, getting a text with a photo of your grandchild, hearing that a friend in the hospital is feeling better, remembering a vacation you took years ago, a cup of good coffee, a beautiful sunset . . .

These are the ordinary things that we now realize are so precious. Accept, embrace, and don’t feel guilty about setting aside thoughts of the world’s problems. Allow yourself to savor the good of your life.

Keep a list of those joyful things. Perhaps start a pandemic diary to document this exceptional era that we are living in, something you can pass on to future generations. Wouldn’t it you love to have a diary like that from your grandparents about their experience during the 1918 pandemic?

While we do have to deal with immediate everyday needs, a pandemic requires a long-range view. When our old, assumptive world isn’t there for us, we can take time for deep reflection and become mindful of change as a new world takes shape.

These are soul-affirming times that ask us to open up to our whole being in the fullness of experience, and to use that in creating the future we want for ourselves and for our world.

Research shows that weathering adversity is made easier when we see ourselves as being a valued member of a broader community. Humans are social beings, and we need interaction. Technology helps us stay in touch, to a degree, in a remote, virtual sense—like this Zoom meeting. Phone calls, texts, and email are great! Receiving an old style, handwritten note or letter through the mail -- now that’s really special. Try writing a real letter, long-hand, one that you need to put a stamp on, and send it to a friend. You’ll brighten their day (thanks, Wendy), and you may just receive one in return.

There are other strategies too. Extending the hand of friendship to those we may not know personally but who need a little extra help, can bring an empowering sense of connection. We need hugs, and you can give a remote hug to others less fortunate than you by finding ways to be of service.

When we help one another, we give them a gift in reminding them that they matter, just as we ourselves are reminded that we are not powerless. We can take action, even when we feel most vulnerable and alone.

We may not be able to cure COVID-19, but we can make masks, lead food drives, tutor students struggling with online school, support veterans’ families in need, contribute to our favorite charities, and so many other ways. Taking action to help others actually helps ourselves.

I believe the pandemic gives us a chance to slow down, cultivate the quiet, and experience more of what it means to be human. We can make this a meaningful, transformative time, if we choose.

Hold hope in your heart. Hold love in your heart. Know that the world will open up, we will travel again, we will attend in-person meetings, have 4th of July parades, and dance at weddings.

Things may not look quite the same, but life will be whole again. If you look around, you’ll see some wonderfully inventive ways that people are already helping make that happen.

We are living in a strange and difficult era, yet loss and unwelcomed change have always been part of the human experience, just as has joy, laughter, and love. Life gives it all, and losses only heighten the awareness of our blessings and remind us of what matters.

This is a re-thinking time -- things that felt so important before may no longer hold value. Things we took for granted before have now become precious to us. The world is bigger now, and at the same time, it’s more intimate. Expectations and structures of the past have been outgrown, and we are replacing them with new ones that fit the world of today. We can do this.

In closing, I’d like to leave you with three reminders:

• Access the quiet. Find peace within you and make a habit of breathing that into your day.
• Find and help others find, ways to be of service. By helping others, we remind ourselves that we are not alone and that we are not powerless.
• Have hope. It’s difficult to accept that the future will not look like the past, yet things will stabilize again. We will achieve a return to what we so long for—the precious ordinary, the unremarkable days, the simple relief of predictability. Remind yourself of the strength of your spirit and know that you can overcome the challenges.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you deny the seriousness of the current situation, or pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t. I’m encouraging you, instead, to be kind to yourself, take time to restore from within, get some rest, allow yourself time off from the worries. And if you need help, please get it! You will become stronger for taking care of yourself, and better able to manage your day.

We all know that bad things can happen. Columbine taught me that my world could shatter in a moment, and in the process, I learned that making it through each day was a little easier with the love and support of friends and community, and that it helped me to help others.

It is possible to reclaim the fullness of life in a new world. As my friend, Holocaust survivor Gerde Weisman Klein, has said, pain should never be wasted.

From the historic and painful times we are living in, we can use what we learn about ourselves and about the world to shape a better future.

It’s been done so many times before.