NEWS

Adversity

At a time of crisis, trauma and or severe adversity, it can seem impossible to think that a way through can ever be found. Our emotions can be confusing, keeping us lost in despair, anxiety, trapped in impossible isolation, wondering if we will emotionally survive. Some how, some thing moves us to stay with the situation and each day we find a way through the challenges created by often the most simplest obligations and commitments. Despair weighs heavy and every day is difficult. Some how each one of us finds a way to put back together some order of inner semblance but this can take time.

It is most profound that human beings when challenged elicit a phenomenal capacity to withstand emotional crisis and trauma. This is hard to feel and see at the time but most people who have come through crisis, on reflection, will speak of a deep capacity to withstand inner adversity. It is testament to our resilience, ability to reconcile difficulties and subsequently make sense of our experiences. We hear of so many people who turn to destructive behaviours or commit suicide under the weight of emotional pain and agony; people who do not realise this ‘instinctive direction’ at the time of crisis and so miss the deep glimmer of intelligence that seeks to protect and ensure our survival. An intelligence beyond our conceptual understanding, the intelligence of miracles and wisdom, inherent in every human being. This is not a fanciful or idealistic perspective designed to offer hope or encouragement at a difficult time, it is a fact. A fact for which anyone who has negotiated the path through crisis or trauma and found healing will testify.

Crisis and severe adversity can be made especially difficult if we have not developed an ability to manage or regulate our inner emotional life, which is linked to the many confusing thoughts and perspectives that can accompany them. ‘Psychological scripts’ that limit any possibility of asking for help or support can reinforce the sense of isolation. Undressed and unidentified feelings and emotions that if expressed would have us judge ourselves to be vulnerable or weak are concealed by anger, intolerance, impatience and control, which only serve to push those who care away. It means that we increasingly feel depressed, helpless and scared, which results in becoming increasingly unreachable. This all restricts and limits our natural ability to emotionally survive and thus awaken the psychological resources so essential to coping with adversity and guiding us back to inner stability and well being.

The associated isolation that has been mentioned is also compounded by the belief that our situation and reactions to it are ours alone and that no one can possibly understand what is happening to us. Well meaning friends and family can offer examples of support and identification based on reflections from there own lives but these often serve to only confirm that no one understands. Crisis, trauma and adversity can have very similar situational and contextual themes but every one of us has our own experience based on many different personal variables. It can be unhelpful for another to try and convince us that they completely understand what is happening to us, as they cannot; it is impossible; for that to happen they would have to be us. One of the most important things to know is that the best any one of us can hope for at a time of difficulty is that some one might be sufficiently present and attentive that they can imagine what we might be going through. This realistic response is a way of metaphorically and literally coming along side somebody and can help to relieve the challenge of inner isolation. Genuine attention, engagement and presence is the most powerful means by which we can tend to one another at times of impossible turmoil and despair.