It's not easy being a bystander to someone else's difficult life journey...whatever that difficult life journey is. I get it. It's the same reason why I severely limit my contact with world news...it makes me feel helpless and powerless, which then triggers the whole cascade of invisible emotional habits in response to feeling helpless & powerless to change the negativity in the world...and who wants to feel powerless and helpless all of the time? No one.
What do you do with a whirling dervish?
This is one of the questions I was asked yesterday by my trauma counselor, and my answer was, "avoid it." Which is exactly the answer that a person who has adopted the habitual lifestyle of avoidance and isolation would say...lol.
Avoidance and isolation have become the emotional habits of the way that I live my life.
But, the deeper truth is that I have invisibly adopted this lifestyle, because I have not (yet) learned how to be in the presence of chaos without absorbing it like an emotional sponge, or getting caught up in it like a powerless and helpless doll.
So, what DO you do with a whirling dervish?
According to my trauma counselor, you observe it. You watch it, but don't personalize or absorb the chaos. You see what's happenening, but you don't respond to it or get sucked up into the vortex of chaos. You simply observe it...which has nothing at all to do with "simple" or "easy."
What do you do, then, when you have become the whirling dervish in someone else's world?
It's how I feel, of course...that people avoid me because of the unpleasant feelings their own powerlessness stirs up for them. It's human nature...and, is probably hard-wired into our primitive survival brain to do so.
I still remember the workshop with the artist whose husband was so severely depressed he could barely function. He attended the workshop, but she wasn't caught up in the whirling dervish his depression created. I was very aware of it (because I felt uncomfortable by how depressed he was), but I was also impressed by how she set him up in the corner with the day beds and then let him be...just as he was. He was free to participate (or not), but his whirling dervish had no (apparent) affect on her. I'm sure it didn't start out that way, but after all of the years of living with a man who struggled with severe depression, she had learned how to observe without feeling powerless and helpless...which made it possible for her to love her husband just as he was...whirling dervish, and all. It was beautiful.
So, I today I am practicing the art of observation...and, also feeling very grateful for those who love and accept me just as I am...whirling dervish, and all...
