Finding kindness amid the chaos
The Taos News has committed to implement a weekly column to help educate our community about emotional healing through grief. People may write questions to Golden Willow Retreat and they will be answered privately to you and possibly as a future article for others. Please list a first name that grants permission for printing.
Dear Dr. Ted:
This last week seems to have been intensely difficult for me and for our community. There have been some tragedies in our town that have had an impact on me, other individuals, families and the entire community. During this time, I have seen amazing kindness and support, and I have also seen cruelty and judgement. Why is there cruelty in times of trauma?
Thanks, Cindy
Dear Cindy:
Thank you for this question and observation. This last week seemed
to demonstrate a week of trauma internationally, nationally, statewide and locally. With the ongoing pandemic, war, political upheaval with the Supreme Court and other political tensions and ecological travesties, there seems to be little room for crisis on the personal level. It is as if the emotional plate is already full. This last week in our area, the fires continued to burn, and there were traumatic and sad incidents that left many people shocked, afraid and disturbed.
When one or more unexpected and tragic events happen within a community, there is a high level of tension and fear as the unthinkable has occurred. It is as if your innocence has been changed, and your perception of safety is dismantled.
Whenever homeostasis or the norm of how you perceive life is taken away, your emotional state moves to a place of chaos before it can reconstruct a new norm within your life. This time of chaos is fearful on your emotional baseline. The brain immediately needs to try to find a new safety base in which it will consciously or unconsciously wonder and fear if this tragedy could happen to you. Could there be a piece of you that could be caught in the same situation? All of your nightmares might be played out in front of you through someone else’s tragic situation. In this chaotic state, your brain is primarily worried about you and your internal and external safety.
This can lead to very little empathy for the person and people that are actually having to be part of a traumatic event. Your thought process and actions may not come from a mindful place. Judgements, rageful statements and actions, blame, rumors, as well as other destructive behaviors sadly arise as your dysregulated emotions move into a gear of personal protection. Finding kindness, empathy, support, staying supportively silent and moving away from a place of judgement and blame is difficult for the brain, yet it is what is needed more in a time of chaos and pain than any other time for a community. Standing together, remembering that these situations could happen to you and finding kindness during a tragedy — these actions will help with your own healing as well as the community’s.
If you are unable to be in this state due to your own trauma and grief due to the event, not lashing out and wreaking harm on others and finding proactive ways to reconstruct our sense of personal and community safety without lashing out and causing more pain and violence can be the best support possible. After any tragic moment, there will be chaos. But, if everyone can stay mindful in the midst of the chaos, chaos will subside with the opportunity for conscious reconstruction of our sense of safety and for healing for all, especially for those who are having to work with their personal traumas and grief.
Until next week, stay safe and take care.
Golden Willow Retreat is a nonprofit organization focused on emotional healing and recovery from any type of loss. Direct any questions to Dr. Ted Wiard, EdD, LPCC, CGC, Founder of Golden Willow Retreat at gwr@ newmex.com or call at 575776-2024. Weekly virtual grief groups, at no charge, are being offered to help support emotional well-being. Information can be accessed through goldenwillowretreat.org.