Be here now.

Overwhelm!

I am commemorating the life of a friend in an hour (he was 33 when he died last month).

Prigozhin is marching on Moscow. 

My house sale is less likely because of a process setback yesterday. 

All my dials are at red, and I am finding it hard to express how I feel because I am allergic to anyone’s attempts to "fix it."

In my head, the world is on fire. How can someone leave us so young when he was more alive than any of us? Furious. Internal fighting in the Russian army can only make a volatile situation worse. Scared. My house has been on the market for 2 years and this deal would have set me up for the next stage of life. Despondent.

It’s going to take more than a clever reframe or a personal responsibility challenge to make this OK. 

Breathe

I am in John Lewis’s café. I have a cup of tea, a croissant with jam and a pain au raisin. Why am I overweight?  If only there were clues.  I smile and leave the worlds of existential philosophy, geopolitics, and personal finance behind. I inhabit this seat at this table now. 

It’s Pride Day in Edinburgh.  Gangs of rainbow-decked people are laughing and talking. Perhaps they are celebrating shifts in attitude or armouring up for the next frontier. Maybe they’re just having a good time. What I do notice, in the words of the iconic chant, is that they’re here.

An elderly couple occupy the same side of a small table. I assume it’s because of the softer padded wall seat. The more I watch them, the more I suspect it is a convenient “inconvenience” which "requires them" to sit where they can touch. Their faces are less than 30cms apart as they assert agreeably at one another. They’re here.

A couple, my age, are sitting in silence, with their phones on the table. She is deep inside her head: maybe at a sad event or in Russia. Closer examination reveals her expression is peaceful; she could be at tonight’s family dinner table, but she isn’t here. He is gazing around the room, observing the different tables like me. He catches me watching him and nods. 

He’s here and so am I. 

Reflect

My attention is now on my friend who lost her husband last month. Her pain will alchemise into wisdom one day but for now, she is suffering, and her needs have primacy. What I know about Russian politics would fit on the back of a stamp. For all I know, this internal dispute could end the war. This situation is too unknowable for my reductionist terrors. The Shireing is a great house. Another year or two living there will allow for more magical visits, just like the first 6 years.  And my buyers might still come through. 

I find myself returning from the storm of hyperarousal to an emotional window of tolerance. Through pastries, tea and noticing, my body is providing rationality for my thoughts. I am still angry, scared, and disappointed, but those feelings are proportional: signals rather than traumas. One of these situations will pass, one is too complex for my fears to be meaningful, and I have done all I can with the third one.      

Sometimes I forget to employ my body when I am emotionally overwhelmed. Brunch and people watching is one way. Your method might be running, swimming, meditation, a hot bath, or something spicier. Never underestimate your body’s ability to regulate your emotional experience and bring you back to reality.

I drain my cup, wipe the pastry flakes from my shirt and head off to the church. I trust my ability to experience the service: it’s stories and the tragedy. My temptation to dissociate doesn’t have to drive me into puerile meaning making.  I can handle this with my own peculiar sadness.

I am no longer under siege.