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28/2/2022 Living In Interesting Times
Years ago, in the middle of nowhere, I got up very early and turned on the radio. There was nothing on it other than the death of Princess Diana and I was rapt, listening to the same story over and over again. My friends came down an hour later, listened while we had breakfast and then, to my amazement, turned the radio off. I stood there gaping like a grounded fish but this was their home and so I just got on with having a very good weekend. Coming back into London at the end of it I had no clue why the stations were so full, why the streets were heaving: having missed the media frenzy I was an observer rather than a participant and never really got into the swing of the outpouring of feeling that brought people to camp in Hyde Park. Like everyone else, I’ve been worried about how things are developing in Ukraine and I’ve found myself reading up on the history of the Cossaks and Tartars, of Sufis in Chechnya, North Sea oil reserves, the inventor of the AK-47, the most vulnerable points on a tank, and very nearly missed yesterday's warmth and brightness. Only when I forced myself to get out into the park did I realise what a spectacular day it actually was here, now. People in their 50’s are having fairly intense memories of life with nuclear war on the horizon on top of profound economic and social turmoil, our parents remember the Cuban Missile Crisis just 17 years after WW2. This latest cycle of international madness involves social media, a new factor that brings siege, desperation, shock, (the latest) refugee crisis, high drama and death right into our heads, in glorious technicolour, as it happens, repetitively and constantly. Whatever our age, it's worth reminding ourselves that we are living through huge weirdness. MP’s have been murdered in the street. 72 British people died in London, live on TV, and no one has been held to account. Confidence in the police has seldom been lower. 2 full years of pandemic compounds havoc in a collapsed NHS, employment turmoil, relationship breakdown, childcare mayhem, disability, bereavement. Brexit divided our country overnight, kicking off polarisation over, of all things, whether or not to wear a mask! Culture war is viscerally real. Ordinary men and women wearing nice clothes, with mortgages and respectable jobs and 2.5 children have invaded hospitals and attacked vaccination centres. The religious fervour on every subject in the US is very visible but it’s here too. Interestingly, people who experience this kind of zeal seldom come to therapy, their beliefs and communities sustain and contain them. For the rest of us, the uncertainty and strain is cumulative. What can we do about it? Be disciplined about social media use. You need to know what’s going on in the world but don’t need to be immersed in it. Can you limit it to 2 half hours a day? What’s it like to imagine that? Conflict is exciting, little jolts of adrenaline and dopamine can feel pretty rousing, but living in that arousal takes a toll. Understand that rolling news requires drama and has a great deal in common with soap opera. We are surrounded by instant experts . . . . . . in guerilla warfare, international banking systems and war room diplomacy. Avoid. No one really knows what the future holds. No one. Becoming an instant expert grants a fiction of control. Distract yourself. I am no fan of Keep Calm and Carry On, it’s a trite platitude that diverts attention from reality. But. Unless you’re going to move to somewhere out of range of an intercontinental ballistic missile (nowhere) this week, life goes on. Ordinary day to day activity is good - as is thinking about how much this day to day activity actually nurtures you. Think about strength and weakness and power, how it functions in your relationships and world view: “Real strength is getting up at two in the morning when you’re exhausted to feed the baby and let your partner get some sleep. Real strength is listening to a friend’s grief and holding them close, going to work every day when you’d rather stay in bed in order to feed your children, saying ‘no’ to a toddler and withstanding the ensuing temper tantrum, speaking an unpopular truth, listening to someone you disagree with and striving to understand their point of view, losing with grace, admitting when you’re wrong. "Real strength is a thousand ordinary acts of responsibility and caring done by ordinary people of every gender every day to keep the world running, and it requires empathy - that ability to understand that the world is full of other people who have feelings and needs and rights, just as you do, and to care about them. "Let us not confuse strength with power. A strong person may or may not have the power to get something done or stop something from happening. Real strength may mean recognizing the limitations of your power, and using the power you do have judiciously and wisely.” Miriam Simos Relationships may have to end but it’s by no means inevitable that they end with drama which simply serves to keep that relationship thrillingly alive and increasingly toxic. While some relationships must end some relationships can be improved. The focus on ending relationships can have a flavour of being a dissatisfied customer; in this model, partners are manufacturers and may need to negotiate changes to produce a better product. You may be stuck in your job and you’re doing what you can for yourself and your family. You may be stuck in your job but there are still ways to change it, to gently and reasonably change yourself within it, or to find structured, safe ways out. Any therapist who says they know how to deal with what’s happening here is kidding you and themselves. None of us have lived through a pandemic. A minute number have lived through warfare. But we do have principles that we believe to be useful: boundaries, acceptance and care for clients, empathy, the primacy of the therapeutic relationship. These principles take years to begin to embody and are as old as time, cross cultural, a bedrock of civilisation that anyone, everyone, can attempt, moment to moment, here, now. All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. WH Auden 24/2/2022 February 24th, 2022 ITAR-TASS NEWS AGENCY / ALAMY LIVE NEWS /HTTPS://WWW.ALAMY.COM I grew up in very rural England during the late 70’s, hitching around the countryside at all hours, enjoying dawns, dusks and days surrounded by wide fields, big skies and very low crime. In many ways it was idyllic.
It stood in sharp contrast to the news which was filled with misery. It was very clear even in my early teens, that the country was convulsing. Every Friday night the ITV news would discuss how many more jobs had been lost. The never ending violence between police and strikers, the nihilism of punk, the crushing drudgery of poverty that was suddenly visiting people who’d expected the employment that had been guaranteed to previous generations, and the crassness of the newly rich became part of an amusing start to the weekend as my generation was introduced to satire via Saturday Night Live, The Young Ones and Blackadder. Most of us were insulated from the realities of this period, we had no strikes, poverty and prosperity remained pretty stable in the times before second and third homes, and the nearest thing we had to punk were girls putting bin bags over their party frocks. But what we did share with the rest of the country was Protect and Survive, a pamphlet and public information film telling us what to do if a nuclear bomb fell in Britain. As teenagers we knew that a mattress propped up against the stairs would not be protection from anything and we couldn’t understand why the adults around us were taking it seriously. I asked my mother about it and she said this: “Look at the quality of the film. They know that it’s pointless.” I found her acceptance of the futility of all of it strangely comforting, there was a weird kind of peace in her acknowledgment of mutually assured destruction. In fact, many people were very much more than aware but CND was considered dangerously radical in North Shropshire. My RAF armourer father told me that nuclear weapons put food in my mouth. A couple of years later there was Threads. After watching it I went to bed in no little fear that I tried to sooth with planning. Where could I keep a secret stash of supplies? What supplies would I need? Where could I get a gun and ammunition? Before I finally fell asleep I knew it was useless and my mothers existential despair descended on me: in many senses that despair allowed me to move on. I left home, moved to London where surviving day to day distracted me from war even though the issue was very live and I went on marches and a Die In at Parliament. I watched When The Wind Blows and, rather than having any compassion or sympathy for Jim and Hilda, felt disgust for their bovine trust. And here we are again. Russia bombed Kiev this morning. A huge number of American politicians and voters are expressing sympathy for Russia: if you’re under 35 you might not appreciate how surreal that is. Today's Daily Mail’s front page criticises our Intelligence Services for being ‘Woke’; the Markets are volatile, this is a moment for really quick profits if you’re savvy and lucky; the media is having a field day, it’s all very exciting. Like everyone else, I’m preparing for another working day, not cancelling any social appointments, not marching on parliament, not writing to my MP. The world seems seldom to be out of crisis, very many ordinary people live the entirety of their existence in quiet desperation with genuinely no hope of respite, whether that’s through poverty, illness, a sense of duty or a lack of imagination. Perfectly lovely people, people you’d happily have over for dinner and be pleased to have as neighbours, create the conditions for despair to thrive. What can we do about it? Are the Hard Working Tax Paying Jim and Hildas better or worse off trusting their betters than despairing protesters who know what war actually means? Are the bloviating Я Boyz gang happier than people hand wringing over how isolated the UK is? You won’t be surprised to hear that despair is pretty standard fare in therapy but over the last few years despair about the state of the world rather than the state of an individual life has become a thread that runs through increasing numbers of narratives. Brilliantly functional people whose lives look pretty perfect (from in and outside) are also consumed by unshakable anxiety, a sense of dread and the overwhelming but secret fear of being found out. The intersection between personal and political is becoming harder to discern as one leaks into the other. Isolation is a structural part of this dynamic: a society that lauds success must despise failure, and so pretence seems vital, becomes habitual, increases the despair because you can only dance prettily for daddy for a limited amount of time before exhaustion kicks in - yet still you must dance. In an ideal world, we’d stop dancing when we realised that the music was discordant but the rewards for throwing ridiculous shapes can overwhelm reality. It’s why so many MPs take vast amounts of money and other benefits from private individuals and businesses : many are genuinely nihilistic, believing that there's no such thing as society and consequently that all that matters is making their life as comfortable as possible at any cost, because if they don't others will. In an ideal world, we’d be able to talk with our peers, listen and be heard, and have some power to alter the conditions that make life difficult, but that’s never been part of our culture (something that many other developed societies find bewildering.) So what can be done when despair takes hold? Understand that despair can sometimes be the cost of years of denial. It can manifest as anxiety, panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviours, burnout, depression, deep sorrow, agitation, and even a feeling of restless excitement. Somewhere in there, there may very well be shame. Guilt is a reflection of what you’ve done, and you can make amends, put things right. Shame is a reflection of who you are - and how do you make that better? Despair occurs when you become aware of your essential powerlessness - you’ve done all the right things and life is still not good. It’s not unusual for people to metaphorically throw their hands up in the air, understand that they’ve been wasting their time trying to be decent, and begin investing in armaments, polluting industries and other high yield stocks, buy the second home and the performance car, the cans and the drugs, throw their spouse away, because life is short and nothing matters. So start where you are, you are not going to change the world but you may be able to improve your relationships. Try new conversations with your children, partner, parents, friends and don’t expect instant results, life is not a Pot Noodle. Think about the boundaries you’d like to set with the friend who sucks up your time but doesn’t reciprocate, the manager who abuses your good will, the child whose behaviour has become tedious or too compliant, the partner who seems more like an annoying flatmate or a comfortable stranger. In the last 70 years we’ve lost all sense of meaning and purpose beyond having stuff, not even money - household debt has never been higher - but the trappings that signify success. Religion and charity are almost entirely reduced to an uncomfortable charade; retired businessmen used to go into politics as a way of giving back to society and while it’s never been clean, it’s seldom been more polluted. That doesn’t mean that you’re obliged to ignore the traditional sources of meaning and purpose. If the idea of working at a food bank is too much then hand over some money. It’s a fact that poorer people give more to charity than rich people, so knowing that put 10% of your weekly supermarket spend aside for the foodbank box by the tills, just to see what spending 10% on someone you’ll never meet feels like. Next time transfer the money anonymously. See what that feels like. Life is short and then you die, but rather than acting out (performing what you can’t find words for) find the words. This is what therapy is for. God knows, if Mr Putin and Mr Johnson and the rest of these apparently very successful people had spent some time trying to find some words to describe how they felt they might have been less inclined to physically compete against children, support terrorist organisations, sow chaos, cause terrible hardship and become paranoid, small and pathetic. You may not enter the history books, but you can do better than most of the people who do. |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
May 2022
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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