Trauma Overload

We are flooded with trauma after trauma, both personally in life, and in the news. It takes a toll.

Life is a journey, one that contains trauma. 

The older that I become, the more this seems to get inside of me and can sometimes even immobilize me.

We each have our own personal traumas. We come from different childhoods, different experiences. Life happens. There can be injuries, illnesses, accidents, losses in every shape and form. Some of us are born into more severe trauma right from the start. We each have our own wounds to heal from and to work through. They are all part of life.

Earth in Trauma.

The earth is in trauma. Climate change is wreaking havoc on all of us. Plants, animals, all of us are suffering from it. Species are dying, disappearing. Weather patterns are killing so many of us. We see more and more turmoil in the form of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, draughts, extreme heat, fires, disasters. 

Human created trauma.

There are wars, hatred, division, death, human-made trauma. We feel conflict brewing all around. 

Mass shootings are becoming a regular part of our news. We feel the pain of children dying, children shooting children. 

We have so much political name calling, with lies, further dividing all of us into we and them. It all serves to accentuate how we are different. And fear is fueled, the message given that the difference is to be feared, destroyed, and conquered, assassinated. 

It can feel like too much. I feel powerless in the face of it all. Like I was powerless in my childhood, so I now feel. 

The trauma of aging.

Aging brings its own traumas.

Our bodies are declining, some more slowly, but still declining.

We are viscerally faced with the reality of mortality, the realization that we have an expiration date. Add to that the fact that we don’t know how functional we may remain until that date comes. It’s scary, this thought of loss of independence, loss of things that we took for granted, loss of who we have seen ourselves to be, with time exacting its cost, a cost that will not be denied, for anyone. 

How do we cope? Owning the darkness within.

Partly I think that one way that we sometimes try and cope, a way that in my opinion doesn’t work so well, is to try to separate the dark that is within us all and see it as outside of us. 

It’s so much easier to see and reject the darkness in others rather than shine the light onto our own shadow. It is my belief that we all contain the darkness within us as well as the light. We must come to know and understand our own darkness, own it, so that we can better control when it comes out. I must accept that I can contain rage and hatred at times within me. If I do not admit that, it can control me rather than vice versa. If we teach our children about all their feelings and how to deal with them, contain them, regulate them as needed, accept them but not have to act them out, perhaps we can change some of what is happening all around us. We contain it all. We are it all. It is the darkness that can help us grow, can help us see what is inside that we can work on, understand, and learn from. It can help us understand and empathize with each other’s pain.

As I see the darkness in others, let me look in that mirror and see what part of myself is reflected to me that I may be reacting to, that I may be blind to within myself and project onto others and then blame them without seeing the part of them that is also in me. 

I hate isms. Yet I need to look at the isms that may exist within me, even toward myself, internalized and so much and for so long a part of me that I cannot see them. I can be ageist toward myself. I have been sexist toward myself. I have internalized isms that I am not even aware of, that can still inform and influence my decisions and actions. 

The sensitivity, a blessing and curse, of the wisdom of our years

And now, as an elder, I see it all more clearly, feel it all more deeply, sense the sadness of it all, the poignancy of it all, and more. 

I cry more easily these days. And that’s ok with me. Tears allow for some of the pain to come out and not completely take over. Tears are a release and a gift. They help me to feel the humanity, the pain, the sadness that is part of this life. There is time enough to be dead to it all when we are dead, yes?

I can barely drive by a poor creature killed on the side of the road these days without feeling some tears come up. I feel how their life was cut off in an instant, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, hit by a car rushing by.

I cry at commercials. It’s painful to see photos of animals suffering everywhere, to hear stories of elephants being killed for their tusks, to make trinkets and things from their teeth. Rhinos are killed for their horns. Animals are being used for entertainment and then abandoned when they no longer serve that purpose. Animals are abused and neglected. Animals are hunted and their heads mounted on a wall as a trophy. Proving what? 

I see children being killed in wars, in shootings. Children who have not yet even begun to live their lives. It’s heartbreaking beyond description. 

I hear about children in this world and their parents starving and dying of thirst. I see photos of their huge wide eyes filled with pain and longing, not understanding why they are going through what they are going through. 

I am overwhelmed by it all. 

And yet, there is still kindness and love

And yet I still have hope inside that we are so much more than all of this. We have love and kindness inside of us that I see evidence of every day all around me, if I look. 

I see strangers helping others, people being kind to each other, people asking how someone is and taking the time to hear the response. People volunteer to help where they feel called to help. People contribute what they can. 

I see children playing with each other, not seeing differences until they are taught. 

There are people trying to save the earth and its creatures. People are trying to reach out and extend a hand of help when they can, empathizing, trying to understand, trying to slow down and stop all the hatred and division. 

Love shows itself. I think that we are all in trauma these days, and it can almost begin to feel normal. We don’t have to accept that. First, we can acknowledge the depth and reality of all the trauma we all feel. We can be kind to each other, be gentle to our fellow trauma survivors. 

We can work to harvest the richness of kindness and love that we all have within us. We can come together instead of apart. We can join hands, across the chasm of words that may separate us, trying to at least understand each other rather than attacking what may be different. Maybe we can be like the lotus who grows out of the dark mud to form a beautiful flower. Maybe we can keep going, keep hoping, keep trying, keep reaching, keep loving. I hope so.