Just at a time when I was finally working on the difficult process of thinking about my own healing and moving towards important treatment options (that would have involved cross border travel), the world fell apart.
I feel deep sadness for everyone affected right now, including those who, like me, were finally starting to face their own trauma and/or mental health in a meaningful way for the first time only to have the ground beneath their (and the entire world's) feet shift in an unprecedented way.
Or maybe some weren't quite ready yet, and the trauma of what's been going on in the world has forced the issue. Emotions may be surfacing that feel uncontrollable, and the links between current and past experiences may be harder to ignore at a time when the options for addressing the issues may seem less obvious and accessible than ever.
This is a really difficult situation and I don't have the answers for anyone. There are mental health professionals still providing support in virtual ways along with self-help sources that may be of assistance to some, so I encourage people to explore those options to see if any feel right to them. Also, in-person services do still exist for health needs that require them, so if you need to avail yourself of those options, then you absolutely can still do so.
As for what I'm learning right now (which may or may not be of assistance to others), it's that my own emotional needs and responses have been shifting all over the place and the biggest error I could make for myself right now is to demand any consistent or unifying meaning to emerge from this at the moment. What I need right now is survival and more than anything what survival requires from me in a situation like this is flexibility.
Some days/hours/moments I feel numb. At other times anxious. Other times are characterized by depression/grief; others by frustration. Sometimes I'm just profoundly bored and lonely.
I need the flexibility to one day be annoyed by all the attempts to find meaning in this, while retaining the ability the very next day to focus on those very same questions and answers that irritated me the day before. I need the flexibility to think only about getting through each minute and hour one day, while then carefully planning and strategizing all possible future outcomes the next day. I need to be gentle on myself one day, set all "self-care" requirements aside and eat non-stop junk food, and then shift the next day into remembering how important it is for me to take care of my physical health for the sake of my mental health. For me at least, with an inner world that is already complex and ever-shifting, survival is in many ways more of an art than a science, now more than ever. The ground shifts faster than I can predict and plan for, so intuition is just as important as planning. Which is why flexibility is key. The approach I might need in any given moment might be the exact opposite of what I needed in the previous one, with no clear answer as to why. I need to be flexible and responsive and let go of the need to understand the why of it all before deciding and doing what needs to be done.
I'm not saying that we all should avoid trying to find meaning in this, or planning for what we need. In fact, I think that reflecting on what the meaning could be, and whatever lessons might be gleaned about our own needs, might be a very useful exercise for some of us some of the time, and certainly has always had great importance for me, including now. But I'm saying that for me at least I have to be careful not to demand a quick answer and a consistent meaning or plan from the situation right now by which I can guide myself. Why? Because the scale and scope of what is happening right now and what it triggers within me are of a magnitude that can't simply readily be formulated and digested into easily ascertainable guiding principles. For me flexibility is the answer right now. Planning and seeking meaning can be very helpful as long as I allow those processes to remain provisional/tentative, thereby maintaining room for flexibility and intuition as my needs, perception and understanding shift.
Before going to law school my background was in philosophy. There's a reason why the history of philosophy is complex and lacking in consensus. Finding the deeper meaning in things is not usually easy, especially in the face of a complicated crisis that calls into question all our previous assumptions. It may be asking too much of ourselves to use this situation to suddenly have perfect clarity about what the meaning of life is and what our core needs are. That doesn't mean the situation won't bring clarity on those issues for some of us. There are a lot of important realizations happening for many of us right now about what is of greater or lesser importance (maybe relating to first principles/key values re the importance of caring for each other as best we can, and connecting with and protecting the natural world), but synthesizing those into some consistent guide is often not easy, and it's okay not to have all the answers right now. Which is why I need to remind myself of the need to be gentle and flexible on those issues right now. Crises can help to clarify important deep questions but that doesn't mean the conditions are necessarily right to arrive at any clear, final or obvious answers.
If it helps you to reflect on what the meaning in all of this may be and how we might best emerge from this, then I'd suggest doing so. I'm doing a lot of that these days and sometimes it's helpful. But if the answers don't always come easy, that's okay. If the answer that seems so clear and obvious one day doesn't provide any strength or comfort the next day, that's okay too.
We have limits. Figuring out the meaning of life/humanity is a journey that can involve a complicated process of reflection and self-discovery that we might not all be ready for right now. So let's learn what we can from this, but also let's allow each other and ourselves to just get through it in whatever way we can. In whatever way works for us.
There will be a lifetime ahead for us to reflect on and uncover the meaning in it all. In the meantime, inconsistency is okay and for some of us maybe even life-saving. It's okay if we need to be a bit erratic and maybe even seem a little inconsistent and hypocritical at a time like this. The flexibility required for intuition and self-discovery during such a rocky time is a process that might take all kinds of twists/turns/bumps/pauses before showing any consistent thread/pattern. Just because immediate answers aren't readily available doesn't mean that we aren't progressing as we need to along a complicated, bumpy, topsy-turvy path.
As always, please note that I am a lawyer, not a mental health professional of any kind. I have no expertise in trauma or mental health. Also, please note that any opinions and views expressed in this blog are solely my own and are not intended to represent the views or opinions of my employer in any way. For more information about the purpose of this blog, please see here and for a bit more information about my personal perspective on this issue, please see "my story" here
I am very grateful to have received a "Clawbie" Award for this blog (which reflects the importance of this topic): https://www.clawbies.ca/2019-clawbies-canadian-law-blog-awards/
For some of my external writing on this topic, see:
- https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/opinion/a-more-inclusive-discussion-on-the-impact-of-trauma-on-lawyers-mental-health-is-needed/276166
- https://www.cbabc.org/BarTalk/Articles/2020/February/Features/Speaking-Up-About-Trauma-and-Mental-Health
- https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/opinion/changing-the-conversation/326240
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