Vicarious Trauma.. and Boundaries
My dearest friend,
I want to start by sending you and your family so much love and best wishes for 2020, especially if you and your loved ones have been personally affected by the blazes that have ravaged our country.
The tragedy of the Australian bushfires has shocked the world and our great nation, and while I’m blown away by how many communities have rallied together to support each other. I’m also aware of how the energy of ‘fear’ and ‘blame’ can seep into our consciousness through so much unconscious communication.
Last year, I had assumed that at this time, we would need to clear our energy after time with our families may have tested our boundaries as opposed to the vicarious trauma we are experiencing as a nation after so many fires destroyed our bush, wildlife and claimed several homes and lives.
My intentions for this year centre around the words LOVE, PEACE, CALM, CONNECTED, CONNECTIONS, OPPORTUNITIES, FLOW + REWARD. If you’re one of those people that can choose one word intentions for the whole year, I so admire you! How do you even do that?
When I found myself in a shopping centre recently, I was looking around feeling a little lost and over stimulated, and when I stepped onto an escalator, I tripped and almost fell as it had stopped working temporarily, resulting in us needing to walk down the stairs the old fashioned way.
That’s how the start of the year feels like for me. For all good intents and purposes that ended last year with time in the mountains with loved ones and strong resolves with how I wanted to start this year, my expectation of being carried into this decade was more like me having to stumble a little so that I could find my footing.
Many of you must also feel feel this as you reached out and contacted me to book in a session last week while I was away in Queensland, but I am back at work this week with a replenished soul that is is very ready to help you clear any blocks. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
A recurring theme that has come up is the feeling of being overwhelmed about what to do, but also within conversations around loved ones when you don’t necessarily agree with what they’re saying, or simply aren’t in the right head space to listen.
Dr Justin Coulson wrote an opinion piece in today’s paper that was unrelated to the bushfires, but he made an excellent point when he said: “Everybody is an expert. Shrinks call it ‘the illusion of explanatory depth’ — and its why we’ve all become so shouty and bossy.”
Even amongst the closest of families and friends, religion and politics can flare up many passionate opinions that can get projected very strongly. If you’re tired, disagree, highly sensitive and or very empathetic by nature, this can feel overwhelming
I want to pop in quickly to recap that it’s OK to let someone know that you’re at capacity with your own feelings that need to be processed, but mostly to remind you that if your spoken word goes unheard in a noisy discussion, then it’s important that your actions match your words.
Boundaries are less than 50% effective if our actions are not aligned with our words. Then our frequency becomes whiny background noise that people tune out of.
Walls keep everybody out. Boundaries teach people where the door is. — Mark Groves
I experienced this myself when I was having lunch with a friend at Burleigh Beach last week. The proprietor of the establishment that we were eating at was moving around the tables seemingly to greet his customers, but in actual fact needing to offload about how close his brother came to losing his farm.
I could see him doing this as he made his rounds and heard the story repeated when he’d reached the tables closest to us.
He got to our table right when our food arrived, and call me old fashioned, but I really prefer to eat my pasta without needing to also digest a side of vicarious trauma, so I smiled and told him that I’d already heard the story, and preferred not to listen to it again while I ate my lunch.
He nodded understandingly, then smiled and walked away.
KIDDING!! He looked at me in shock like I’d started the fire myself.
What made this situation worse, was when my friend gave me a swift kick under the table. Thankfully, I was literally saved by the bell, as in the ring of the chef’s bell, so that the plates could get delivered to their rightful customers and the owner hastily moved away looking like a wounded dog.
What ensued was a heated whisper fight between my friend and I. They thought I should just have been polite and copped it on the chin. I argued that the definition of impolite was standing over someone who was paying money to eat food peacefully, while you ranted incessantly at them about yourself.
Apparently I made a good point, but my boundary made my friend uncomfortable, as despite being a visiting guest from Sydney, my friend actually lived there and was a business associate of the proprietor so could I pretty please just be quiet and listen?
It was a fair request, but not one that my frazzled nerves could accomodate, so we came to a compromise where I would simply excuse myself and move to the outdoor area should he come back.
And that’s how the story ended. With timely reminders that:
- Speaking up doesn’t always set the boundary
- Not everyone will be comfortable with your request
- Your friends won’t necessarily support you
- Clarity is when your words are backed by an equal action
Also, despite the picture I may have painted with that isolated experience, the manager is actually a nice guy and not some narcissistic sociopath. If anything, he reminded me that when we have unprocessed emotions that have shocked us, they can remain in our nervous system and energy field, and this causes us to get stuck in our energy circuits, much like a vinyl record does when it plays the same loop over and over again.
It’s something I too have been guilty of in my life and I’ve appreciated it when my close friends have called me up on it. It can be confronting to hear, but unless we’re ready to move on, we’ll find it difficult to be accountable for that kind of behaviour. Change only occurs when the desire for healing is greater than the need to feel the pain.
I’ll be popping in next week to tell you more about my 6 month soul support program that kicks off on the autumn equinox and finishes on the spring equinox and in between we will celebrate the winter solstice. It is only open to 8 women as we spend 6 Sundays together deep diving into delicious work that I have never ever shared publicly before, along with some 1:1 time with me as well. Feel free to email me if you want to hear more about it.
Below is a quote that I shared during my final workshop that celebrated the SUMMER SOLSTICE last year.
“If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington, D.C., instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff — the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet — but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart…”
And until we cross paths again in 2020, I’m sending love to you and your journey of unfurling,
