Category: Pain
States of Unrest
The U. S. has a violence trauma problem.
Our nervous systems evolved to help us survive threats to our bodily safety and integrity. Most people are familiar with the concept of fight-or-flight responses, where adrenaline is pumping and we become ready to move—in whatever direction will most minimize the threat—with all our energy. Sometimes fleeing makes sense. Sometimes fighting is the only path.
The shutdown response, where a person becomes numb and detached, is another way we respond to threat. Shutdown is how children tend to process threats, which often come from adults who are far stronger and scarier than the child’s capacity to either fight or flee from.
The ideal state for our nervous systems is a social connection state, where we feel calm and open and have the capacity to be curious, to listen, and to learn. Different people need different things to return to social connection after their body deploys a threat response. Music, movement, art, piney scents – but also workouts, punching bags, or even enacting or threatening violence – are all ways we humans may attempt to metabolize our bodily reactions when we have faced real or imagined danger.
In the days since ten Black people were murdered in a grocery store a few miles from my house in Buffalo, NY, I have grieved. I have mostly remained open and connected, except for one morning when I cried and screamed in my empty kitchen. That first Monday, after my kindergartener went to school, I spent a fretful, wandering hour wondering where to put my energy. I cut up cardboard boxes with a kitchen knife and painted a few protest signs. I planned a small community arts event on my street. Nothing heroic, just a way to bring a few people together to grieve and recognize the lives that were lost in our beloved and deeply flawed City of Good Neighbors.
Since 19 children and 2 elementary teachers were murdered in Uvalde, TX, my nervous system has been in an almost constant state of either shutdown or fight-or-flight. I go between feeling helpless—which leads to shutdown—or angry or scared, which is fight-or-flight energy. Reading the news keeps me in one of those two defensive states, and I see our leaders experiencing the same thing: President Biden spoke in Buffalo on Tuesday May 17 and I could hear his grief but also his resignation – a sign of shutdown. He knows Congress will not act. The time to act was years ago, after Sandy Hook. After Columbine. He sounded the same on Tuesday May 24.
It has helped me to recognize that like many Americans, members of our two political parties are also in states of shutdown or fight-or-flight. The problem is, half of Congress would feel better with more gun safety, and the other half would feel better with more guns. Both groups are responding to their nervous system’s directives. We evolved with these systems.
Our responses can’t be “wrong” in the logical sense, because they are primal and are deployed without input from the thinking brain. We don’t choose our nervous system responses the way we choose a belief or opinion. But they are intimately related because the thinking brain is expert at coming up with explanations for our nervous systems’ directives. We can find, invent, or edit facts and beliefs so that they are consistent with our nervous system responses. In this way, our nervous system-approved facts help us maintain at least a feeling of order in this complex and scary world—if not actual order.
I want to change this gun control/gun safety conversation. Can we begin to recognize what is driving our reactions, our interpretations and our policy proposals – and also see what is driving those who are reacting in the opposite direction? Can we begin to see each other, not as enemy combatants, but as human beings having bodily responses to threats of real or imagined harm?
Additional resources:
Healing Racialized Trauma Begins With Your Body, Resmaa Menakem
How to Communicate Effectively with Legislators, Animal Welfare Institute
Politicians and the people are suffering from two forms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We need to find ways to heal, Rick Knobe, The South Dakota Standard
How Guns & Drugs Contribute to Violence Across America, The Recovery Village
Talking with children about the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol
How can families help their children and young people understand the attempted government takeover by White nationalists at the U. S. Capitol on January 6?
Parents can share with children that when people feel really strongly and they don’t have other problem-solving skills like communication or strong relationship skills, they think that the only solution to a societal problem is through violence. When these people are from our own country, we call them “domestic terrorists.” Domestic means they are from our own country, and terrorist means they are using violence and terror to try to get their way.
- Parents can ask children “Have you ever been really mad when you wanted to get your way but couldn’t? What helps you calm down? What do you think the people at the Capitol should do to calm down instead of using violence?”
Parents should tell their children that in the United States, most of our government workers and leaders care about peace and telling the truth. President Trump and the domestic terrorists using lies and violence to get their way are the exception. But they cause a lot of fear and confusion, and this makes it seem like more people agree with them than actually do.
- Parents can ask children, “Have you ever noticed how one loud or violent person can make the whole room seem scary? But when you look around, most of the people in the room are remaining calm and peaceful?”
- Parents can also tell children that a true leader leads by example and the way to know who a true leader is to see who is using their power to help others understand each other and stay safe during a crisis. Even though some people in leadership positions, like President Trump, may say that not having your way is a sign of weakness, real leaders listen and recognize that they can’t always have their way.
President Trump and the white nationalists at the Capitol are mad that they lost the election. It is difficult for them to imagine that so many other citizens in the United States voted for President-Elect Biden. It is so difficult for them to imagine this reality that they think it is not even possible. They are making up stories, which are lies, to explain away something that makes them very uncomfortable: that the majority of Americans voted for President-Elect Biden, not Trump; and that Biden won the Electoral College fair and square – in fact, by as many votes as Trump won in 2016.
- Parents can ask children “Have you wanted something to be true so badly that you couldn’t understand how reality could be any other way? What helped you calm down so you could accept how things really are?”
President Trump hasn’t admitted his loss, and this has made it very hard for the people who like and care about him to accept that he lost. Children also need to know that human beings tend to use violence and things like this have happened in our country before, though more than 100 years ago, and happen today across the world. They need to know that the United States was founded on the idea that humans can be better than this. The peaceful transition of power is key to this idea of being better. No one likes to lose least of all the leader of a country. But in our country, a losing President is supposed to admit their defeat, and this helps the people on his side accept it.
- Parents can ask children “Have you ever seen anyone you care about lose something important to them? How did they act? Did they accept it or deny that they had lost? How did you feel when this happened?”
- Parents can confirm that it’s good that President Trump has finally asked for a peaceful transition of power, but he is not the right person to trust or listen to, because he changes his mind so much and because he has shown he approves of or likes the domestic terrorists who are using violence. He is unpredictable and unpredictable people are scary to be around. He also tells a lot of lies. When you say one helpful or true thing and 9 scary or untrue things, it doesn’t really matter if you said one helpful thing.
It is important right now that we listen to people across our communities and government who are remaining calm and have called for peace and a peaceful transition since the November election. And it is important to look within our communities and see that the vast majority of people in the United States want a peaceful transition and are ready for President-Elect Biden to become President on January 20. Even when people, including senators and members of Congress, didn’t vote for Biden, most of them want a peaceful transition.
Finally, parents should emphasize to children that they are safe and this includes protecting them from too much information. While talking openly and encouraging questions and conversation appropriate for the child’s age, parents should limit children’s exposure to media about the violence at the Capitol. Limit or avoid watching videos or letting children overhear adult conversations about these unsettling events. When parents are able to stay calm and keep to the regular family routine, this reassures children that they are safe and helps us all navigate an uncertain period.
I recognize that many different people can be parents: grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, other relatives, and family friends. I use “parents” in this article to include all these people and others who are helping nurture children during these uncertain times.
Additional resources:
NEA article about talking to young people about the violence at Capitol
NEA about white nationalism in schools
How To Talk About Things That Are Hard to Talk About
How to talk about the things that are most difficult? Choose one or more answers that apply.
A. Don’t. Keep it inside, and when a thought that pains or confuses you comes across your mind, wave it away like a fly.
B. Talk about it haphazardly. Talk about it when you don’t mean to, with people you don’t know or trust, and say things that you didn’t realize you thought, accidentally and without intention. Take the consequences and regret.
photo by C E Cameron
C. Talk about it awkwardly. Start to talk about it, then change your mind and see how the conversation partner responds. If they want to talk about the weather, sports, or a TV show, take it as a signal that they’re not ready, either. Talk about the weather, sports, or a TV show so neither of you has to act awkward in public. Or keep pushing until they hang up or become angry or stonewall. Feel sad that they won’t engage.
D. Talk about it thoughtfully. Mull your feelings over for a while first, write about it privately, decide how to open the topic and with whom you feel safe discussing it. Resolve not to become offended or hurt but to instead take new information in, like you’d feel a fabric before deciding to try it on. Feel grateful when the person(s) responds with thoughtfulness back, validating your feelings and telling you what they think. Feel more connected, trusting, and less alone.
There are so many topics that we would all like to pretend don’t hurt us. Catastrophic climate change, sexist family members, racism and police brutality, end of life decisions, second weddings, our personal writing. What are the consequences for not talking? Are they worse than trying B-D and going from there?
Memorial Day 2014 ~ Remembering Ada Grace Cameron
It’s starting to feel like a long time that I’ve been alive. When I was born thirty years ago – though if we’re being precise, it was 33 years, in 1981 – my mother was 30 herself. She was a single mom and we moved in with my Grandma Ada Grace, mother of eight and schoolteacher again. Again, because Ada went back to teaching shortly before her husband Duncan Cameron, my mom’s beloved father, died of brain cancer at age 53, in 1971.
Nine years before that, my mom was a little girl of twelve leaving Escanaba, MI, to put down roots with her family in Greenville, MI, where I mostly grew up.
Some years before that, before her birth in 1950, my mom was only a hoped-for daughter, existing in the future of Duncan and Ada’s growing brood. They’d begun their family in World War II with three sons who saw little of their father at first, because when he wasn’t able to be with my grandmother, he was off somewhere fighting and experiencing stories he’d never tell, and getting what turned into brain cancer.
Before that, in the war years of the ‘40s, this country was still able to rally around a common good, and get it together to save metal and fuel so the soldiers overseas had what they needed to fight a clear and true evil that was trying to take over everything.
Diorama for Ada Cameron’s retirement | photo by CE Cameron
…
Before that, things are quite fuzzy because the primary sources in my life, the ones who are left, don’t speak much of those days, the Depression days of emerging efficiencies and still lots of people growing their own produce and learning to sew.
Before that – not long before that – women had just got the vote and found it difficult to be more than teachers, nurses, and secretaries. That world is unimaginable to me now, here in these United States, even though the same world exists today for millions of women. It’s just that they live elsewhere, six to twelve time zones away. They live under cover, under secrets, under the control of the power hungry, and they are stronger than I can ever imagine, and braver than I can ever believe.
…
My grandmother bore eight children, and when her husband Duncan died, half their brood was still at home, all the ones after my fourth-born mother. When my Grandpa Duncan died, their youngest child was twelve.
What did my Grandma Ada feel, think, and say, when this happened? We know what she did: she kept teaching, and she somehow scraped them by. They had the house and plenty of space and it was walking distance to school, and people didn’t need all the stuff of today, the stuff that keeps us working and driving, preoccupied and indoors.
Was she grateful that she could teach in the 1970’s, given that the last time she taught, she’d had to keep it secret that she’d married my grandfather? (In the 1930s, a married woman in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was a pregnancy waiting to happen, and the teaching contracts prohibited marriage.) Did she think on those years ago, or did she wonder only about the now, about her new responsibilities as head of the household, and which bill would be highest that month?
How much and how deeply did she miss her “Dunc,” the man she loved ‘til her death, at age 91, in the same big house he bought them in little Greenville, in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan?
…
When I was small, that house was everyone’s rock, all us cousins who visited in the summers, the fruit of Duncan and Ada’s eight. My grandmother decorated in green, blue, and brown – drab Nixon florals that didn’t get anyone too excited, but which also weathered the years. My grandfather was a handsome man, I could see from his portrait hung above a green leather chair, and I thought of it always as his chair. I would go and sit beneath him and feel love emanating from above and from my grandmother, on the sofa across from me, where she watched TV after reading to me and bringing me soup.
Did my grandmother ever wish for early death, to see her Dunc again? Or did she wish against Fate, that he could meet all of us grandchildren who came after he passed, and it was most of us?
She loved us enough for both of them, making us meat pasties from scratch, sloppy Joes and potato salad, foods I loved, even though she said she couldn’t cook. She shooed us out to play and there was that one time – the only time I can recall – when she was cross with us. It was for fighting and being unkind. A clump of us sat in front of the TV, sniping away until she said, “You stop that, you kids! I’m tired of you being mean to each other.”
Did Ada think at night of her Dunc? Did she think of when she would see him again? Because she had her own kind of faith, in the Episcopals and the Democrats, and the notion that the poor deserved some help. She’d lived in a world where everyone was poor, and it was no one’s fault, not due to anyone’s being lazy. To the contrary, in her world, everyone had worked hard and still: poverty.
My Grandma Ada waited to see Duncan and talked more about him as she aged, spending 30 and then 40 years without him in that big house, making us food and shooing us outside. After my cousins and I grew up, she cooked for only herself, loading oatmeal with prunes, bananas, and nuts each morning. She liked ice cream and always had Tin Roof in her freezer, and she was never afraid to eat ice cream with you. She never called anyone fat, except herself, and not very often, because she wasn’t.
I inherited these gifts from my grandma: four metal mixing bowls, a serving tray engraved with a map of the world, an embroidered jewelry box, a diorama of her first-grade classroom that the other teachers made for her retirement.
And the priceless ones: Thrift. Hope. Love.
With thanks to Mary Cameron Mitchell for fact-checking this updated post. Mary writes: “Fact check #1. My dad died in 1971 at age 53. My mother had gone back to teaching before they knew he was ill. There was a teacher shortage and my dad encouraged Ada to apply. Fact check #2. Ada wasn’t fired from her first teaching job for getting married or being pregnant. The contract stipulated that marriage would result in a termination of her job.”
Jewelry box, serving tray, mixing bowls | photo by CE Cameron
Learning to Be Myself at the Holidays
Even before I got divorced, I had trouble with holidays. Gifts – travel – lots of family visits in too little time – it could all be too much of a good thing. Or too much of a mixed bag (of mixed nuts…). And what’s more, those good things came tinged with a feeling of guilt, for feeling that way despite my blessings, or for being tired despite having plenty of time off.
Letting Go
photo by Claire Elizabeth Cameron
Halloween 2013, UVA Lawn
Then my world turned inside out and I was single again, the “kid” again at the holidays. Instead of a carefree kid waiting for Santa, I was the woman without a husband. Without children. Just myself. So I had to figure out how to “do” the holidays. That first year, I had to reinvent the simplest things, like how to find gifts when I was too sad to like anything in the stores. Or how to enjoy Thanksgiving when I was too distracted to really taste anything.
I finally decided to just be myself. Even though “myself” didn’t feel like much. So instead of traveling by airplane on the busiest day of the year, I drove four hours over a beautiful mountain to see family in Charleston, WV, on Thanksgiving. That weekend, I rested and walked when I needed to. For the first time at the holidays, I tried to just be present, and good to myself – whoever that was. It turned out to be OK. All the worrying I normally did, the fretting over details and whether others were enjoying themselves – turned out to be unnecessary. Being present and good to myself somehow translated into feeling more present and more good to the others around me.
This Thanksgiving, I’m going back to Charleston, WV. My circumstances have sweetened considerably and I have energy to share. But rather than worrying and fretting and planning, I’m going to try to live more in the moment. Oh, and be myself. It sure is easier than trying to be anyone else.
claire e. cameron 