I’ve been reflecting on the need for surrendering to crisis both personally and globally, recently. The ‘trying to survive’ and ‘get on with life as normal’ does not serve us or life on this planet.
My tendency in crisis when I’m operating from my trauma response is to go into a sort of pseudo “I’ll be fine mode” yet riddled with intense anxiety. I’m literally in survival mode, brain going a million miles a minute trying to figure everything out, trying to fix the situation, totally disconnected from my body and emotions.
The gold happens when I give up and surrender to the sense of not being able to cope, to not having a fucking clue, to being totally lost and vulnerable and terrified.
It’s only when I let go of the pushing, the ‘top-down’ strategies for controlling life and avoiding the vulnerability of facing myself, and only when I give up my ideas of what I think I know and surrender to what wants to be felt, is there the space and humility for deep listening, where something new can be birthed from the unknown. A next evolution of myself. A new pathway into the future.
I know that surrendering to crisis can be a privilege. Some people have situations in which it’s easier to do so than others. It’s also really difficult to do it in our individualist culture and systems, where there is so little community and sense of being held.
But I feel it’s important we reframe our ideas around it – from fearing and judging it as ‘weakness’ – to seeing the power of crisis. Because I believe it’s only through surrendering to crisis that we will initiate ourselves personally and collectively to our next evolution, whatever that might be.
To anyone out there teetering on the edge of crisis… you are not alone, and those who have bravely gone there… I salute you! 