What is the endgame?

These times aren’t easy.  I won’t pretend to have clarity.  

Through my first week of entirely online clinical practice, I have found that something that remains the same during this time of crisis is the importance of our subjectivity. 

I like to get really granular in session about the fantasies and the fears my clients are experiencing.  What are you afraid of? And if that happens then what happens? What is the endgame here?

We are learning so much about the un-worded times, the primal fears…  note this: each person’s greatest fear looks very very different. Each anxious client writes a different catastrophic movie.

If the end of the world comes it will only be one movie.  The rest of us will have been worried about something that didn’t happen.

Amidst very real uncertainty we project our earliest terror.

We do this because this is what we constructed in those early days when something didn’t go right.  Our bodies think they know the worst-case scenario and they tell us what to fear.

The people who raised us and the people who raised the people who raised us have experienced a lot of terror.  So we inherited it and have been working through that but when uncertainty comes we go to our particular version of the worst.

It is interesting to notice where our fears go and where they stop.  What do we fear? Can we see the subjectivity, the projection in our terror?

As we can pull this back we can live with the reality of what is happening.

All this to say that if we are honestly doing our work right now we are going really deep.

It involves breath, body awareness, compassionate accompaniment, lots of space.

I urge you into the depths.

Choose your (virtual) company wisely.

Follow your impulses.

Let your dreams speak to you.

And perhaps you can take some solace in the diversity of forms that fear is taking all around you.  

COVID-19 Anxiety Relief:  My colleague Sandy Kia, RP and I have collected resources for your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.  They are all free and offer valuable support and insight.