Categories
fearful trauma

But What About Me!

Between Traeth Lligwy and Moelfre at 3pm Sunday 23rd April 2023. Photographed by myself

I’ve been pondering how to pull the last four posts together and this came to me this morning.

When we live in a state of high alert, high anxiety, of fear, of high meerkat mode, even though it doesn’t appear that way to our logical minds we are too often thinking of ourselves and how things will affect us. We overlay it with looking as if we care for others but too often, not every time, it is that “but what about me!” fear. This leads us to being greedy and selfish, to taking the job that makes us miserable because we want others to see us as in a respectable position, putting our own egos and own self image before what our heart really says. The system is broken but we only really want to fix it if it helps us not if it helps a wider world, a world that will exist after we are gone.

Many people bemoan the state of the UK’s National Health Service and say more money needs to be put into it, but if something went wrong with the treatment they are having many would sue. I learned the other day that there is a department in each NHS health board that deals with people who wish to bring litigation against some part of the Health Service. Often because they think they have been short changed. This does not help with putting more money and resources into sorting out this system. Interestingly too I knew of someone who had to fight with lawyers who wanted her to take the NHS to caught because twice her babies had died a month before they were due to be born. She felt that the NHS was not to blame but also that no amount of money would ever replace her babies. Yes she wanted something to change but did not see how suing for a large sum of money would change anything.

Yesterday in the UK we had a nationwide security alert go off on our mobile phones. This was a practice to see if it was possible to warn people of an impending disaster. [The above photo is where myself, husband and dog were at that time] Now much as I do not like the idea of any government department being able to get into my phone and send me something I also think it isn’t such a bad idea to know if one was likely to be flooded, earthquake, fire, bombed, whatever, in time to take evasive action. But what tickled me was that many people were saying how it frightened them and that they would be really upset if something like that happened unannounced. So now we want to be warned about warnings of impending disaster. Nice idea. But again it was “all about me”.

So why are so many people on such high alert? For good reason. There have been so many traumas, many of them passed down through the generations, that too often they are seen as just what is rather than a trauma. A friend once commented at a map I had on my wall to help with home schooling about how many it was all just about commemorating battles, and of how many there were. Our land is littered with fighting, much of it internal battles of who should be king, who should rule, how people should worship God, etc. Then in more recent times those who came back from both the 1st and 2nd world wars who were traumatised, those who had lived without a man in the house, etc. And for myself I campaigned with CND and learned about what would happen in a nuclear war. All very scary. All things that make one on high alert. All things that make one put oneself, and often those closest, first. It does not encourage thinking of something bigger like a national health service, a national education system, a national anything. It all comes back to “what’s in it for me?”

Again though we revolve back to getting rid of those traumas. I know I’ve been pushing QEC but I do also think there are many others ways too. QEC worked for me but things like Sozo, and other inner healings works for other people. I would say anything that helps deal with trauma, deals with pulling down those walls that separate us from each other and the world, from God and the Universe, are all valid. But I do believe, as I say so often, that until we can release ourselves from being on high alert – which is often so ingrained that we don’t know it’s there – we will not be able to really put others before ourselves.

Love your neighbour as yourself

Mark 12:31

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life

John 3:16

God loved because God isn’t traumatised. Jesus was able to do what Jesus did because he put others first. We can only love others if we truly love ourselves and are willing to stopping having to protect ourselves by being on high alert and so having to protect ourselves first.

When someone is on high alert it is not about the other but about them. Let go and let God in and then I think we can truly heal our broken systems and our broken world and let of of logical thinking and replace it with heart thinking.

By dianewoodrow

I married Ian in 2007. I have two grown up children, who I home schooled until they were 16. My son has just joined the army, my daughter has just moved to Cardiff.
I have a degree in History and Creative writing and a PGDip in using Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
Until Feb 2016 I lived in a beautiful part of England and now I live in a beautiful part of North Wales where my time is filled with welcoming Airbnb rental guests, running writing workshops, writing, serving in my local Welsh Anglican Church, going for long walks with my little dog, Renly, and drinking coffee and chatting with friends

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