We react with panic to the loss of ground under our feet, and this is normal. But if we stop for a moment and allow ourselves to admit our own powerlessness, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Psychotherapist Vladimir Dashevsky explains how it works.
The situation in which we now find ourselves evokes many allusions, metaphors, and stories. In my opinion, this is a clear hit in the painting «The Blind Leading the Blind» by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
Now we feel as if our eyesight has suddenly really disappeared and now we need to focus on other sensations, reconfigure our own analyzers.
It seemed that we had just walked on solid ground — and suddenly we found ourselves either in a cave, or in a tunnel. We do not know what will happen next, what is waiting around the corner. Of course, this state of affairs causes great concern. And this anxiety is very familiar to me.
Realize powerlessness to start moving
Once I got stuck in a pipe. I was 10 years old, we played war with friends at a construction site — an absolutely cool place! I had to hide, and I climbed into the pipe. Its diameter was obviously larger than my body. It seemed to me that it was incredibly long — about ten meters. And in the middle of the road I got stuck.
I chose the pipe so well that no one could find me in it. Apparently, my friends had gone to dinner, or perhaps they thought that I had run home myself. Not important. The fact is that I stayed in the chimney and it was already getting dark. I couldn’t move forward or backward. It was unimaginably scary! All life flashed before my eyes. I thought: “Where are dad and mom? Where is everyone else? Why am I here?»
I don’t know how long I spent there. Maybe a second, maybe two hours. Time ceased to exist while I was in a panic. And when I realized that I could not do anything and, probably, I would die in this pipe, I felt total impotence … And I calmed down.
Then I started breathing. It was impossible to crawl back, and I began to move forward very slowly. Slowly, like a worm, swaying from side to side, literally five centimeters, I crawled out of there. For me, it was a life lesson. And today, when I think about powerlessness with my clients, I use this story as a metaphor. After all, exactly the same thing is happening to many of us now, in the era of the coronavirus.
In free flight
My master in directing at the higher courses of scriptwriters and directors said: “Your script must have a “bzdych”. His childhood fell on the 60s of the last century, and he passed it on the Moscow dovecotes. There, this word denoted a dove that behaves differently from other birds. Such a dove flies very high — and falls down like a stone. His behavior is unpredictable. It is not at all clear when he will start doing this.
The more such «blessings» in the script, the more interesting the film. You don’t know what will happen to the hero, how circumstances will change, what will happen in a second. Such a plot keeps in suspense, it is interesting to watch it from the side. But now we ourselves seem to be inside the film, the script of which is filled with “buzz”, and we, of course, are scared.
On the scale of a single human life, what is happening to us now is horror and a nightmare. But from the point of view of humanity as a whole, such processes are neither good nor bad, they are quite natural and logical. And if we had the opportunity to look at what is happening from the side, we would evaluate it in a completely different way.
Human life itself is a series of changes. Sometimes we resist change, but later we accept it anyway. Until we realize our own impotence, we think like this: “Where are the doctors looking, where is the government looking?
We humans have been given the opportunity to think. On the one hand, this is a gift, on the other hand, it is a scourge of God. Because now you need to use this option to explain something to yourself, draw a plan, understand why this is all happening to us. This is how conspiracy theories appear: “What is happening is beneficial to someone, someone is behind it …” The only explanation for this way of thinking is that we are all living people.
But one way or another, this is all — thoughts about the pipe. And we have two options. You can start to fight with the pipe. And you can realize your own powerlessness — and very quietly, very slowly, saving resources, start crawling out of this pipe. Because if you crawl fast, you will probably get stuck again.
Point of non-return
Powerlessness is a kind of point of no return. For pilots and sailors, this concept refers to a place, having passed which you can no longer return back: there will not be enough fuel reserves. When we understand that the point of no return has been passed, we stop worrying. And what is the point of worrying if it is already clear that there is no turning back? Now we can direct all forces to move forward.
The realization of powerlessness is, paradoxically, an incredible point of strength and growth. After all, accepting impotence does not mean capitulating, quite the contrary. By doing this, we gain awareness, we are able to separate the products of our own brain from reality.
After all, most of the events that happen to us, we evaluate rationally (or so it seems to us). This appreciation is due to our own filters, optics that we have acquired during our lifetime. Therefore, we evaluate much of what happens to us in a completely different way than an outside observer who watches a movie about our life would do.
If we manage to step back at least a little and look at what is happening as if from the outside, then we will see the limits of our capabilities. A look from the side helps to understand: «It is completely pointless to go in this direction, because there is a wall.» After all, the more we butt against the wall, the more injuries we will inflict on ourselves.
Instead, it’s better to take a closer look at the pipe we’re trapped in — or explore the world below if our life has turned into a free-flying bullshit. This will allow you to see new opportunities: “Yeah, here I can do something — which means that it makes sense to move in this direction.”
So it turns out that the awareness of powerlessness is the bottom, but it is also a springboard that makes it possible to change. Realizing this state, we shift the focus from the circumstances of the external world to ourselves. And when that happens, we start to adapt. We carefully look at what is around, we move slowly and calmly. We begin to see the coordinate grid even in the narrowest and longest pipe.