It’s time to have healing conversations
In my conversations with diverse people after the tragic Easter Sunday attacks – I realize, people especially in the Western Province and Greater Colombo area are gripped by a fear psychosis. This is exacerbated by;
- a lack of strong political leadership to give people a sense of confidence, direction and an assurance for a sense of safety;
- the focus on security and enforcement – the presence of armed forces with guns again can be daunting;
- the media and social media reports of continuing threats and feeding the xenophobia – ‘vans laden with bombs to the bridges that are under threat’ – keeps everyone tense, suspicious and uncertain
- the implications of the geopolitics that is panning out – the rumours that abound
It does not matter whether the uncertainty and the threats are credible or not, when most people’s minds are frozen by the trauma – emotion of fear and despair will dominate.
Open loop emotions
This happens as our emotions are an open loop system which takes in everything we hear and see, which then impacts on our thought process, stress levels, health and well-being.
According to Daniel Golemen, expert on emotional intelligence at Harvard University – scientists describe our minds as an open-loop limbic system which impacts interpersonal limbic regulation where any message we witness and absorb – positive or negative – can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, and even immune function inside the body.
Therefore, our limbic regulation depends on external stimuli, which could either make us happy or send us to despair. This process happens at a subterranean level of our mind.
There is a biochemical reason for this.
When we get afraid, our amygdala, our internal antenna in the brain, gets activated to signal a threat, which increases the breathing rate and the heartbeat. This elevates our blood pressure to dilate blood vessels around vital organs to flood them with oxygen, nutrients, cortisol and adrenaline which gets pumped into the muscles to react.
When this heightened state is prolonged as we are seeing now in Sri Lanka, it leads to tremendous stress, paranoia and despair.
This paranoia is natural especially for those young people who have encountered it for the first time, as well as for many who endured the horrors of the war for 30 years. Having enjoyed the last 10 years of relative peace, one would have thought our inner wounds from the war have healed. Reaction of fear shows that those wounds have not healed properly.
Most of us suffered in different ways from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in enduring the war years. However, there was never an acknowledgement of PTSD for the people of this nation, even though there are many proven ways to deal with this stress. This blog (the link) articulates some methods used in Europe and North America:
https://groundviews.org/2016/06/21/healing-from-the-horrors-of-war-the-amazing-effects-of-yoga-on-ptsd/
Healing conversations
In this situation, we cannot physically and mentally protect ourselves, as the threat is illusive and not direct. This manifests as our emotional and physical reactions of despair and paralysis.
However, at a biological level, if we become conscious of the fear, we can change the inner narrative by nudging the hippocampus – the brain region dedicated to memory storage – to move away from the emotion by becoming more mindful, rational and logical about the actual threat.
Becoming mindful and aware, one can put things in perspective, activate the executive function of the brain through the prefrontal cortex, which is part of the brain involved in high-level decision-making, to assess the threat in a reasonable manner. This way, we can check whether the fear psychosis is justified, or we may be over-reacting and feeding into the motives of the perpetrators of this attack – to paralyse the country.
Our emotions are merely, feelings that arise when a need is met or not.
Therefore, mindful healing conversations can dissipate negative emotions – to put things in perspective and move on with life.
Healing conversations enable people to discuss what they are feeling and what needs are not being met and move away from a paralysing emotion to a more logical reasoned place in the mind. That will enable feelings and needs to the surface to dissipate the emotions – to move to a more rational place to put the perceived threats in context, so we can start to move towards normalcy can free us to get on with life to move on from this tragedy.
Healing conversations in our homes, schools, workplaces
That is why it is crucial to have healing conversations in our homes, workplaces, schools and communities to put things in perspective.
There has to be a concerted deliberate effort to do this, or else the suppressed negative emotions can operate at a subterranean, subconscious level, which can have an impact on clear thinking, health and well-being for the longer-term. It impedes us operating at an optimum level at home, school or work – to be happy and calm, think rationally, be flexible, open and creative to make sound decisions.
Simple methodology
The first place to have these healing conversations are at home with the family.
In schools and workplaces, it is best to have the healing conversations in clusters of maximum 12 participants at a time, using a facilitator. This can be a teacher or a manager at work, merely to provide a safe space for the participants to explore their emotions.
It could take about one-hour for a conversation to hear each other’s voices, to help participants to bring their feelings out and move towards the logic of why those feeling have arisen, why they feel paralysed – as a need or a bunch of needs are not met. This process can continue on a regular basis.
Doing this simple exercise to acknowledge feelings and needs will help people to slowly dissipate the negative energy from those feelings percolating internally not having an outlet.
Use the following exercise with questions for clarity to guide the healing conversation with everyone;
- Take a deep breath and clear the mind.
- Observe what is seen and heard to become present and aware.
- Acknowledge and share the feeling(s)
- Ask the question ‘why’ several times to get to the root cause of why these feelings are manifesting
- That leads to the needs that are met, not met for the feelings to manifest themselves
- Once the feelings and needs are unearthed, help put them in perspective by thinking critically in relation to the situation with a rational conversation. This may help to move away from the pessimism and helplessness to optimism to taking more control of the mind and to regain a sense of power.
- This does not mean ignoring the realities, but to move the mind to a more positive place by looking at any good that is coming out of this tragedy – the lessons learned, the emerging sense of community, togetherness, that can help Sri Lanka to get back on its feet and be at peace in the future.
- Then ask each person to state how they are going to move forward – what action will be taken for the mind and the body.
This way we can move away from the fear psychosis which also manifests xenophobic reactions making scapegoats out of innocent people, which will only divide this beautiful country more. Simple but crucial first conversations are important for the nation to come together to begin the healing process.
(The writer who is based in Canada was in Sri Lanka recently. He runs the Sage Ontario for Mindful Leadership and can be reached at
lalith@mindfulsage.net).