by Willow Banks, Psy.D., NCSPP Secretary

2020 is flogging us with an assortment of horrors. Some are new but most are not: global pandemic, record unemployment, ongoing brutality and murder of Black people by police, suppression of protests, and political corruption. White supremacy and patriarchy run rampant in our systems. Another hurricane hit Puerto Rico, starvation is widespread in Yemen, explosions tore Beirut apart, and fleeing Syrians are refused entry to Europe, abandoned in the water of the Mediterranean Sea. There are hurricanes strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico as I write this, and the state of California is on fire from dry lightning strikes. Australia burned in January. These are just a few examples and I know there are so many more.

There is a Zen koan that goes something like, “I am sick because the whole world is sick.” Our systems of power are sick. I feel so inundated by the suffering in the world and in my patients that I can barely think sometimes. I would have thought that my Zen practice, my Bodhisattva vows to acknowledge “what is” and work to end suffering, would have prepared me for this near-constant sense of living in the present, horrors and all. Instead, I feel distinctly not prepared.

I am sure the hours I've spent sitting on my meditation cushion (and in my own analysis) have helped me to at least confront the ways I want to escape some of the suffering of this moment in time. It blasts me in the face daily, lives in my tense body, and seeps insidiously into my dreams. At least I’m sure that I’m distracting myself from it less than I would otherwise. In this, I'm reminded of the White privilege that has allowed me to avoid, for the most part, a pervasive sense of threat in my everyday life.

As worried as I feel about being distracted, I find that I do hang onto my mind during sessions. I feel closer to my patients, in some ways, than I ever have. “I know what you mean, I'm right there with you,” I find myself saying. Many of their fears are also my fears. Neither of us know what will happen.

My patients talk about feeling trapped in the present moment, too. They can't plan for the future, and they don't want to lose momentum or slide backwards. They can't help dissociating and fantasizing, but they don't want to lose touch with themselves and others. They want to turn off the news, but they can't stop doomscrolling. Most are scared for their bodily safety, because of the pandemic, the police, or the current administration (or all of the above). In the present, they are constantly aware of the losses, ambiguous and concrete, that mark this pandemic.

They want to talk to me about these losses, but sometimes they don't. It's hard for them to talk when they feel far away from me, and don't know when we'll have the office again. I understand completely. I can validate their feelings and experiences, and I can relate. The present moment really, really STINKS.

As I'm writing this I realize, this is what I feel prepared for. I can live in the present of each session, with them, wholeheartedly, despite the distractions. They ask in the beginning of each meeting, “Are you okay? How are you holding up?” As Nancy Williams pointed out in a recent post, some patients need to know that we are okay right now, before they can let themselves move on to telling us about their minds and hearts. I tell them, “I am okay. I'm hanging in there. It's been about eight years now since shelter-in-place started, right?” Then they laugh, or they cry, but I believe that they believe I'm prepared. Because I am, at least today. 

Tomorrow is, of course, no longer guaranteed (it never was). We check in on each other each session, and we go like that, week by week. It's not the nirvana I imagined living in the present moment would be, but I'm getting used to being relentlessly disabused of my assumptions and delusions this year.

A friend and colleague said to me, “I thought the apocalypse would be fast!? Not dragged out like this!” I don't know if we are in the apocalypse, or nirvana, or if we are within a catalytic process by which we establish the ongoing systemic changes that we, our patients, and our world desperately need. I'll try to be as present as I can.