Anger is about unmet expectations. It is an alarm response generated by a gap between what is happening and what someone believes should be happening: a perceived lack of fairness, a breaking of the rules, whether explicit or unspoken. Discussion while one or both parties is feeling angry can make the conversation difficult, and anger can turn a conversation into a confrontation.
Anxiety can be a disabling emotion. In thinking about future possibilities, the mind presents a menu of undesirable options, some less likely than others. The frightening thoughts, whether of illness and death, loss and distress or more everyday fears like changes at work, the safety of our family or friends, taking an exam or a job interview, trigger both the emotions of anxiety, fear or dread and bodily responses caused by anxiety-induced hormones: tense muscles leading to stiffness, pain and headaches; rapid heart rate, breathlessness, dry mouth, that familiar ‘sinking feeling’ in the tummy; and for some of us even nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Enabling someone to spend time thinking about their anxious thoughts allows them to examine the thoughts for what they are: imaginary visions of the future. Just because we think it, does not make it true in every detail. The upsetting thoughts are often images, frequently containing a grain of truth wrapped in a large parcel of conjecture: jumping to the worst possible interpretation, discounting any possibility of coping with an anticipated challenge, mental pictures of future suffering, or humiliation, or of being overwhelmed.
When misunderstandings and disagreements arise, we can let them pass or we can bring them for discussion. Sometimes letting them pass can allow them to be forgotten but sometimes they sit within us like silent companions, pinpricks of hurt or rage, slowly and subtly changing our relationship with the other person. It is as though our steps are out of time: the dance continues but now we bump into one another when we used to anticipate and accommodate each other’s every move. We become careful, guarded; despite yearning to reestablish that old, easy partnership we find ourselves always slightly at odds.
The longer the misalignment goes on, the harder it feels to mention it. We often use distancing tactics to prevent the need to discuss the change in our relationship, either holding ourselves aloof within our shared circle or even moving apart, avoiding contact in our attempts not to misstep, not to trip into exacerbating the hurt.
The world is busy. People are caught up in their own affairs. We move between tasks and places distractedly, rarely living in the present moment, largely preparing for (and often worrying about) what may lie ahead, and sometimes remembering about (and perhaps reproaching ourselves for) what has already passed. When life suddenly brings us up short through an event that is sad or shocking, we are tipped out of our distraction into the present moment. The world moves past us, unaware or uninterested; we are islands of presence in a distracted world.
We are social animals. We are hard-wired for connection to one another. Yet community living becomes lost in urban anonymity and rural distance; it has become harder to make meaningful relationships; a loneliness epidemic has been recognized. Loneliness is not about lack of company but lack of connection. Surrounded by people but with no one to hear us can be a place lonelier than isolation.
How can we design our clinics so that there is a safe space to feel overwhelmed? Because that is what is required. Our clinical spaces currently reproach expression of emotion: public waiting rooms, brightly lit and sparsely furnished; no room to sit and think or weep, apart from a toilet cubicle; hospital cafés without booths or screens. The absence of a space in which to cry is part of a public denial of the possibility of bad news. The Compassionate Hospital would offer time, calm spaces and trained, willing companions as a basic right for anyone receiving life-changing news, either of death or of an unwelcome change to their own or their dear one’s expectations in life.
Illness, accidents, bereavement, lockdown during a pandemic: these are all disorienting, disconnecting experiences. Although social connection is vital for our wellbeing, it needs to be a connection that we can control: the principles of invitation and acceptance, mutual responsibility, conversations by consent all apply as much in our families and friendships as they do when we seek or offer support or advice elsewhere.
We require contact on our own terms, in spaces that are conducive to meeting and the enabling of privacy: choice is the key. There are times when we need company, and there are times when we are alone and content to know that company would be available should we choose it.
Since earliest times, people have lived in communities. We know that loneliness and isolation deprive humans of wellbeing, and we have learned that overcrowding and lack of privacy are damaging, too. As urban slums were cleared and new housing solutions were developed in the second half of the twentieth century, the rush to provide ‘accommodation’ sometimes failed to provide ‘homes’, with neighborhoods, neighborliness and community identity being lost to social experiments of high-rise living or isolating suburban housing estates.
We have learned that housing developments need to be planned on a neighborhood scale to create connected communities: neighbors need to be able to meet and greet each other, to have access to their own personal space and still be able to connect with other households as they choose. Estates designed with only motorists in mind force pedestrians to walk circuitous routes to shops or schools, without pathways on which they can pass each other and connect; social housing complexes can make residents feel corralled, resenting those shared areas that are overcrowded, belong to everyone and yet no one, and so become unkempt and inhospitable.
Source : Listen by Kathryn Mannix
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58676989-listen
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