Things Keep Getting Scarier. He Can Help You Cope.
April 11, 2020
by David Marchese
In this turbulent moment, a lot of us — myself included — are feeling fear, anxiety and grief. And a lot of us, I suspect, could use some help managing those difficult emotions and thoughts. I had been wanting to talk to someone who could answer that question with practicality and steadying wisdom, so I got in touch with Jack Kornfield, whose work has offered that to me and a great many others over the years. A clinical psychologist and author whose books have sold over a million copies, Kornfield is one of America’s true mindfulness pioneers, a man who helped popularize the once-exotic practices he learned more than 50 years ago when he began training as a Buddhist monk. “Epidemics are a part of the cycle of life on this planet,” Kornfield said. “The choice is how we respond. With greed and hatred and fear and ignorance? Or with generosity, clarity, steadiness and love?”
People reading this might be scared of contracting Covid-19 themselves, or fear that someone they love might contract it. Is there something, even small, that you can share that can help us all feel a little steadier? What’s needed in a time like this, David, are ways to steady the heart, which is the essence of your question. The first step is acknowledgment and the willingness to be present. You could almost whisper to yourself, “Sadness, fear, anxiety, grief, longing,” as if to bow to that feeling and hold it with respect. That allows the feeling to open — maybe even intensify for a bit — but eventually to soften. The next step is to bring in a sense of compassion for all the fears and confusion and helplessness. These feelings are all part of the fight-flight-or-freeze instinct in the body and the mind. If I make space for the feelings and they have time to be felt, it’s as if my awareness gets bigger and I can hold all of this with greater ease and compassion and presence and steadiness.
But what you described sounds like something you would do alone before going to bed or something. What about those times during the day when, I don’t know, you’ve been reading scary things about coronavirus-death projection, and your kids are going stir-crazy from quarantining, and you feel that all your stress is about to bubble over? We don’t always have the luxury of dealing with anxiety in some period of quiet reflection. I love the line from the Japanese Zen poet He wrote: “Last year, a foolish monk. This year, no change.” So the first thing is to acknowledge that this is just our humanity. Your feelings are your organism trying to handle things. The second thing is what you teach kids: Take a pause. You don’t have to sit and do some formal meditation. In that moment when you’re about to snap, take a breath, turn away. Bring that quality of loving awareness, and name the feeling gently — upset, worried, frightened or whatever it might be — and then, almost as if you could put your hand on your heart, say: “Thank you for trying to protect me. I’m OK.” That can take 10 seconds, and it allows us to reset our consciousness. All the good neuroscience on trauma and its release is based on this kind of caring attention.
The article is published in The New York Times.
