We’ve been ‘going viral’ for a while. I’m of the generation that straddles a technological abyss and the long-term memory that remains in a Gen X-er cannot always pinpoint when that shift occurred. Now I use Zoom, then I wrote letters. Now I use WhatsApp, then I checked an answering machine.
We are living in a time where information and images go viral with such rapidity and ease that we collectively forgot what Viral actually means.
But now we are beginning to remember.
Now we see the insidious, focused attention that a virus harnesses to rapidly spread across borders and time zones. Now we obsess over the packaging we just touched and the jogger who ran past us only 3 feet away. Now we witness brutality in flesh and fading breath all across the globe, in the palms of hands, on screens, in seconds.
What does Trauma mean now? Is it still that thing that only happens to soldiers? Or is it also a black boy screaming “I’m scared!” as his family and community plead for calm, while armed police officers approach him, guns raised directly in his direction.
Is it the lingering guilt you feel because you infected someone you love, or someone you don’t even know, with a deadly virus?
What does Self-Care mean now? Once a hashtag used to promote products consumed in the efforts of relaxation. As I stare at my roots and unpolished toes I realize just how much ‘self-care’ I had been outsourcing.
Disconnected from my body for years. Paying people, often of color, to groom me to a higher level than I cared to attempt. Self-care has been bandied about to excuse day drinking, napping at work, and all manner of indulgence.
But now I do the things. I polish the nails. I cut the split ends. I am looking out for my health and frantically paying attention to my body in a way that feels familiar but forgotten.
And what is Mental Health?
It’s a hashtag for sure. It’s a whole month. It’s the catch phrase that’s gets peppered into conversations on the causality of violence. It’s at the end of articles; as in, talk to a mental health professional if you or a loved are… which says nothing of the therapeutic process people are so often unprepared for.
I am reminded of this every time a novice to psychotherapy expects me (by the end of our first session) to have the antidote to a pain they haven’t even begun to understand, nor the words to articulate.
What does it mean to live in a world where words travel so quickly but change moves in slow motion? Words do have power but they are rendered meaningless if unaccompanied by a sincere desire to change our behavior — in therapy, in our priorities and, especially, in politics and policing.
You just need one word ‘Home’ to contact the Crisis Text Line.
US and Canada: text 741741. UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 086 1800 280
Natasha Watkinson, LMHC, NCC is a licensed psychotherapist in the State of Florida, a National Board Certified Counselor and a Registered Member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
Comments