Hi everyone – it’s Artemiss.

In the current situation, with what’s going on around the world and in our own countries and communities, I wanted to share one thing that’s been helping me.

I’m not a therapist and I’m not an energy healer, but as someone who, through my own experience of depression, anxiety, and a nervous system that is easily triggered, I’ve created some hacks, if you like, for things that help me stay connected to my values of love and compassion even amidst behaviour that I don’t agree with.

And I really really firmly believe that whatever our personal beliefs about why and how things are happening and other people’s behaviour around it, that the biggest healing, the biggest resolution, the biggest gift we can bring to the situation is staying centred to our own sense of love and compassion and offering that to other people – even if we disagree with what they say or how they’re behaving.

We can still stand for what we firmly believe in without sinking into judgment and ridicule and finger-pointing etc. Because the energy of “why are they doing this, they’re so stupid” or “why are they doing more of this” or “oh look at those people doing that differently, I would never do that” – first of all, on a personal level, it fucks up our system – that amount of stress and holding on to that turmoil within weakens our system, makes our immune system have to work harder because of that chemical influx of stress hormones and all of the other stuff that is not something that our body is made to sustain for a long space.

But then we also have the energy that we’re offering to the world. If we’re bewildered by someone’s behaviour, fair enough, but if what we’re throwing at them is judgment and ridicule, all we’re doing is creating that bigger divide of us versus them – and I tell you that does not serve anybody’s higher good.

It does not serve the stability of the world, the empowerment of the government we wish we had who truly represents the people, it doesn’t connect us closer to the neighbours that we’re trying to build a community with. It certainly doesn’t make anybody who believes differently to us stop and say “I wonder what that’s about?” All they’re gonna do is be defensive – and they should be because that’s our natural instinct for survival if we’re attacked – we will defend, we’ll put our fists up, and we will close our ears down.

So if you, like me, believe that love and compassion is the way forward regardless of what your belief around the actual situation is then I invite you to use your own body and reaction as a mirror to what’s going on. Okay so if you’re reacting to someone from a place of judgment and ridicule – and I’ll put my hand up full transparency, I was totally on that with the whole toilet paper saga in the beginning until it clicked that people don’t behave how we’re seeing in some spaces if they did not feel already unsupported, unsafe.

So personally, for me, how I address that, how I want to be part of that rebalancing in the world is to offer love and compassion. So when I walk around in the shops like yesterday or reading stuff on Facebook and I feel triggered what I do is check in with myself – where in my body is that affecting me and then I take time to just calm down my nervous system reaction, calm my knee-jerk reaction because I honestly can’t do f- all from a place of anger and resentment.

So once I’ve got myself under control then it’s like “OK, how can I bring compassion and love to this situation even if we have different beliefs, even if I don’t agree with how people might be behaving towards something?”

And that is to understand that in their human condition, in their life experiences, they are doing the best they can – so if I seek to understand that so that the energy I’m bringing not only to my own body but people around me is one of compassion and kindness then the way I talk to people is going to be different; the energy I put when I see someone behaving in a certain way is going to be different.

Now this isn’t about turning a blind eye and pretending we don’t see things going on which we believe might be harmful to our families, our society, our country – so this is not about pretending we don’t know – this is about actively choosing how we show up in that moment of “conflict” and the idea that hate only breeds more hate. And by golly geez we don’t need more that shit, ok!

So if you stand for having a better world, if you stand for having a more compassionate population that supports each other and comes in together with community, speak your truth but speak it from love and compassion.

That’s my 2 cents, thanks.

© Artemiss Keyhani, 2020