Day 30 The Masks are Falling Off; or, Scaling the Inner Walls

Melania Trump’s picture in a face mask in The New York Times this morning was telling in marked contrast to the man she married who refuses to wear a mask because “it will look bad.”

Remember Governor Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island? Outcomes, not optics.

I spent over an hour yesterday on the phone with a client talking her off a metaphorical roof.

The Trumps and mask policy notwithstanding, the masks we wear for the sake of social discourse are falling off. Leaping off our faces, and our psyches, and our souls to reveal what inner resources we do or do not have.

Many of us are experiencing a distinct lack of inner resilience.

For all that the fear-mongers of our world have sworn up and down that walls are the answer to the coronavirus pandemic, a child could tell us that external walls are no defence against an invisible pathogen.

A look in the mirror will tell us where we are being asked to scale inner walls. Those are the walls that are toughest, the least expected, the most painful, and the most necessary to climb.

For all that from sea to shining sea the beloved country is crying for infrastructure, where the infrastructure is in equal if not greater danger is within each individual.

Reality, as we used to know it, business as usual, same old, same old, is unraveling. It’s a crisis, what the Chinese pictogram names as ‘dangerous opportunity.’ Indeed, it is.

As the illustrious David Brooks wrote in this morning’s Times, “[T]here is ... a river of woe running through the world—a significant portion of our friends and neighbors are in agony.”

At the beginning of the call with the single mom on the roof yesterday, her voice was thready. She was barely breathing past her collarbones, bordering on hyperventilating. She was ready to cry or scream or both. Because she’d just put her ten year old son to bed, and she didn’t want to frighten him, she whispered as she took herself outside to speak to me.

She was afraid. For a thousand reasons. When we resolved one, another seven would pop up like the heads of a hydra that had just been waiting their turn.

Over the hour, her breathing changed. Her voice changed. She was restored to her fully-resourced self. What happened?

Well, one thing that happened is that we’ve known one another for more than ten years, and my own natural calm and her years-long experience of it worked its usual magic. That was one reason that she called.

More, however, together we were able to get her to stop doing two things.

Comparing. (I’ll explain, be patient.)

And projecting.

Here are the words David Brooks’ invitation to tell him about our mental states yielded. So far more than five thousand people have answered him. Try these on for size—or don’t.

gripped by a deep depression
lethargic
bleak
hopeless
wrenching loneliness
crying alone
feeling helpless
totally alone
terrified
paralyzed
struggling
hogtied to unhappiness

There are more, but that’s enough. Are you experiencing any of this, Beloved? If you are, stop a moment, and exhale hard, then let the inhale come gently. You’re not alone.

My client was unable to focus in order to meet a lucrative deadline. She was also not sleeping due to nightmares.

One of the things that was sending her right ’round the twist was hearing her married couple friends complain at how hard it was to work, home school, feed, take care of house and children. She has to do all that on her own. She told me she didn’t want to talk to them for a while. Can’t blame her.

Comparing is a legacy of our educational system. Trust me on this; we can debate it another time. I’m with obscure fifteenth-century philosopher Sir John Fortescue, “Comparisons are odious.” And, honestly, unhelpful.

Your skeletons are yours, Beloved. They scare you. Mine are mine, and they scare me. One of the reasons I am able to help others is because I’m not scared of your skeletons. I’m scared of mine, and I have people who help me with mine.

Projecting is a function of the human brain. We all do it, and it’s ridiculous really. What’s happening now, whatever that is, isn’t going to be happening forever. It just isn’t, but our brains take now, and faithfully extrapolate it into the future which often torments us.

What’s now is now, Beloved, and what’s then will be now, too. If you’re projecting that this pandemic will last forever, project again. The stories you tell yourself about your past, present, and future matter. If you don’t like the future story you’re telling yourself, rewrite it. Or get help to rewrite it like my client did.

David Brooks again, “There’s a heroism in the vulnerability you display in these letters, a courageous willingness to share your fears. You can read several more of them here, and you’ll see that spiritual growth pulses through the paragraphs. An atheist wrote that he prays daily, though he doesn’t know to whom. Many people are reading Viktor Frankl. ‘I am looking at this as a type of monastic retreat. I am hoping that we come out of this crisis as a nation with a renewed sense of perspective, a new sense of our dependence on each other.’”

Spiritual growth. In the metaphysics of a worldwide pandemic, of course that’s its long-term purpose. It’s the metaphor that matters in the moment. The thing I said to my client that set her back into her power was this: “I look at COVID-19 like a computer reboot.”

I heard it restore her to herself. She took a deep breath. Her spine realigned. Her voice dropped and she said, “Got it.”

There are many persons in the world far more computer-literate than I. One of the things I was most afraid of when I first started using a computer in the early 1990s was that by pushing some incorrect key, I would blow the whole thing sky high. I meant it literally. Answering my aol email was hugely stressful for me because of that fear.

Well, one day, I was on the phone with another client, a computer consultant, and I don’t know what made me turn her into a confessor, but the whole metastatic network of fear fell out of my mouth and into her ear. She dissolved, but utterly. Laughing so hard that she had to put the phone down to recover. I was completely at sea. When she came back to me, she explained that there were default settings in a computer, and all I had to do was turn it off to restore it to itself. “It’s called ... a reboot.” She was still hiccoughing her hilarity.

As Anne Lamott is known to have said, ““Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” Reboot may work for you as a concept, or it may not, but what I can tell you is this. Reaching out to someone and talking about what’s upsetting you can be empowering to you. Just naming it within someone else’s hearing can be a relief.

Mr. Brooks ends his exquisite piece, “I’m reminded that this is a time to practice aggressive friendship with each other—to be the one who seeks out the lonely and the troubled. It’s also true that character is formed in times like this. People see deeper into themselves, bravely learn what their pain is teaching them, and become wiser and softer as a result. So much respect, David”

Yes, friends help. So do spiritual practices. There is, however, nothing like an external witness to our experience to give it meaning. Are your interior masks falling off at too fast a rate for you to cope, Beloved?

If so, like the old AT&T ads used to say, “Reach out and touch someone.” If that’s me, lovely. Nothing is business as usual in my practice or anywhere else at the moment. If it’s not me, lovely. Reach out to someone. Don’t make the mistake of feeling that you’re alone in this. You’re not. Even if it feels that way.

There is a link at the bottom of this missive that will take you to the counseling page of my website. From there it’s a click to the contact form. Fill out the form, even if it’s just to ask for prayer, and I’ll gladly get back to you.

I was feeling a little blue myself toward the end of the day yesterday when I received an email from a Broadway producer I follow named Ken Davenport. He’s generally brilliant anyway, but at the end of his email, he addressed the ‘stuck’ word, which, if you’ve been reading these essays, you know has been making me a little crazy. Ken wrote,

“Because we are not sheltered in place, we are artists in residence.” How’s that for a beautiful mask to pick up and wear? Internal infrastructures are most definitely artistic endeavors. If you want a witness or a muse for your artistic process, I’m here.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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