Is This An Emergency?

by Stephen BE, M.A. D.Div. – 6 minute read

In the midst of near-universal social anxiety due to a viral pandemic, we are reminded that it is sometimes difficult to determine if what you are experiencing is an emergency or not. We witness people around us behaving in unusual ways. They seem to think they have an emergency. They are anxious. They are skittish. They seem to over-react to every new piece of news. They hoard food and household goods in ways that are not normal to them. They worry, a lot. Everything about them seems to scream loudly, “Hey, this is an emergency! Don’t you know?”

When our security issues are raised by these behaviors, and reinforced by the warnings coming from government and news services, we may wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Am I missing something?”

We all have security issues. These security issues can usually be moderated through rational thought and deliberate behavior. Some people are better at moderating their security issues than others. When security issues are pronounced, it is easy to misperceive the reality of the situation.

We see others reacting in desperation and wonder if we should be doing more to assure our own security. This results in a circle of irrationality: The more we see others over-reacting, the more we wonder if we should react more. Then our increased reaction reinforces others, who then also over-react. This is mob behavior. Mob behavior is how people will fight over an article of clothing in a frenzied shopping spree, or even kill one another over being able to fill their gas tank during a gasoline shortage.

Here is the thing to remember: People driven by their security issues will always act irrationally. You do not want to be someone who is driven by their security issues. Doing so will inevitably destroy what you truly want.

There are lessons to be learned in any situation, including those that make us wonder if the present situation is an emergency and we just don’t see it yet. To retain composure and a sense of competence, it helps to have a system for evaluating the urgency of a situation. You must learn how to increase your consciousness and commit to conscious behavior if you are to avoid falling prey to your own unconscious security issues.

Anyone who has taken a hard fall has experienced that moment in time when you have to survey your body to know how badly you have been hurt. You might just lie on the ground for a minute or two while you mentally check your legs, your arms, your bones, your skin, your breathing and your blood flow. Even after you return to a vertical position you continue to survey your body messages. It is not until you have completed your survey that you can determine if you have an emergency or not.

This same method applies to incidents of worry and apprehension. When you feel anxious and wonder if you are perhaps under-reacting, stop and assess. Is this an emergency? Am I, or someone in my care, physically hurt or imminently endangered?

Of course, we hear about people getting sick. We even hear that some people are dying from the sickness. But are you sick now? If so, take corrective action. If not, do not let your unconscious rule the moment. Reassure your own unconscious by claiming your experience and the truth of your choices.

Should I do more to avoid getting sick? Maybe. What more can you do to avoid sickness? Isolate yourself? Perhaps. For how long? A week? Three weeks? Three months? How will you know when it is safe to come back out into the world?

Everyone must make choices about how much they allow their unconscious to rule their behavior. Your unconscious has only one purpose, to guarantee your survival. It will often guide our behavior in ways that assures our survival at the expense of other choices that will get us what we truly want. If you are in a true emergency, then your unconscious is your best bodyguard. But the key lies in how you define an emergency.

A true emergency requires immediate action to preserve life. Blood is flowing and needs to be stopped. Air flow is impeded. There is no circulation in the body. There is an imminent threat to your safety or survival; imminent threat, not just a worry about a threat. These are emergencies.

Worrying about what might happen in the future is not an emergency, no matter how much your unconscious is screaming otherwise. And yet, worry is the very experience that leads most people to over-react to their present situation. They believe the misperceptions, mistranslations and outright lies of their own unconscious. They assign emergency status to their worry.

There might be a sickness in the near future. There might be a radical and long-term shortage of convenience items to which we have grown accustomed. We might suffer an economic set-back, or even an economic catastrophe sometime in the near future. We may encounter shortages of essential items, such as food, water or shelter. We may be confronted with difficult choices about our safety or liberty. Other unpredictable and perhaps undesirable changes to our lifestyle may be necessary. The list of “what ifs” and “maybes” is long. And our unconscious wants to indulge each and every one of them to assure adequate worry and insecurity, emotional experiences that then allow it to reclaim its dominance in our life.

If you aspire to be more conscious in your life, then you must remember to practice the skills of consciousness even when the unconscious is acting up, especially when the unconscious is acting up. You cannot have it both ways: You cannot pursue consciousness and also indulge the unconscious. If you value higher consciousness, you must learn how to accommodate the unconscious without sacrificing the consciousness you have attained. Do not let the worries of the unconscious alter the purpose of your life by declaring an emergency when there really is none.

A skilled therapist can help you learn to harness your worries and fears so you can make truthful choices. We are here to serve as a port in the storm, providing guidance to help you understand why you feel how you feel, and help you to decide how you want to navigate each new situation. Give us a call to schedule an in-office or video therapy session with one of our skilled therapists.