When The Problem is not The Problem

How often do you feel certain that you know what the problem is? You slave away trying to fix it, find solutions only to discover that what you thought was the problem is actually not the problem at all. It may be a problem, but it is not the problem, and it is only when you finally reach down into the truth of what is troubled that the solutions begin to present themselves.

I think about this with COVID-19, I thought it with the bushfires. The problem with the bushfires, for me, was not that we were running out of water to “fight” them, was not the fires themselves, not even the death upon death of beloved animals. For me the problem was emptying dams to fight a fire, was pouring chemicals over vast swathes of country to put out the flames, was treating it like a war, when all I heard was wailing: a deeper cry, the cracking of the known world, the dying beneath the dying. This is what kept me awake at night.

I wonder about COVID-19. The illness is a problem, trying to treat it is a problem, keeping social distancing and self-isolation is clearly a problem for many of us, fatigue is a problem, trauma at the front lines and for the dying and the families of the dead and dying. Sudden extra poverty, health care systems and financial systems in crisis, our society feeling like it might be on the brink of some great disaster, the Titanic having hit the iceberg but we are not sure yet and so the party goes on in the back rooms far from the weather raging outside are all problems. But is ‘the pandemic’ the problem? Or is it like the fires, calling to us from a deeper place in the systems of living and dying? As it rips through us humans like a forest fire, killing some, maiming others, leaving others unaccountably still standing, what is this virus saying to us about us? Is there a deeper problem that it is pointing to?

I do not have an answer for this, but I am curious. In this time, I hear the terror of knowing that we cannot control the world and protect ourselves from death and suffering and personal catastrophe. I hear anger at a world that could come up with an illness that makes us all so vulnerable – just when we ‘had it good’. I hear us howling to the moon to not have to know that we are animals subject to plague and fire and drought. When I say, “us”, I mean Westerners. My Indian friends talk more calmly of fate.

And beneath this what else could a virus be wanting to bring home to us not just about vulnerability but responsibility: not just to each other, but to life and the world. Is the earth sending this pandemic fire to us from its own terror? If there is any message, and I think it can be worth listening for, then what message is most fruitful to hear, what story most helpful to tell?

All stories – and by stories I mean interpretations and understandings of events that form a narrative of meaning – shape how we act. This makes stories powerful. We know this. The story we make of the thing is what we know the thing to be and then how we respond to it. While there may be many stories to tell about bushfires or pandemics or our own lives, it is helpful to get to know the ones we are telling, to hear their echoes, see how they make us respond, and understand more fully what the deeper roots of our experience may tell us.

I have recently started private practice full-time. The first week I was excited and joyful; the second felt too scary, too empty; the third was like being squeezed in a vice. At the end of week five, this last week, I felt ready to break into a thousand pieces, crushed by the weight of responsibility, not knowing, uncertainty, my own old pain being touched by client after client. I have been thinking about boundaries and logistics: the nuts and bolts that need tweaking so that I no longer feel so lost in the sea of the day. The refrain through my head has been, “Why? Why am I doing this? What purpose does it serve?”

I keep thinking that I need to work this out, write a manifesto, or draw a picture. But this afternoon as I listened to Roshi Joan Halifax discuss the challenges of working in the charnel grounds of life (and being a trauma therapist certainly touches on these dark and torn places) something began to come home to me. When she led us through her GRACE practice even more came home. I realised that I had lost my way spiritually; the nuts and bolts and the purpose will become clear as I regain connection to sacredness and wonder. I already knew that my poor little ego has been feeling scared, remembering all the lost places; but I did not realise that this is not the ‘problem’; the problem is that it can’t find its way back to spirit, to soul and that that is not found on a whiteboard or in writing a manifesto from a list of values. As I listened to her a lightness returned, the spark that feels like truest me reignited, and safety and purpose and knowing wound their way back in.

When I think back on my own traumatic times and I think the scariest moments were the loss of connection to my essence; where my soul felt torn and broken by the weight and horror of living through something so awful and so unseen and misunderstood by others. It was as if the whole world abandoned me, not just the people. And when that happens, what really is the point? All is consumed by the howling badlands.

In spiritual care we talk of spiritual injury. I feel like we live in a time of this: so much disconnection from what truly matters, from the cycles of living and thriving, being ill and dying, from the natural world and the love and care that is needed for us to be true to our lives and being contributors to this beautiful and wondrous world. And beyond my own experience I am sensing that maybe for many of us, the deepest part of traumatic response is not in the nervous system or the psyche, it is in the spirit and the soul. If we do not go to the root of the root then we miss the point of what trauma truly is.

When I started working in the field of human care my supervisor, at our very first session, said, "Usually what the client brings as 'the problem' is not really the problem." And I think she is right. Often what seems like the main issue is actually the first layer and it takes some peeling to get to the deeper truth. All the layers matter, but it is the getting to the core that unlocks the real transformation.

So yes, we need to attend to the emergencies that are here and need attending to, whether that is someone dying of an illness or fires bearing down on homes and wiping out national parks over thousands and thousands of kilometres. But for me, and many others like me, there is a belief that we need also to go within the horror of the fires, the chaos of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter heartbreak and injustice being shaken out like dirty laundry, the brokenness of all the inequality and suffering, the shame of the greed and destruction of our planets systems and beings, to hear the deeper, abiding questions of our spirit and our souls.

And I fear that if we do not acknowledge and go down and down to the root of the root, do not listen to the rumblings beneath the events, to our own soul's response, then we may not understand the source of the suffering and something important may be truly lost and not found. And I believe that if we do not begin to understand how we belong, what it is to be brought into life on this earth, to live here and to die, then I fear that any ‘fixes’ of any ‘problems’ may be missing the truest point of what is happening and what is being asked of us. And if we miss that then any solutions we come up will at best address only some of the problem and at worst lead us all further into disaster and destruction.

Chantal Jackson: 16 August 2020