Stage 3: Exhaustion

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi All,

Thanks for the break, unless my email is broke and I just didn't get 
your mail today.

  I was filled with dread as I made my way home from a long day, 
feeling incredibly crummy. I didn't want to face a load of mail... to 
answer questions and generally do my job here, and I was feeling 
guilty about it, too, considering what the folks in New York are 
going through right now.

Then I realized that I recognized this state of mind and body because 
I had time to think and feel and evaluate. It's the third stage of 
reaction and the processing of emotions following such a major 
psychological trauma. It's exhaustion.  It's that peculiar form of 
internal poisoning, the result of unused adrenaline and other stress 
hormones released by bodies molded by evolution to react physically 
to such emotional events, but it is not only unused, at least unused 
in the way evolution prepared us to use it, but is revisited again 
and again both through media repetition of stories and images, and 
also in nightmares and flashbacks that are entirely involuntary and 
unavoidable. It is a form of intense, and hopefully short duration, 
post traumatic stress syndrome.

I've been through it in the riots and demonstrations of the late 
sixties, and saw it in friends and acquaintances returning from 
Vietnam in a worse form. Then I went through it again in the Loma 
Prieta Earthquake, and then again in the Oakland Hills Firestorm. And 
now this.

Live long enough and ya learn a few things, whether ya think ya need 
it or not. This is one we could all do without. However, there is a 
point to this rambling. None of us will be able to operate at 
anything like normal efficiency anytime soon. One of the things this 
means for us is that we must redouble our dedication to this task, 
right now. As much as I would love to take a break, and just recover, 
I will never be able to recover and maintain my honesty with myself, 
if I allow this opportunity to slip away.

I certainly hope there is never another such moment in time when 
minds which might otherwise be closed to even considering our work 
seriously are open, at least for a time, to the possibility that 
increasing our ability to understand our often inexplicable fellow 
human beings is worth pursuing-- at least AS worthwhile to pursue as 
retaliation or vengeance or deterrence, or whatever name we place on 
the need to punish the perpetrators and try to prevent such 
atrocities in the future.

Maybe I can see this because I have been through enough similar 
experiences. Stage1 is outrage, anger and/or shock mixed with large 
portions of disbelief if not outright denial. Stage 2 is Numbness, 
usually combined with some denial, that shutting-down that prevents 
anxiety from overwhelming us. Stage 1 and 2 often oscillate back and 
forth for some time until Stage 3, the exhaustion we're all feeling 
now, takes over.

Depending on our emotional and spiritual health, the next Stages can 
lead to positive steps to use our grief, sorrow and outrage to create 
substantive change in ourselves and the world, or negative steps to 
create further damage and destruction, but, regardless the next stage 
is either paralysis or action.

As I said yesterday, I am glad I have work I believe is positive to do.

Thanks,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request