As survivors of relational trauma, the harm that occurred was within our personal world. The private circle in which we live our daily lives. The hidden abuse we experienced was from people we know or knew at one point in our lives. There may now be distance between ourselves and those who inflicted harm upon us or we may still be exposed to these toxic individuals. Regardless of the current proximity to the poisonous people inside of our life bubble, we are also now experiencing a complex and mad world raging outside of that bubble.

There is a loud clamoring of external voices who are seeping into our personal lives. How can they not? They are everywhere. They are insisting that their way of seeing life should become our lived experience as well. It feels as if it is being forced upon us.

We are inundated with social media posts and videos of people talking about things that make us feel terrified because what we value most is exactly what someone else wants to actively take away from us. Perhaps, maybe they already have directly impacted our quality of life, and we are angry about the changes.

We know there are people out in this mad world who wholeheartedly do not see the threats that cause us to feel deeply anxious.

We don’t understand how in this world they cannot see what is so clear to us.

The threats are vividly before our eyes each and every day.

We sit on one side of a belief system and look across into the distance and see those who hate our way of life and even us as other humans. To some, we have become a burden to be dealt with and silenced.

We don’t understand how others cannot or will not see the dangers that are happening in our local communities and beyond those invisible borders. We can see these dangers are threatening to our very way of life.

How can they not see it?!

We recognize that we are isolating more to either ourselves or only those who also see the threats of this mad world as we do.

We no longer authentically enjoy the companionship of those who don’t fully recognize what is happening or could happen if we don’t make crucial changes now.

We are no longer as joyful as we once were; before the threats and fears of what may be to come took hold of us.

We are scared and we are angry.

Now, here’s the thing. These words can fit for both sides of this raging mad world out there.

We may have come to these feelings from very different viewpoints, but the lived experience is shockingly similar and not remotely good for our mental health.

We could go back through this list above and read it from whatever point of view we hold and then we could read it again from someone on the “other side.” We are experiencing the same distress but just for very different reasons. Surprising, right? To feel the same as people we don’t believe we have anything at all in common with.

We are scared and angry together, but for different reasons.

I do not pretend to have any sort of simple answer to the mad world’s issues that threaten to engulf us all, but I do know that recognizing that we’ve been caught up in the vortex of angry words can help to find the stable ground beneath us.

I do know we can slow down long enough to see how precisely our daily lives are impacted right now by the things we fear but have not actually come to full life. We may be spending more energy on worry than we actually will be impacted by the perceived risk.

I do know that seeing people who are not like us as monsters truly only causes our lives, right now today, to spiral downward. If we are honest, many of us have lost some of our joy while being caught up in this mad world.

I do know there are people who we will never meet but who are benefiting from our palpable fear and anger. It lines their pockets with more money than we could even imagine and in ways we have never thought of.

I do know that we are not meant to live this way.

We are made to live in a peace that doesn’t make sense but is still ours to embrace and enjoy. We must protect it and look at just today’s concerns that directly impact our lives. The answers will come with time and I know they can’t be found out there in this mad world.

As always, remember to keep dreaming big!

Shannon