Our traumas are catching up to us

​"Feeling the need to be busy all the time is a trauma response and fear-based distraction from what you'd be forced to acknowledge and feel if you slowed down."

A friend shared that quote on her social media yesterday.

Then, last night, I ran into another friend whom I deeply admire. He told me about a conversation he'd had with someone about being a workaholic.

My friend owns that he may have some workaholism in him. The conversation he had with his friend got him to thinking about the possibility that the need to be constantly working is a pathway to escaping the past.

And then I got to thinking.

A lot.

My friend is very successful at what he does. Because he is, you'd never think for a second that his success might be partially or largely or even entirely driven by his unwillingness to go anywhere near his past.

It got me to wondering. How much of this frenetically paced world, this mad dash for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, is actually a stampede away from the collective storms of our pasts?

How much 'driven' is actually 'hiding'?

How many trophies, how many big houses, how many promotions aren't achievements, but actually distractions? If I can make this moment big enough it will somehow shrink the moments of my past.

I had a friend send me a text the other night. The message said I know you will fall asleep shortly only to wake up an hour later wondering what you missed out on in the hour you slept!

This friend knows I'm not a great sleeper. I haven't been for decades. And I always did think it was because I was afraid of what I'd miss out on if I was sleeping.

When I'm awake I'm moving. I'm creating. I'm contributing. I'm observing.

I am staying busy.

But when I woke up for the first time last night, I found myself wondering if this is not because I'm anxious to get up, but instead a fear of the stillness of being asleep.

Many see sleep as an escape from the fast pace of life. I wonder if some of us feel like sleep holds us captive away from the fast pace that often offers us our greatest source of peace?

I'm not suggesting that all sleep troubles are rooted in the traumas of our past.

I'm not suggesting that all hard working and accomplished people are running from the traumas of our past.

I am suggesting this - that far more of what we do and see and interact with IS a dance around and away from the traumas of our past.

I AM suggesting that as we find more and more ways to outrun our traumas - hide from them - we are missing the reality that our traumas are not so slowly catching up with us.

They are catching up with us as individuals; they are catching up with us as a society. Every measure of the current mental health crisis points to this reality.

And yet the stillness we've been running from is the stillness we so desperately need. We need the sleep we are hiding from; we need time to comfort the shared pains we are running from.

We need to collectively stop. And turn around. And wave our white flags of surrender at our shared traumas.

And together fight them. Not with violence, but with shared compassion and acceptance and understanding.

I can feel that white flag moment. I can feel the world tap it's brakes. The spinning globe screeching to a crawl. The dust of the stamped settling.

I can feel it, and it feels like peace.

I can feel it. It feels like sleep.