Love is a light that never dwelleth in a heart possessed by fear. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Four Valleys, p. 58)
When referring to the Báb, he mentioned that “love had cast out fear”. (Dr. J.E. Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, p. 22)
Everywhere in the world, humanity is going through the trauma caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In trauma, people typically react through fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Let’s look at what each of these looks like and how love helps get us through.
Fight: we attempt to gain control through outbursts of irritation, anger or bitterness
Flight: we attempt escape through addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, sex, work, food, shopping etc) or suicide
Freeze: we fall into hopeless, helpless despair leading to depression
Fawn: we focus our attention on people pleasing, approval seeking and compulsive caretaking
While each of these are understandable, none of them are particularly helpful. The things that help me are remembering that:
- This pandemic is part of the disintegration of the old-world order, in order to build up something much better. To the extent that I can focus on applying the blueprint given to us by Bahá’u’lláh, I can turn away from all the things I can’t control.
- The purpose of my life is to know and worship God. To the extent that I can develop and strengthen this relationship, laying all my affairs in His hands, I can trust what’s happening.
- The purpose of my life is to also develop the virtues I’ll need in the next world. To the extent that I can focus on applying the virtues that I need in any given day, I can improve the quality of my life. I find the ones I need the most often are faith and trust in God’s plan; detachment from my own response to lockdowns, stay at home orders, economic hardship, marriage and parenting problems, vaccine shortages and so on; patience with the process; and gratitude that we’re in a pandemic and not a world war, among others.
So let’s turn to love as a solution. To love ourselves when we’re in fight mode, we can focus on what we can control and take action. To help others we can get lots of physical exercise to dissipate the anger.
To love ourselves when we’re in flight mode, we can immerse ourselves in the Bahá’í Writings and the Dawnbreakers and biographies of early Bahá’í heros and heroines. To love others we can make time to nurture friendships and forgive them for not being who we want them to be.
To love ourselves when we’re in freeze mode, we can get out through coming into the present by focusing on the breath, moving our bodies through exercise and/or finding ways to be of service. To love others we can respond to invitations and get out of the house.
To love ourselves when we’re in fawn mode, we can put self-care first and spend time developing a loving relationship with ourselves. To love others we can recognize how manipulative we are when we take on roles that aren’t ours.
Seeing practical ways to overcome fear through love, I am grateful!
What jumped out for you as you read today’s meditation? I’d love it if you would share so we can all expand our knowledge of the Writings!
If you liked this meditation, you might also like my book Fear into Faith: Overcoming Anxiety
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Dear Susan, Thank you VERY much for your blog! It is so often very useful for me personally, providing inspiration or food for thought. Or, sometimes I use it as a contribution to a conversation with one of my friend.
The forth response to trauma – fawn is new to me. And I’ll be keeping a look out for it in the future.
In appreciation,
Eva
My pleasure Eva, I love researching new things and fawn was new to me too.
I liked your recent blog post. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn… I appreciated the addition of fawn. It was a good reminder and call back to those principles on a day that might otherwise be lost to emotional drama that I need to accept yet be detached from the thoughts feelings and actions of others.
Thanks for writing this post
Thanks Julie! Fawn is new to me too, but I can relate!
Dearest Susan, I love the list of your 3 items. Wonderful!
I’m so glad it resonated with you Simin! Thanks for the encouragement!
I’ve had difficulty “loving” myself because of the way I was treated as a child – in most unloving ways. Over the decades since then, I have come to be (mostly) content with myself. That is as close to loving myself as I can understand. There are some characteristics about myself I would like to be different, but I now understand them as results of the treatment I received and brain wiring I can’t control. I’ve come to understand from the Baha’i scriptures that a “perfect” human being is one who is striving to be better. I have done that all my life, so I’m content.
I can relate to that Duane. As a child I learned to accept that love and abuse were intertwined. It’s been hard to separate that out. I’m glad you’ve found contentment – I agree that childhood trauma has wired our brains in ways we can’t control, and at the same time, my hunch is that we’ve both been able to reach that plateau of peacefulness and contentment (and maybe even leaning towards radiant acquiescence?) because the Baha’i Writings have rewired our brains. I look at some of my friends who have been through similar experiences and don’t have the Faith, and my life is infinitely better, and I am grateful!
Thanks, as always, Susan.
Yes, “fawn” is a spotted new arrival to further enlighten us.
In other words, now WE’re in the spiritual headlights.
We sure are, Steve!