Entry for 10
November 2016
Ann Weiser
Cornell's latest piece
(https://focusingresources.com/2016/11/09/finding-potential-possibility/),
which my friend and former student Catherine Cowie has also picked up and commented
on, has moved me to try to put into words my experience of this week's US election:
When it finally
became clear early yesterday morning (UK time) that Donald Trump was going to
be the next US president, against all apparent reason or sense, it took a while
to even begin to process my feelings. Over
the next few hours I was able to mostly distract myself as I attended
graduation for the recent cohort of our counselling students, proudly
applauding them as they walked across the stage in front of me and later posing
for photos (me in my garish American academic cap and gown) with the happy
graduates. I welcomed the distraction
because it left a part of me free to continue processing what had
happened. What gradually emerged was in
Focusing terms a bodily sense of physical injury, as if I had been punched in
the middle of my chest. Then, as I stayed with the feeling and talked about it
with supportive colleagues, who were also struggling but still able to give me
space, I was able to really feel the anger in the blow that had left me feeling
wounded.
Immediately, I
recognised this as the same feeling that 9/11 had left me with, and the whole
thing began to open up for me: I felt
the anger in this vote, and then I was able to contact the sense of hurt,
despair, and longing to be understood behind that anger. As a therapist I have often accompanied my
clients as they explored past their secondary reactive anger to the primary
pain and sadness underneath it, and learned from them that even urge to strike
out, to gain revenge, hides a longing for empathy: “I am going to hurt you,
even if it injures me in the process, because that’s the only way you will ever
understand how bad I hurt.”
So I am in
mourning this week, like many of us in the privileged, educated elite, because
Donald Trump has won and we have lost.
Nevertheless, as much as it pains me to write this, he has earned it,
for better or worse: I could even go so far as to say that he deserved to win,
because he was the only one who most understand the sense of hurt, brokenness,
anger, and, yes, even longing for true understanding that is the core pain of the
new minority of poor, struggling, working class people (especially older white males
but not just them). They recognised in
him their own sense of injury and anger, understood and reflected back to them,
and, grateful, they rewarded him by electing him President.
Facing this
reality is going to require a lot of us: Saying hello to and accepting the
parts of us that are scared of what will happen next; supporting each other in
honest, positive ways that move us beyond outrage and simply disparaging those
with whom we disagree; accessing our hope, creativity and resilience in facing
new challenges; and most of all listening to and offering empathy to our hurt,
angry brothers and sisters.
