Staying Empowered During Divisive Times

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Mohandas Gandhi

It almost feels to me as if things are slowly winding down after the world wide pandemic. I don’t know about any of you, but I find myself feeling a little worn out and raw. It’s been a year of revelations, endings, beginnings, shadow work, inspiration and most of all, change.

For me, it’s almost like a metamorphosis of the self and of society. Our world is no longer the same as it was and through this new birthing of circumstances, we’ve seen a huge division with humanity. I’ve seen friendships and marriages dissolve, families torn apart and huge crevices created by differentiating beliefs. And it made me wonder, how can we stay empowered through divisive times?

I’ll admit that I, too, got caught up in the whirlwind of fear and leaning towards one side of the political and social pendulum throughout COVID. I, like you, am human, and over the course of my life have adopted beliefs about what is right and wrong, good or bad, uplifting or not, and so on. We all have. That’s the nature of having a human experience.

For me, empowerment came in the form of loving detachment. Normally this term is widely used when dealing with recovery and addiction. Of releasing codependent cycles and learning to adopt self care. It’s consciously choosing to become less emotionally involved with addiction and stopping any attempts to fix things. The goal of loving detachment is to prioritize one’s own personal life and self-care above everything else.

It’s a proven fact that fear and anxiety create stress hormones which lowers our immunity, physical and mental health. Our bodies actually become addicted to how the stress hormones biologically and psychologically affect us. I learned about this recently by reading Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza. It was an incredibly interesting read that included how the brain and body reacts to thoughts and beliefs. I found that I was too focused and integrated into all the outside noise. Was I addicted to what I was seeing on social media and media outlets? Was I allowing my emotionally charged beliefs to affect me? Did it make me feel empowered? I had to get real and honest with these questions.