Willingness is a necessary component of awareness. People often arrive to therapy with negative expectations and considerable resistance. However, throughout the period they hung in despite defensiveness, uncertainty, and the demand for change. Many people left feeling less demoralized, more confident, and with specific steps to implement a denomination-wide strategy. From isolated, reactive, independent activity a more related, rational, collaborate understanding emerged. Again, however, I warn you not to assume that all problems were solved, and all people satisfied. Yet, more was accomplished than anyone imagined possible. The issue in the systems approach as much as in the individual approach is seldom the maximum distance covered and usually a minimum change in direction. As in sailing the Albatross in a White Squall, at first the change seems so minute as to be insignificant. Over time, those few degrees of difference stretch into significant directional consequences.  Even though we are constantly reacting to immediate and emergency situations, we take time to think through and plan strategically long-range responses to human pain. Adrenaline is one of the hormones that are critical to help us fight back or flee in the face of danger. Increased adrenaline was responsible for our participants’ dramatic rise in heart rate and blood pressure while listening to their trauma narrative. Under normal conditions people react to threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate, and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They may also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual.  

We now know that there is another possible response to threat, which our scans are not yet capable of measuring. Some people simply go into denial: Their bodies register the threat, but their conscious minds go on as if nothing has happened. However, even though the mind may learn to ignore the messages from the emotional brain, the alarm signals do not stop. The emotional brain keeps working, and stress hormones keep sending signals to the muscles to tense for action or immobilize in collapse. The physical effects on the organs go on unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. However, the body continues to keep the score. Too much sand, not enough maids and mops—that was our presenting problem. By re-viewing and re-visioning what we see and what we do, we can transform an overwhelming take into a more manageable endeavor. It would be illusory and utopian to act with the belief that through one’s involvement all will work out well for everyone. The task of humanizing society is ongoing. No particular task matters officially; every particular task has a place in the swirling constellations of history. No one can do everything. Each one is called to do something. It is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither are we free to desist. We can focus on the neurochemical and physiological disruptions that were so evident and make a case that some people are suffering from a biochemical imbalance that is reactive whenever they are reminded of a death or massacre like the one that happen in Orlando, Florida USA, on 12 June 2016, when a gunman shot 103 people, killing at least 50. We might then search for a drug or a combination of drugs that would damp down the reaction or, in best case, restore the survivors’ chemical equilibrium. Based on the results of our scans, some have begun investigating drugs that might make people less responsive to the effects of elevated adrenaline.  

We can also make a strong case that the survivors of the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida USA are hypersensitized to their memories of the recent past and that the best treatment would be some form of desensitization. After repeatedly rehearsing the details of the trauma they witnessed at the nightclub with a therapist, the survivors’ biological responses might become muted, so that they can realize and remember that that was then and this is now, rather than reliving the experience over and over. However, sometimes the experience of trauma gets in the way of being able to talk about the distressing feelings so they can be resolved. No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality. I am continually impressed by how difficult it is for people who have gone through the unspeakable to convey the essence of their experience. It so much easier for them to talk about what has been done to them—to tell a story of victimization and revenge—than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience. The dread of these horrible experiences persists and could be triggered by multiple aspects of daily experience. They have not integrated their experience into the ongoing stream of their life. They continue to be there, but do not know how to be here—fully alive in the present. In responding to human pain, we risk what is known for what is yet to be known. We give up safety for searching. We lose life for the sake of life. If we are to respond, then we risk that risk. To me, risking risk means trusting God! In that trust I respond…keep yourself free to pursue activities that really matter to you, such as creative pursuits, platonic friendships, playtime with pets or the children in your life, open yourself up to spiritual practice, travel, and safe adventure. Give your time generously to family and other relevant communities in your life. Take some time to observe, reflect, and consider whether people are bringing good into your life. And most importantly, love yourself.