Lea Misan is an accomplished consultant in systemic psychotherapy and process-oriented psychology who is passionate and dedicated to helping people involved in conflict, abuse, trauma and in leadership positions. She is also a Facilitator, Trainer, Coach, Founder, and Director of the mental health charity Act for Change. A firm believer in continuous learning and development, Lea holds an LLB in Law from the London School of Economics. She is a Fellow in Holocaust Education with the Imperial War Museum and a Fellow with the School of Social Enterprise. Lea is the author of two books, ‘A Body's Call to Presence' and ‘The Tribe Within' (publication due in June 2023). Here, she discusses ten ways to rediscover and expand your identity in times of community chaos.
Scientists define chaos as the amplified effects of tiny changes in the present moment that lead to long-term unpredictability. We are certainly experiencing amplified effects in our communities.
In such unpredictable times, we often experience a disconcerting feeling of unease, of not knowing how to meet the world. We are so accustomed to shaping and controlling our environment, harnessing it to our needs, that we forget nature has its own way. That ‘chaos is associated with “good health”: pathologies (such as of the brain, heart, lungs) occur when the dynamics become stable' For more click here
What follows are eight ways of engaging with community chaos that expand your sense of identity.
- Chaos and creativity - a moment of choice
When a sense of reality is no longer tenable, it feels like the core of who we are does not hold. Because the centre does not hold. You might need a moment to feel that disorienting sense of community chaos, of not having the language to describe what is happening around you. In the next moment, just remember that it takes a drop of awareness and at a moment of choice, very little effort to redraw a sense of order to the community and your place in it.
- Community chaos and a redefining of community
Before we can redefine community, with much discomfort, once our sense of reality shatters, we deconstruct our understanding of it - hence the community chaos. The deconstructed parts, we then reuse and recycle: we bring back old concepts and recycle them into new forms - only not in a straightforward, linear way. Be part of the conversation. Feel the freedom to play an active part in redesigning your community to accommodate how you envision being a part of it.
- Naming what's in the chaos
In community chaos, it is not possible to decompose the community into its parts and sort each part separately to then construct a full solution. The bad news is that communities are dynamic systems. That is also good news for you because, in dynamic systems, a small change somewhere might result in a large change to the whole community. Consider yourself as the harbinger of that small change and you will do more than rediscover your identity, you will expand it in untold ways.
- Channeling what's needed
Do you experience your community in chaos? Focus on the community context and ask yourself: what's missing? Remember that community chaos also means a nonlinear, dynamic system: the whole is more than the sum of its parts. A small intervention can have large, unexpected impacts - if we know where to make them. Notice what's needed, put yourself out there differently than you've ever done and channel that.
- Circle making - coming together and listening to one another
John Gray reminded me that we can't disagree if we don't have agreement. We can create a sense of chaos in our communities if we don't agree on some common values. Rediscovering your identity in the chaos can also be an act of collecting those people you want in your ‘chalk circle'. Reinstate your own boundaries of who is in and who is out. Recreate some common ground to hold the centre, whatever agreement brings people together into your circle and then… listening to one another.
- Looking back
We can only understand what is by looking back. From where we are, the future is uncertain, but if we can envision the future as we want it to be, then we have a vantage point from which to look back at this moment and to connect the dots to the container that we are presently holding.
- Giving back to the collective and to history
In evolutionary biology, organisms create their environment and are in turn moulded by that environment through positive feedback. Similarly, you look at the content of who you are and reflect on the context, the collective history that created it. You now have the opportunity to give back those aspects which are moulded by the collective and history - wherever they belong; empty yourself of content that isn't yours, other than by an inheritance which no longer serves. Complete the feedback in reverse: from individual to collective.
- Holding the tension in polarity within yourself
Community chaos is perhaps the expression of a sense of reality that shatters. Create a new container to hold the tension in the polarities within yourself. Find a new pattern each of the parts can fit into and organise into wholeness. Experience it long enough to sense and change the old pattern, even momentarily, to start with. Transformation can happen when we look at the context to hold the tension.
- Consider your identity as a context and not content
Focusing on our identity, on the content of who and how I am served at one point in time. But from the next moment on, the dissonance between me and what is needed in that next moment, grows. Focussing on our identity as content, we always fall short of what it's supposed to look like. Instead, to consider your identity as a context, is to ask: what is needed of me right now? Find out more
- Retell the story
Retell your story of you for the current context. Retell the story of you and of your community to a different Who. Keep reminding yourself that content flows in and out of us. The rigid domination by certain content over our identity can only stultify us. Allow the flexible flowing of information through you and at each memorable moment, retell the story.
In writing this article, I have reminded myself that community is both a feeling and a set of relationships among people, that living a vital life does not depend on a rigid sense of identity, but on holding a conversation - an inner conversation as well as a conversation within a chalk circle of trusted friends engaging with the moment, with history and the collective. Within the dynamic nature of community chaos is the vitality. Each moment we redefine ourselves we reconnect with our own vitality.
For more information about Lea visit: https://leamisan.com/
