You're Not Alone: Interconnectedness Meditations for Overwhelming Times

Queer Joy Practice #15

This is How To Queer Joy, a newsletter dedicated to LGBTQ+ mental health and joy practices, written by queer psychologist Dr. Kiki Fehling.

This week’s queer joy practice: interconnectedness meditation. When you’re in pain or struggling, you can decrease your suffering by purposefully practicing self-compassion and bringing your attention to your connection to all other people/beings.

---

Three Offers for Hard Times

In the past week, I’ve had many people in my life express some form of stress, grief, rage, or “things are really freaking hard right now.” With the abuse described in the latest Epstein reporting, and the ongoing violence and repression in Minneapolis (as well as the rest of the country and the world)—all happening alongside all of the “typical” personal life stressors and griefs—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. If you’ve been struggling, you’re not alone.

So in this week’s post, I offer three things.

1. The wise reflection that my meditation teacher, Jacoby Ballard, shared with us in sangha this week:

   When I have thoughts of ‘this is not OK’ come up in my mind, I know it actually means ‘I am not OK.’

   Feelings of overwhelming indignation and hopelessness can become cues that you’re lacking capacity. When the world is not ok, it can be a prompt for taking action to change the world—but it can also remind you to replenish your resources, ask for help, and take care of yourself.

2. A reminder (along those lines) of a few ways to cope and take care of yourself that I’ve described in previous posts: Self-Soothing, Dancing, and Rest.

3. An encouragement to remember that you are not alone. You are not the only one struggling. You are not the only one in pain. You are not the only one fighting or wishing for a better world. Bringing your attention to these facts is the queer joy practice that I’m focusing on this week: interconnectedness meditation.

The Power of Remembering Interconnectedness

Last week, I highlighted the ways that individual action can contribute to collective liberation because we are all interconnected. Our lives are intimately tied—whether we know each other or not. Focusing on this interconnectedness can resource us during trying times.

Think about the last time you were suffering. I mean truly suffering. Most likely, there was an experience of feeling alone, isolated, weird, broken, different, less-than, or just somehow separate from other people. This kind of self-judgment in painful situations is incredibly common. But it also increases suffering, makes it harder for you to take care of yourself, and actually contributes to your sense of disconnection from other people.

If instead, when you’re in pain, you remember that suffering and struggle is an inherent part of the human experience and not a problem or shortcoming that you singularly face, it can greatly reduce your suffering. Interconnectedness meditations can turn your suffering back into pain—still painful, but much easier to cope with than that extra layer of “what’s wrong with me” suffering.

How To: Practice Interconnectedness Meditation

As long as you’re nonjudgmentally and compassionately bringing your attention to your interconnectedness with other people, you’re doing this one right!

But here are a few of my other favorite concrete practices…

• Perform a cultural or spiritual ritual. Choose a ritual that you find soothing and that you know your ancestors practiced—reciting mantras, building an altar, reading certain passages, dancing, or cooking. (“Ancestors” here can be your direct blood ancestors, or other historical people who share your religion, culture, or queer identities.) As you practice, bring your attention to how generations of people have used this same activity to cope, connect with their ancestors, and make sense of their worlds.

• Ground through your body. Lie down or place your bare feet on the ground. Feel the sturdiness of the earth, literally holding, cradling, and supporting you. Bring your attention to how this same earth physically supports all people and all beings, present, past, and future.

• Reflect on your queer role model. Bring to mind a queer or trans person who inspires you—alive or ancestor, celebrity or personal friend. Reflect on how they struggled and suffered, just like you. Reflect on how they practiced queer joy, just like you have and can again.

In the moments when these practices feel inaccessible, try simply saying to yourself: “Others struggle just like me, just like this. I am not alone. We will get through this, as we always have. Just as I offer kindness to my loved ones when they’re in pain, may I offer kindness to myself. ”

We’ve Got This

This week’s practice isn’t about feeling “good” as much as it’s about not feeling alone, broken, or disempowered within or because of your pain.

Taking a moment to actually feel your feelings—but with the collective support of these or other interconnectedness meditations—can resource you so that you can begin again. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.

Keep going. I’m with you,

Kiki