When you and your community are panicking about disease going around, there are simple things you can do to support community action. We’re living in a time when disease outbreaks are becoming more common as germs survive and mutate through warm winters. So whether you’re responding to coronavirus scares or H1N1, now is the time to learn how to be during a pandemic.
As a theatre maker, I study people and how they react to to different stimuli, which gives clues on how to survive amidst a panic. So let’s start by helping you notice your reaction, using a french theatre exercise called La Gamme, or the scale. It’s a scale of responses to an external crisis. What level are you at in the scale?
Level 1: You have a sense that a something unexpected may be happening but you barely react.
Level 2: You notice something unexpected happening, can’t figure out how it affects you, and then go back to your daily life.
Level 3: It’s clear something unexpected is happening and you start you start trying to figure out how to respond.
Level 4: The problem feels closer and you start rushing to respond.
Level 5: The problem feels eminent, so you stop everything to try and protect yourself.
The first step to community action is noticing your individual level reaction. This will change, but until you notice your own, it will be hard to act in a way that is in alignment with your own needs.
Next as preparation for collective action, notice what levels your community is in. When you and your community members are at different reaction levels, it can feel like you’re living in different worlds. One person is going about life as normal while others are bunkering down at home. Both are natural responses, but the dissonance between levels increases the tension between people making it harder to work together effectively.
When people are panicked, they often stressed looking for a sense of normalcy. You may want people to be at the same level of reaction as you, but people will have their own unique reaction timelines that we need to honor to get through panicked moments. So trying to drag someone to another stage of reaction makes it harder for them to get grounded, because they are just coming to grips with their current reality.
To be a loving friend or colleague, the biggest gift can be to witness someone in their stage of panic before moving to collective action. To be ready for this, you need start de-escalating yourself internally.
Yoga, meditation, and other breathing techniques can calm you internally so you can make more clear choices. Then from your centered space, start reconnecting with community by helping people feel witnessed in their panic as you work on problem solving together.
To get through, we’re gonna have to live in our range of reactions as our environment changes quickly. So let's breathe deep and get present so we can ride this out.