Kind

We can all look and see some terrible things at the moment happening all over the world. It can be hard to quantify that people can behave in this way to other people and cause them harm in this way. When we see these things happening in other parts of our world it can often make us feel quite helpless in how we can change or even help what is happening. At times like this, we have to take a step back and not get stuck in that helpless place, feeling that these things are out of our control, and so in turn, we don’t feel that we can do anything to change this. This can be triggered by the defensive part of our minds as we can see the horror of war, violence, and crime, and deep within us this can trigger an internal response. We can then step into a place of fear and then end up being frozen in fear and finding ourselves not able to help in any way. We might not even be aware of this happening; we might just find ourselves trying to avoid what is happening. This might mean that we choose to not watch or listen to the news that informs us of these horrendous things that are going on. Life is always about balance and this situation is the same, we need to not ode on the information that is flooding into our media, tv, news, radio, and social media as this isn’t great either. This could then cause our mood to drop, we could feel anxious and angry or experience a combination of all of these feelings.

If we take a step back from this, both of these situations are part of our primaeval mind’s response to dangerous situations. This, you might say, is normal, and yes you are very right there, but what we need to be mindful of is that if we don’t acknowledge this then we could be causing other issues. If we are suppressing these types of feelings then this can be causing underlying anxieties to grow within us. Underlying anxiety is a very pesky thing for us as we can be unaware of why this is there and where this is coming from. If we let things like this continue to get pushed within us and never get resolved, then over time these can start to stack on top of each other. If we see this as the game Jenga, then imagine badly stacking these blocks together. Badly stacking these can instantly start to cause us to feel unstable, just imagine trying to stand on badly stacked blocks. It could feel like being on a very unstable seesaw and this level of imbalance within any of us will trigger anxiety and nervousness to push from the inside out. Let’s be clear, this can come from overexposure, or avoidant underexposure, to what is happening in our society and our world.

So, what should we do?? I think we should not do any of those under reactions, and over responses to exposure on the information won’t help either. But what we should do is stop and consider what we can do to help. If we look at the horror of Ukraine, we know that it is very hard for us to stop what is happening in any way, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything. What we have to do is do what we can, this might be helping to support families coming to the UK but for many of us, this is not possible. We could donate money or time to support charity organisations working to support the refugees fleeing from the country. Also, we could just look around our homes, in particular our wardrobes and all those items we are not using. Maybe we are holding onto them for the day we will, but if we are doing this, let’s be honest how often do we ever get to use these things again. For many of us there is just a slim chance of this, so why hold onto these things? Why not gift these to the many organisations desperate for clothing to support the ever-growing refugees. Or we can look at items in our home that we are holding onto and sell them to allow this money to go to charity.

All of these steps not only will make a huge difference for the people that receive your donations. But doing these acts of kindness will also profoundly help how we feel inside as well. Taking action will enable us to step out of avoidance and fear, allowing us to change what we could have otherwise been suppressing within ourselves. You might be thinking will this help? And the answer is, yes it will; if we are doing anything then we are not frozen in fear. Making acts of kindness is our way to help on the levels we can. Just imagine if all you can spare is a hat and gloves set. It might seem insignificant but if you were the person who receives this and you are cold and have nothing to keep you warm, how amazing would this gift be for you to receive? It would be amazing to now have that warmth from your gifted hat and gloves.

Just think about doing acts of kindness, even just the small things. Don’t ever think a small thing is not worth doing; this is not the case. Even a small thing will make a massive difference to the person receiving this, and to how we will feel inside.

Do something kind today, just take some steps to make a difference, no matter how small. x

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