Complex Lives Surrounding Dense Moments

We are all more than what is happening right now.

REFLECTIONS | BRAD TAYLOR

I often ask professionals who work with individuals in distress to remember that the person in front of them is larger than the moment they are witnessing. Their personhood is not embodied by any one moment.

If they, right now, are seeming agitated, irritated, angry; if communication feels difficult or they seem defensive; if they are impacted by substances or by underlying mental health challenges; if they are having a difficult time—this is happening right now, and what is happening right now will not always be happening.

This is a person with a life full of relationships, experiences, joys, losses, memories, and moments we know nothing about.

This is simply one difficult moment in a much larger life.

These are dense moments, concentrated with emotion, responsibility, urgency, authority, vulnerability, history, safety considerations, and competing needs.

Their complex lives surround these dense moments.

That perspective shapes how I approach interactions with people in distress, drawing on some of the pre-escalation strategies that I developed over more than a dozen years of working as a homeless outreach worker and a mobile mental health crisis worker.

We explore preparation, approach, pace, positioning, tone, word choice, goals, and exits. We talk about ways to prioritize safety—physical safety, emotional safety, and our own sense of safety—and constantly consider:

Is this the right time? Is this the right place? Am I the right person to be in this situation?

But the work does not end with how we enter, navigate, and exit these situations. We also have to consider what we carry away from them.

For me, this is also where Self-Care & Team-Care strategies enter the conversation: how we care for ourselves and one another, and what we carry forward after the interaction ends.

And this is when we remind ourselves that we, too, are complex individuals, greater than the

situation that we are in.

We are not merely extensions of an office or an organization or a governmental body or a desk or a policy.

In these times, we may feel activated or frustrated; defensive or argumentative or impatient. We may feel concerned about our safety or heartbroken by the situation.

Our lives are not embodied by this moment.

Our lives are more than this moment.

In these professional moments that feel heavy and that remain on our minds hours and days after they occur, we can try to remind ourselves that these dense moments are happening within our larger, complex lives.

Today, right now, I might be fully engaged with the moment—feeling the weight of unreconciled past frustrations, carrying the perspective and goals of my organization, being seen as an authority or an obstacle or a barrier.

When others are not seeing me—or when I am not even seeing myself—as a complex individual, greater than the situation I am in, I find ways to remind myself that:

What is happening right now will not always be happening.

One day I won’t be standing or sitting here, talking about this or to this person, focusing on these tasks or policies, defending my professional perspective, or engaging in this challenging or frustrating topic.

I may be sitting by water or in a field, walking through a forest, dining in a foreign city, dancing with my partner, laughing along with a child.

What is happening right now will not always be happening. Other happenings await me.

In striving to gain perspective that allows me to work in ways that prioritize my safety in all of its forms, I remind myself that my career is not my life.

It is a part of my life.

And within my career, my current role is one chapter, not the entire book.

And within that chapter, today is only one paragraph.

And within that paragraph is this moment.

And in this moment—when my nervous system is on tilt, my mind is in spirals, frustration is rising, patience is depleting, and I feel fully engaged in a complicated and challenging matter— the greatest gift that I can give to myself and to those who love me is to find a path through the moment that gives me the best chance of going home no worse off than I left.

Retaining and regularly considering this truth can help us find ways to set down the pieces of our past experiences that are not valuable enough to carry forward, preventing the cumulative impact of holding more and more weight, day after day.

As dense as the moment may feel, it does not define or embody me or my life or even my professional life.

Through intentional practice, I can use strategies that help prevent these challenging moments from weighing down my next moments.

My ability to set them down can give me greater capacity to engage in the joyous moments and manage the challenging moments ahead.

Their complex lives surround the dense moments.

And so do ours.

Brad Taylor