What to do when life interupts

Mental Health Week acknowledges the many traumas and interruptions in life, notes clinical psychologist Roger Bretherton - who analyses how we might respond to them.

Roger Bretherton

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

A blurred exposure of a person under a hood turning their head to the side.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash.

For over a decade I worked, as a Clinical Psychologist in a service treating people who had suffered trauma. I clocked just under ten thousand hours of clinical contact with people who had been through the worst situations imaginable. One thing I learned during that time is that trauma often occurs to us as an interruption.

Most of us live our lives to some script, a set of assumptions of how we think things should be, our expectations of what is about to happen next - and trauma shatters those assumptions. Over and over again, people who had been through trauma told me how their view of the world had been violated. The narrative that defined their life, the story they thought they were in, changed genre unexpectedly. The romcom became a horror movie; the adventure became a hideous farce. The story called walking home at night turned into another one called being mugged. Driving to the supermarket became, having a crash. A day out at the beach, became delivering CPR. All of them illustrate how trauma sends an earthquake through our view of what we thought our lives were and, if we survive, leaves us in the rubble picking up the pieces.

In one fell swoop it gave an insight into why it is that trauma occurs to us, not just as an event or a set of events, but as an interruption to our whole sense of reality.

Back in the early days of researching AI systems one study illustrated the catastrophic effect that even the mildest contradiction of our expectations can have on our entire view of reality.

In the quaint old days, when Chat GPT was a nightmare for a future generation, an expert system was developed with one simple aim in mind: to identify birds. Such a simple task. The specifications of various species of animal were entered and, by applying a broad array of criteria, the system would indicate whether the said species was a bird (or not). But not all its criteria were accurate. One of the rules of thumb the system developed was: ‘all birds fly’. Which worked fine until it was required to categorize a penguin. In the first attempt it followed its own rules and concluded that penguins were not birds. But when forced by the programmers to categorize a penguin as a bird, the system went into meltdown attempting to reconcile the contradiction with its own criteria. To resolve the anomaly of the penguin being flightless and yet still being a bird, it concluded that no birds could fly. In one fell swoop it gave an insight into why it is that trauma occurs to us, not just as an event or a set of events, but as an interruption to our whole sense of reality.

The nightmares, the flashbacks, the apprehension, irritation and sense of foreboding, the numbing and the terror. All of these are an attempt to make sense of a world that no longer makes sense. Of course, it would be heartless to suggest that the agony of trauma is little more than a glitch in our information processing. Reducing it to a bug in our programming would conveniently trivialise the horrors that can befall human beings. I have no desire to sanitise or diminish the horrors that can haunt us, but trauma is at least this - a hiatus, a shock, an interruption.

The agony that intensifies our fears, depressions and compulsions is often the torturous comparison between who we thought we were and who we have become.

It is not just trauma that interrupts us. Life specialises in throwing wildcards and anomalies into our path. Just when everything seems to be going swimmingly, when we seem to know what we are doing, when the future seems mapped out before us, the unexpected and the unwelcome occurs. The best way to make God laugh, goes the saying, is to hand Him our five-year plan. I’m not sure I have ever spoken to anyone with insight into their own psychological distress who doesn’t to some extent experience their pain as an interruption. The agony that intensifies our fears, depressions and compulsions is often the torturous comparison between who we thought we were and who we have become. Our imaginary ideal self, the person we thought we would be, waltzes away into a future of freedom, light and joy, and leaves us behind in doubt and uncertainty.

Mental Health Week could in some ways be viewed as an acknowledgement of the interruptions in life. I can only imagine what has interrupted you. I can only hazard a guess at what it is or was that derailed the smooth trajectory of your predicted life. Was it bereavement or aging, sickness or betrayal, disappointment or assault, redundancy or financial ruin? Whatever it was, it may not be reversible. This is one of the reasons for the burgeoning of mindfulness practices in mental health treatment. We don’t just need a technology of change to help us get better, we equally need a technology of acceptance to be able to live with what we cannot change.

I’ve lost the ability to firmly believe that the future can be planned out, that the straight line into the next few years cannot be shattered without warning at any moment.

For me, the lockdown was an interruption from which I have never really recovered. I hesitate to say this because I worry I might be the only person who feels this way. I know it’s all supposed to be over. We’re back to work and acting like the world is rational and predictable again. But the great reset just doesn’t work for me. My mind is ready to go, but my heart just hasn’t got the memo. I’ve lost the ability to firmly believe that the future can be planned out, that the straight line into the next few years cannot be shattered without warning at any moment. There is a hesitancy in all my plans, an uncertainty in my ambitions. The solid arrow of time is dotted, if not broken. Experts in trauma call it the sense of a foreshortened future. The disruption of our capacity to self-transcend, to bridge ourselves towards the person we may become. Our once lucid image of a better self flickers and grows dim, no longer compelling or believable.

And if that’s not confession enough, I have another one. One that makes me sound like a rehab resident in a young adult drama. In the midst of the lockdown craziness, I was forced to slowly and reluctantly uncover a gift. Like a treasure buried in a field, or a priceless pearl concealed among the worthless tat of a car boot sale. Something so crashingly obvious and cringeworthily twee that I can hardly bear to put it in writing. Many of my plans and ambitions were imaginary, just plain illusion. I was no happier achieving them than I was pursuing them. But I started to glimpse, that if I could overcome the grief of losing them, I would be better off without them. If I could put words to it, I would say that I came to a deeper appreciation of grace – iit’s not a bad thing just to be. We can be so busy trying to become something that we fail to notice that we were before we even began. This has now become a daily contemplative practice for me. I call it being present to The Presence in the present. Somehow, I came to a deep inner settlement that I no longer needed to work to justify my existence, but could work out of a present moment in which my existence was already justified. I came to accept acceptance.

Essay

Change

Community

Justice

15 May 2024

8 min read

Blackpool: how to make somewhere home

From tents to a town-wide regeneration, Blackpool’s hopeful placemaking.

John Clifton

John is a Salvation Army captain serving in Blackpool.

An aerial view at dusk of a brightly lit pier and promenade of the seaside town of Blackpool

Blackpool's piers and promenade.

“Good morning! Would you like to come in?”

I found myself in a local park. I’d had a couple of sips of my coffee, but it was still early in the morning on outreach in Blackpool with workers from the Council. The greeting from the man stepping out of his tent was a cheerful surprise. I was nervous as the task was to give the people sleeping in the small clearing behind the bushes a ‘heads up’. Enforcement action was planned, and a new Public Space Protection Order (PSPO)—another crude way to police the bodies of the unhoused who show up in places society doesn’t really want them—had been placed on the park. The Salvation Army and Council hoped to avoid, or at least lessen, any distress that a confrontation with enforcement agencies might bring about. However, sometimes the message can be confused with the messenger. Fortunately, my worries were unnecessary.

“You can get through here. Don’t worry, you won’t get muddy. We’ve made a path!”

He beckoned me and my colleagues to an opening. He had indeed made a path with some bark chippings. Giving us reassurance about the mud underfoot, he guided us to the space they had made home. The word ‘made’ is important here since they had shaped the space to become more habitable. This created the opportunity to welcome us and to show off what they had done. There was dignity in the orderliness of the space and an obvious pride in the landscaping. The message about enforcement was given with gentleness and received with grace. This grace, unexpected yet appreciated, was the day’s first lesson in humanity. My main lesson was realised only later, after we had bid each other farewell: that there is a deeply human and Christian call to transform spaces into meaningful places.

Just as birds intricately weave branches into nests and beavers architecturally sculpt their dams, we humans engage in this process to shape our environments to fulfil our needs.

Although living on the edges of society, those I met had carved out a small space to call home. They exerted control over it. What was previously space became place through personalisation, social interaction, and functionality. Human experience was layered there, changing the appropriate mode of analysis from geography to biography. Life was being lived. However, that place was to return to its previous anonymity. It would lose its distinctiveness, stripped of the layers of meaning it had for the short time it was inhabited. Although it may sound nostalgic, it's clear that for those living in them, the tents were more than a makeshift solution. They symbolised a deep need to create a home, even in the toughest conditions. Experiencing long-term homelessness, they saw the park as an improvement over the exposed town-centre shop doorways, fully aware, however, of the hurdles in finding a stable home. They looked at their time in the park not just as a stopgap but as a respite in the journey towards a better future, even though they knew it wouldn't be quick. Their plans clashed with the reality of enforcement agencies, whose actions focused on moving them on quickly.

Their attempts to carve out a place of their own in the park are an expression of an impulse indelibly woven into the human condition: the need to make our environment our own. Just as birds intricately weave branches into nests and beavers architecturally sculpt their dams, we humans engage in this process to shape our environments to fulfil our needs. This instinctive behaviour is also an inherent drive to mould our surroundings to reflect our identity. These acts of placemaking not only alter our immediate environments to enhance our quality of life. They also influence the broader ecological and social landscapes in which we dwell. Indeed, a PSPO is part of that broader social landscape. So too was our outreach. The reciprocal relationship between humans, habitats, and other humans highlights how our endeavours to create 'home' extend beyond mere physical modifications. They are the very fabric of our communities and ecosystems. By transforming spaces into places imbued with meaning and purpose, we participate in an ongoing dialogue with the world that shapes both our development as individuals and the collective evolution of our surroundings.

Stewardship goes beyond mere conservation, however, embedding a sense of responsibility to enhance communal welfare and well-being

It is a sentiment I know myself. Having frequently moved home in my youth, like many who search for a place to belong, I am acquainted with the need to craft home anew. As a child, it was putting up familiar football posters on my bedroom wall. As an adult, it is a reshuffling of the living room furniture, which my wife graciously accepts. Intriguingly, my grandmother, whom I know only through stories as she died before my birth, shared this ritual of rearranging her lounge. It is a compelling idea that such behaviours might form part of our genetic makeup, passed along generations, silently teaching us habits to create home. Perhaps this impulse is heightened by my dwelling not being my own but rather a provision by The Salvation Army to fulfil my commitment as a Salvation Army officer. This rearrangement ritual becomes a prayer in action, making space into place again. It is a home not owned by me but held in trust, reminding me that my role in the community is both temporal and purposeful, and my residence a testimony to service over possession.

In Christian thought, there has always been a strong emphasis on caring for the environment, a practice often referred to as "stewardship." This concept is rooted in the belief that all people are caretakers of the Earth, entrusted to foster and preserve the natural and social environments in which they live. Stewardship goes beyond mere conservation, however, embedding a sense of responsibility to enhance communal welfare and well-being—what in Hebrew is called shalom. Shalom encompasses more than peace; it implies a holistic harmony that includes justice, well-being, and prosperity. In practice, this means Christians are encouraged not just to inhabit spaces but to actively improve them, ensuring they contribute positively to the community. This desire to contribute to the fulness of human experience expressed as shalom underscores the dual nature of Christian and, fundamentally, human existence: engaged, yet expectant; grounded, yet yearning for a true home.

The mission of placemaking knows no bounds: from the local county to the national landscape, and even the global stage.

Placemaking is about transforming both individual spaces and entire communities, such as towns and cities in need of rejuvenation. An example of such transformation is seen in Blackpool, a town with a rich history, now on the brink of significant change. The Blackpool Pride of Place Partnership, formed seven years ago, underscores this through its recent event at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, launching the Town Prospectus for 2024. This event showcased the combined efforts of both the private and public sectors to achieve their shared goals. The latest prospectus highlighted the progress from mere ideas to tangible achievements. Much like the pride the unhoused man showed in his makeshift chip-wood path, it highlighted with rightful pride the transformation of concepts from the initial prospectus—once mere computer-generated images—into tangible buildings and projects now existing in reality. This larger-scale transformation reflects a universal need to adapt our environments for the better, mirroring the individual acts of placemaking, like those seen in a morning outreach in the park. The practical challenge is how the instincts and dreams of the unhoused man, currently manifest in a little bark footpath, might be better translated into the wider process of town-wide identity. This process often leaves even the most engaged people feeling overlooked, especially those trapped in the cycle of homelessness, unable to see beyond immediate survival. It is here that the Christian community gets involved in this placemaking.

Just as the church will be called to extend support to a person without a home, we are similarly obliged to play a role in the broader scope of regeneration efforts by helping the voiceless find their voice and amplifying it. Our stewardship extends beyond mere occupation of space; it is a call to play a bold role, engaging confidently and constructively with decision-makers and policy-shapers to help resist the secular tendency towards inequity. The Christian’s vocation to sojourn purposefully intersects with a civic duty to nurture spaces that promote the well-being of all residents, but with a particular bias towards those who are voiceless. In the context of Blackpool, invoking the spirit of Jeremiah we are urged to ‘seek the shalom of Blackpool... and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.’ This noble endeavour to move the ‘World As It Is’ to the ‘World As It Should Be’ is transformative. It not only reshapes our communities but also refines our own character from ‘Who I Am’ to ‘Who I Should Be’. This fusion of spiritual odyssey and community involvement epitomises Christian discipleship. Placemaking, then, can be an act of faith and dedication, not merely shaping physical landscapes but also weaving a spiritual fabric that enriches the collective identity of our communal life by including those on the edge, like people in tents in a park.

This principle transcends the specific context of Blackpool. The mission of placemaking knows no bounds: from the local county to the national landscape, and even the global stage. The shaping of space into home is a fundamental instinct relevant to all, from an unhoused neighbour to residents of a town like Blackpool to the Christian sojourning in the world. The church has an invaluable role to play in this effort, serving as both a consistent presence in a place undergoing upheaval and being a catalyst for change, but most particularly an avenue for participation for those we might consider to be ‘the least of these’ - the homeless man; the battered girlfriend; the addict; the asylum seeker; the kid excluded from school; the lonely older person. By embracing this call, the church upholds its commitment to being a faithful community and fostering belonging. It also participates in the divine act of creation, shaping the world to reflect God’s love and grace. Through this sacred duty, the church contributes to spaces becoming places of shalom. Indeed, without ‘the least of these’ playing a part, true shalom is not possible. By partnering with other local organisations through broad-based community organisations, initiating housing projects, or advocating for policy changes, the church can materialise its vision to make earth a bit more like heaven. Examples from communities where churches have led or participated in urban regeneration efforts demonstrate the transformative power of faith in action, turning spaces of neglect into thriving places of community and support.

From the personal touch of a man creating pathways in a park, to my relocating of household furniture, to the communal efforts in Blackpool's regeneration, we witness a profound truth: that shaping our world to become home is not just an act of physical transformation but an expression of deep spiritual yearning, which is, fundamentally, to know that the Kingdom of God is among us.