Stopping in the Midst of Chaos

By Brea Segger

When things become chaotic, most of us have a fairly predictable way of responding. We move faster. We try to fix what’s happening. We get angry, leave, shut down, take control, make a decision, or look for something that will make the discomfort stop.

What I see much less often is someone simply stop.

I don't mean freezing. Freezing has a quality of disappearance to it. You can be physically still while everything inside you is braced, overwhelmed or trying to get away.

The kind of stopping I'm talking about is almost the opposite. You're very much there. You're aware of what is happening around you and what is happening inside you, but you don't immediately respond to either one.

This can be surprisingly difficult.

When something significant is happening, there is usually more than one thing asking for our attention. There is what actually happened. There is the emotion it created. There are old experiences that recognize something familiar in it. There are other people's reactions. There is the story we're already beginning to tell ourselves about what it means. And somewhere amongst all of that, there may be a decision that needs to be made.

We tend to experience it as one thing because it all arrives at once.

Stopping gives those things time to separate.

I see this in my work all the time. Someone comes in convinced they need to make a decision. Everything feels urgent. They have gone over the possibilities repeatedly, spoken to friends, imagined every outcome, and are still no closer to knowing what to do.

Often, the first useful thing we do is nothing.

We stop adding to it.

Given enough space, something begins to settle. The strongest emotion doesn't necessarily disappear, but it stops occupying the entire room. The old pattern becomes easier to distinguish from what is actually happening now. What belongs to someone else becomes a little clearer. The urgency changes.

I sometimes think of it like stirring up the bottom of a lake. If you keep reaching into the water trying to clear it, you keep disturbing what you're trying to see through. At some point, the only useful thing left to do is stop touching it.

The sediment settles on its own.

This is where I think conscious stopping is often misunderstood. It isn't passive. It isn't avoidance. And it isn't waiting indefinitely because you're afraid to act.

It requires quite a lot of attention to stop without leaving yourself.

Sometimes the simplest way to do that is to notice what is physically present. Not what you think you're feeling, or what you think you should do about it, but what is actually happening in your body. A tight throat. A sore stomach. A constricted airway. Pressure in your chest.

There is something very different about staying with what is physically there instead of immediately following the thoughts attached to it. You aren't trying to make the sensation go away. You're giving your attention to what is already happening rather than adding another layer of response.

Often, that is enough to begin the settling.

You're allowing the emotions, ingrained patterns, reactions and all the different pieces that have become bound together to settle enough that you can see what remains. You aren't trying to manufacture clarity. You're creating the conditions in which clarity has a chance to appear.

Sometimes what becomes clear is that you need to act immediately. Sometimes you realize the thing that felt urgent yesterday doesn't actually require a response at all. Sometimes a path appears that you couldn't see while you were trying so hard to find one.

I've watched people become uncomfortable in that space because we're so accustomed to believing that movement means progress. If we're doing something, at least we're doing something.

But I've seen a great deal happen when someone stops.

Not because stopping solves the problem.

Because eventually there is enough space between everything that has been stirred up to see where to put your foot next.