The Collective Formula for Feeling Strong Against Challenges
This document was created in a group process initiated by Narrative therapist İclal Eskioğlu Aydın, in which knowledge, skills, and values that enable people to cope with the difficulties experienced during the COVID-19 process were discovered. This group work was done with a group of psychologists who are students of the Ibn Haldun University Clinical Psychology master's program.
This group work opened the door for the group members to discover their ways of coping with the challenges they faced. In this process, they wanted to tell and share their stories by developing a mathematical formula. The group members have a message for the readers:
"This collective document contains both our challenges and our responses to them. We think that each person has a different insight and that everyone likes to hear human stories differently. Based on this, we have chosen to tell our stories differently by developing a formula. We thought that the formula was a succinct way of sharing stories. We hope that this document will give you ideas to find own most appropriate ways of expressing your own stories. We hope that this formula will be a bridge between us and you (the readers) to make it possible to share our ways of coping with challenges."
For those of you who would like to contribute feedback to this document, we have prepared a few questions that we hope will be helpful to you. If you would like to answer one or more of these questions, please click on the link at the end of the document to access the questions and send us your answers. We look forward to your feedback on our collective document.
The Formula for Feeling Strong in the Face of Challenges
One of the most challenging situations for us these days is the feeling that we are standing on uncertain ground. One of us describes his anxiety about uncertainty as follows: "It's like I'm on a long road and there's a big stone in front of me, which seems very difficult to cross. The best way to prevent this stone from getting in my way is to get up early in the morning and start my day by doing something I value. For example, reading the Qur'an in the morning or quietly listening to nature makes me feel like I can start a day that I have more control over, rather than just plunging into an uncertain day. This makes me feel stronger against that seemingly insurmountable stone". From the moment we come into contact with those we care about, we feel that our anxieties find no ground to hold on to.
Some of us are experiencing the anxiety of losing our loved ones intensely as the possibility of losing our loved ones is increasing these days. One of us expresses the confusion of emotions he experiences when this anxiety enters his life as follows: "Like a complex ball of different colored threads, at moments when my anxiety increases, my emotions get tangled and I don't know what I am feeling. At these moments, taking a calm breath and noticing my emotions helps the ball of colored threads to unravel and separate one by one. Looking at the threads in the tangled ball one by one, rather than the whole, allows me to experience my emotions more clearly instead of being pulled into the ball". We think it is important to listen to ourselves and recognize our emotions, even though our emotions are turned upside down as a result of the anxiety of losing our loved ones.
We have developed a mathematical formula to express our values and skills more visually and practically that reduces the effects of a big stone and a ball of colored threads in our lives and the effects of these effects in our lives. This formula gives us an idea of what multiplying or dividing what with what can have consequences in our lives.
Explanation of the formula
The math formula you see above consists of two operations.
In Operation 1, we multiplied our worries by the uncertainty and the possibility of losing our loved ones, which are so prevalent these days. The result of this multiplication is the sum of a large stone in our path that is difficult to overcome and a tangled ball of colored threads.
In Process 2, we divided the sum of a large stone in our path and a tangled ball of colored threads by the sum of starting the day by doing something we value (e.g. reading the Quran, listening to nature) and taking a calm breath and recognizing our emotions. In other words, we divided the difficulties we were experiencing by the sum of the things that lessened the impact of those difficulties and were good for us. In doing so, as a result of our collective work, we chose to use the plural rather than the singular.
The result of the formula: As a result of these two processes, we achieved a reduction in anxiety, a feeling of power, a feeling of being in control, and a feeling of inner peace.
If you would like to answer the questions prepared for those who would like to contribute, please click here.