[Protection] On Becoming Aware
Of people, ourselves, and “normals”
Safety has always felt like an illusion to me.
You can imagine how the inside of my mind might have looked when the powers-that-be suggested that the theme of the first edition of Witches Rise be “protection.” There was some side eye, perhaps even an irritated twitch.
I know I’ve always been this way: never feeling completely safe. I know, because now that I’m an adult, I can see just how paranoid my own mother has been throughout my life, as though one unlocked window could end her world. (And let’s be honest: it could.) She lived perpetually in a world where no risk for safety should be taken and, all things considered, it seemed to work.
It might come as little surprise then that I’d develop a serious anxiety disorder, and at least two circumstances that drew my anxious mind into a crescendo of post-traumatic stress symptoms.
Anxiety is, in a word, exhausting. However, there is always a silver lining, and this particular silver lining is an acuity with situational awareness and reading body language, enhanced by a short time working with a world-class tracker, who taught me to notice everything when out in the woods together. I notice who is experiencing frustration or embarrassment long before my peers, and can make somewhat reliable judgments about people’s motivations or potential actions. This is a result of one of the symptoms of PTSD, known as hypervigilance. It’s a sensitivity to one’s environment and the emotions of the people in it. Combine that with a energetic sensitivity to actually feeling the emotions of others, or being adept at putting myself in their shoes, and my empathic hypervigilance almost looks psychic.
It isn’t, of course; at least not always. It’s a hyper-speed processing of very, very small details that are incredibly easy to ignore. I’ll give you an example, all of which occurred in less than two minutes:
One day I drove to the grocery store with my then-girlfriend, and as we both got out of the car and headed toward the building, I noticed a man near the entrance. He was young, maybe early twenties, scruffy. He was just lingering, shifting around on his feet, hands empty. He wasn’t smoking or on a cell phone, two reasons to linger outside of a grocery store that I know. People don’t linger near grocery store entrances; they go in and out with purpose, said my hypervigilance. He’s looking for something, or someone. His eyes were up and narrowed a little, moving around from face to face as people milled about. People at a grocery store are looking at carts, lists, cell phones, where they’re going; they don’t make lingering eye contact with strangers. He started to slowly move towards us as we approached, body language unsure, making steady eye contact with me. He wants something. What does he want? He’s got nothing in his hands. A cigarette maybe, or money. He is bigger than me. I have someone with me. There are a lot of people around. It’s the middle of the day. We’re near the entrance.
“Hey,” he said to me, and then asked me for some money. I continued to move as I replied in the negative, and he nodded, stepping aside and away.
I remember looking at my girlfriend afterwards and saying, “I knew he was going to ask for something.” I remember her bewilderment more. She hadn’t even noticed him until he was already in front of us. She (and many others) had often told me when I shared these predictions or estimations of people, based on observation of their small behaviors and use of words, that I was being “judgemental,” and that I couldn’t possible “know those things.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong; I certainly made a lot of judgements within those two minutes. But my judgements are not typically about the character of the person; they’re just observations, deductions, and predictions based on what I know about how people (myself included) behave. And while I can’t read minds, body language is often even more communicative of intent than words. (This awareness is a skill that many survivors of assault or abuse already know, and a skill that many people of color have been honing for their entire lives because, in modern America, they have never been safe.)
Anxiety, hypervigilance, and preoccupation with safety is not the way I would recommend to anyone to go about learning to become aware. However: becoming familiar with the idea of environmental awareness and practicing it regularly will certainly help you develop a familiarity with unspoken intent in strangers.
All this takes is a commitment to mindful observation, of others and of yourself. Go to a coffee shop and watch people. What’s normal for a coffee shop? Perhaps it’s the murmur of conversations over steaming cups, the fervent clicking of laptop keyboards, the hustle and bustle of the baristas. Watch interactions; ask yourself, how would I behave in that situation? Eavesdrop on conversations and take note of what comes up for you. Do the same thing other places: the bus stop, a grocery store, your neighborhood. Ask yourself, What is normal for this environment? What do people do — what do I do — in those environments?
Go deeper. Where are the exits? What might happen in an emergency? Does anyone seem nervous? What do you do when you’re nervous? What do you think, and what does your body do? How about when you’re genuinely happy, when you’re faking happy, or when you’re angry, desperate, devastated? Look at people and decide how they make you feel, and then interrogate why you feet that way. Is it internalized bias? Or is it gut reaction? And don’t listen to people who insist they make no judgements upon strangers; they’re lying. Perhaps not intentionally, but certainly without acknowledging that their (our) unconscious selves are processing stimuli constantly without conscious participation.
In fact, a very righteous dude by the name of Dr. Paul Eckman developed an incredible body of work on his theory that the human species has seven facial expressions related to the same seven emotions, regardless of culture, gender, or other difference. Which means that we’re wired to read faces (and therefore read emotions), but we’ve been trained out of it. Eckman’s work was developed into a TV series called Lie to Me, about an investigator who was often contracted by various organizations, agencies, and governments for his ability to use the reading of “microexpressions,” or tiny facial movements that could last as little as a quarter of a second. The show was fake, but it was based on Eckman’s very real deductions about body language.
The image below is a small, incomplete but good example of some of the microexpressions for each of the seven major emotions, and while I’m not suggesting that you become a master of reading facial expressions, I think it’s interesting and valuable just the same. (Full disclosure: I could not find an actual source for this image, but considering that it features Tim Roth, the would-be Eckman of the Lie to Me series, I imagine it belongs to Imagine Television and 20th Century Fox.)
Spoken words are only one kind of language that humans share; nonverbal language is something we’re much less accustomed to reading, and while safety is never a guarantee, becoming more aware of your surroundings, the people in them, and yourself, can get you into better touch with your instincts. Women in particular have been nearly completely trained out of listening to our instincts, lest we be called “dramatic,” or “hysterical,” and developing a practice situational awareness is one way to start drawing that connection back into our bodies. When we are better connected to our instincts, we are absolutely more able to respond to our lives in ways that increase our own personal safety — and that of others.
It feels like learning these skills has never been more important, truthfully, now that we have a president coming into office who devalues the safety of most everyone that doesn’t look or behave like him. There could never be a better time to let the bullshit that does not serve fall away from ourselves, and get grounded in our own instincts. Start practicing now.
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Nicole Francesca spent years working in the outdoors, learning the sounds of chattering quail and the feeling of coming rain on a cloudless day, before coming indoors to learn about the human animal through a masters degree in clinical social work. Now, as a queer, anti-racist, feminist witch with a toe-curling love for the intersection of nature and culture, she seeks to share what she’s been privileged to learn with others who are thirsty for a connection to the earth, to ritual, to themselves, and to one another. You can follow her on Instagram, join her Facebook page, sign up for her super-duper newsletter, or visit her online witchy shop.
