Reflexivity

Reflexivity

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Emojis were beginning to be used, I was so confused, my daughters would send me messages and add an Emoji, I could not interpret them and honestly even now they are many Emoji’s that I can’t interpret easily. So, I would copy an Emoji, paste it on google search and let google tell me!

What I like though is that Emoji’s highlight the need to express our emotions in some way!

one of the things that we miss out is introspection. For instance, as I write this article, the Emoji hanging over my mind is that of pain and disappointment, I just got some news of something I hoped would be better and it looks to be disappointing. So, I will go for this Emoji. Anything that helps release emotions is recommendable.

The rise of mental health break down can be attributed to some extent to lack of reflexivity. Unlike reflection that focusses on the environment and occurrences, reflexivity is when you look inwardly to see how you are being impacted by situations around you. Intentional inner self-assessment, reviewing the accumulation of the reflexes that your body has been hit with, from the subconscious, and that begin to find outlets in other expressional moods.

When my dad died, our elder sister did not cry, I guess she was trying to manage other people’s emotions, she later confessed this caught up with her a couple of months later. She intentionally subdued her reflexes. This ignoring of our reflexes eventually results in the reflexes depositing in the subconscious, emojis changing faces inside you.

The Bible encourages meditation, organizations should encourage employee debriefing after hard hitting scenarios, professional therapies need to happen in emotionally challenging circumstances. We can’t ignore reflexivity and simply resort to reflections.

I was talking to a young man about his friend. This friend was my barber and had lost his only daughter and resorted to drugs. So, I told this other friend that he should follow up his friend and help him, to my shock he told me losing a daughter is nothing. He then told me how his entire family had been killed during the genocide against the Tutsi, “so you see I’m now over 30 years but ‘fear’ in me died with my relatives. He gave me an example that when an accident happens and people fear to see the dead, I’m not afraid, he said, I just go to the site and help the injured and put dead bodies on the side without winking!”

I realized this guy had a thick emotional deposit over his conscious that was never dealt with, and it formed this emotionless emoji that defines his responses.

The million-dollar question to you is, if you do not have moments of reflexivity, are you still yourself? Or deposits of emoji have been made over your conscious that your responses are not from the true you! It might be that you need moments of Biblical meditation, Counselling or even therapy. Or simply some organized debriefing that allows you to scrub off these deposits that have taken away your smile, your social life, or your view of others.

Thus, reflexivity to me is a simple exercise of checking the emoji in your life that need to get out, or the one that need to get in, be at the gate of your emotions, if anyone is angry let the sun not set, If anyone is offended, they should intentionally forgive, if anyone is tired take a break.

If all we care for is what needs to be done and ignoring who is doing it, we are incubating toxicity. 'We be and do, we don’t do and be'.

I urge you to listen to your reflexes and not stifle them, if in pain, express it, if in joy celebrate, if at a loss mourn. I challenge you to reflect on how you have paid attention to your reflexes.

James 5:13-14, ' Is any among you afflicted? let him pray, is any merry? let him sing psalms, is any sick among you, let him call for elders.' Oh wow, mixed feelings right!! afflicted, happy and sick, how are they supposed to behave if the three are in the same choir? The answer is simple, deal with your trauma appropriately, you can't just wish it away and God will show up to help you through.

Leaders should have thick skins is an idiom that downplays reflexivity. I believe leaders should be emotionally health, with the ability to discern any toxicity or should I say any root of bitterness that may arise because of not dealing with self!

Thanks for taking care of your family, friends, and doing your responsibility, but we still need you healthy, hurting people hurt people, health people heal people, flex your muscle to a journey of reflexivity via meditation, counseling, debriefing and intentionally dealing with you!