The Myths of the Peacekeeper

Teaching peaceful conflict resolution skills may be your purpose work, your at home work, your vocation or a mix of all of these types of spiritual and healing work. How we perceive our role as peacekeeper influences how we take care of ourselves while helping others. Spiritual leader and buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote “when you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace in the whole world”.

Lack of self trust, faulty beliefs and the rules they keep are often attached to scarcity and may be informing how you perceive the role of peacekeeper. Our definition of peacekeeper may actually be a trauma informed persona such as the perfectionist, fawn or emotional caretaker, these personas have rules that move us away from peace and abundance.

Healers and/or therapists are more likely than their siblings to have taken the role of care taker as children. The myths and rules that look to support others healing may be housed in scarcity and fear, often creating exactly what we do not want. For example, listening as another person blames others or blames you for the difficulty they are experiencing. This is a rule, let someone vent and direct anger at you, so they can feel better. This actually become a broken belief and rule pattern that keeps us inside a difficult emotional and feeling pattern, this pattern then extends to other parts of our life.

These personas have beliefs and trauma informed rules that shadow our feeling habits, these rules over time separate us and those around us from peace. Looking at faulty beliefs and the myths/rules that support them is a helpful place to better understand the personas that we may be dropping into. Here are a few myths/Rules that come from faulty beliefs, that may be casting a shadow on how we interpret our role as helper or peacekeeper.

Myth #1. When everyone around me is peaceful and well, I can then look for my own peace.

Myth #2: If we feel differently from others, something must be wrong.

Myth #3: A peacekeeper needs to always be vigilant and not relax, even when you reach the desired peace place. There is a perceived award and hidden benefit to staying in a frantic energy when resolving conflict.

Myth #4: If someone is angry and venting, we must provide listening and calm to help the person release their anger.

These myths may be part of our conditioning or old narratives that separates us from our deeper understanding of ourself and others. A broken rule box are rules that keep us in a loop of betraying ourselves in the effort to help others. Using a pattern interrupt is a helpful place to start when feeling overwhelmed by others emotions. Interrupt the trigger or myth by asking yourself, what do I want and why and then choosing one elevated step to get closer to this place. The more we interact with deeper awareness of what brings us peace, the better we are at supporting peace in others.