Trauma is felt in the body.
We are all currently experiencing a lot of trauma, directly and vicariously (the body does not really care which, trauma is trauma, in terms of how our nervous systems, et cetera respond to it).
Trauma triggers a fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline–useful if you are hiking in the woods and see a bear; not useful if the bear is on your screen or in your home and you are seeing it all the time. Too much of that rewires the brain, and in young children actually changes brain chemistry, which has lifelong consequences on mental and physical health.
So, trauma = bad. Here are a few simple things you can do to reset, when you’re feeling AAEEEEEEEARGH.
Do this right now: put your hand on your chest, over your heart.
Physically, this releases oxytocin, making you feel more safe, secure, soothed. Mentally, feeling a heart beat is soothing (from birth, and that never goes away) for psychological reasons. Feeling YOUR heart beat is reassuring in a hey, at least I’m still alive in this moment sort of way. Ditto taking deep breaths. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
Mindfulness practices: Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment.
Mindfulness helps recenter your core when the past/present/future is or seems to be full of chaos. Here are some quick, simple exercises to try. And if you want a deeper dive, anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn is where I would start. He has books, he has recordings, and his voice is super soothing and he will walk you through things like mindful sitting/walking and body scans.
Pause. If you are having a strong, upsetting reaction to something, take a break.
Go for a walk. Distract yourself with whatever works for you. When you are calmer and have had a chance to digest–a chance to gut-check if your initial reaction was to what was said/done, or was it more the things our brain does in reaction to a thing, which has about 90% to do with our emotion-based perceived response, and usually only about 10% to do with actual logic or reality–go back to it.
Like, do you ever get an email and think, omg why does this person hate me and why are they being so mean? And then you reread it an hour later and think, oh, none of those things actually seem to be true, based on the actual words in this email, my brain was just freaking out and getting scared and angry for reasons of brains just do that a lot and go on autopilot to the worst case scenario, which is actually true only about 1% of the time.
Ditto for stupid comments online by stupid people. Responding is a waste of your own time and energy, you will not change the mind of a troll who is there just to hear his/her own opinion and shit on everyone else.
And double or triple that for IRL incidents–you don’t know what said angry person is going through privately, and you also don’t know if they are about to snap and cause you harm or kill you. That’s the reality of our country’s gun policies, as we have seen a million thousand times. Angry people with easy access to guns snap and murder a bunch of people who in no way deserve it or usually are even the actual cause of the shooter’s anger, though there may be one or a few specific targets that are triggers, but that is about the shooter, not about that person.
Nature/physical activity/take a hot shower or warm bath.
Nature is grounding because it’s friggin ancient. Physical activity shakes off the mental fog. Heat and water calm the body (again, from birth, wombs are pretty cozy, I didn’t leave my mom’s during labor for a good 28 hours, like, hello, it’s nice in here, no thank you on the whole traumatic birth canal business, I don’t know WTF is out there on the other side, but I already suspect I won’t like it).
For those of you deep in the work, take a self care check.
I cannot stress enough how important this is. You are trying to literally save our country right now, our communities, our friends and neighbors and coworkers, every single person who is vulnerable in this current hellscape. You are, generally, making sure everyone around you is okay, pretty much 24/7. This video is for you (TLDR: you have an ethical obligation to make sure you are doing no harm. You cannot do that if you yourself are not okay. Secure your own mask before you put masks on others, et cetera):
That’s it, that’s all I got. (No, one more thing but it is TMI so I will just say if you are physically feeling very unwell, stress eating, bloated, constantly tired, et cetera, get this, it will help.)
Now back to comfort baking some focaccia. Seriously this recipe is amazing and 90% just letting the dough do stuff. You can top it with basically anything, like the bag of brussels sprouts you found hiding in the back of your veg bin, pre-roasted slightly, then drizzled with honey, sriracha/hot sauce of choice, and a sprinkle of brown sugar and salt. I prefer using bread flour, spreading the dough thinner, and reducing the temp/cooking time (425 degrees, about 30 minutes). I also find if you cut the rise times by half and hour, it doesn’t really matter, as long as it looks like your dough has risen enough (I turn my oven on for a few minutes, then turn it off and let the dough rise in the oven–the warmth speeds up the rise).
This is one of the many things I cook regularly for Bmore Community Fridge Network, a community of volunteers stocking over 30 fridges across the city (and beyond) to make sure our neighbors have access to food in these troubling economic times. When I started volunteering back in July–when I, like so many others I know, was laid off–the volunteer group page had a few hundred members. It now has over five thousand members, and new fridges are being opened every day.
It is one of the things that keeps me sane in this wack timeline of national constitutional crisis. It’s just pure joy to be among so many people who want to make sure their neighbors are okay, and well-fed.
Apocalyptic Whimsy 