It's been a while. It's been since the election, actually. These were my thoughts at the time, saved in draft form:
This week has been difficult for me. Deep down, I did not believe that a man who endorses and displays hostility toward a large segment of the population could "win" (though not by popular vote) the Presidency. I have been, along with so many others, disillusioned and horrified.
I had not remembered that the election was when I stopped blogging, but in retrospect, it does not surprise me.
I was just a baby when psychologist Martin Seligman presented his "learned helplessness" theory, but I learned as an undergraduate about his experiments. I won't go into the specifics of the experiments, as they involve dogs (which I love) and electric shock (so yeah, I can't even go there). What he learned, in a nutshell, is that dogs who assess suffering as inescapable will often just lie down, literally and metaphorically, and take it. A theory of depression emerged.
To be clear, as both a mental health professional and a person with frequent flyer miles for travel to and from depression, I do not believe that depression is caused by any one thing. Depression is multifaceted and multidetermined.
But as I talk to colleagues, clients, and loved ones since the election, I am aware that many have been fighting valiantly, using whatever resources they have toward political and social change.
Whereas I and some others I know have mainly been lying down absorbing the shocks.
What does it mean to survivors to have appointed as our national leader someone who flaunts and abuses power, hates and attacks entire populations, and has both gotten away with and endorsed the assault of women?
Every survivor I know has been retraumatized.
When I think about the most damaging aspects of abuse, I think it is less about the actual physical harm and more about the underlying message: You deserve to be mistreated, harmed, and shunned. You are what's wrong with you.
Some survivors reach a breaking point in which they refuse to ingest and digest this toxic message. They fight back in various ways. For some, a kind of fierce self-care and self-advocacy develop which says, I will look out for myself no matter what. I think those survivors are amazing. They are our beacons of light.
In a thousand ways, I have been more of a Seligman dog. Give me mistreatment or misfortune and even the appearance of a blocked escape route, and I will lie down.
What gives me the hope of getting up and staying up is connecting with other survivors.
When I listen to your story and I know in my bones that you do not exist to be a lightning rod for abuse and bad experiences, I can entertain the idea that I have some inherent worth, also.
Maybe that gets me from lying down to sitting up.
When I share experiences with survivors, it is like we are in the shock box together, and we can look at that blocked escape route and wonder together if it's fallible. Or if maybe there's another escape route to be found or made.
Maybe that gets us, together, from sitting to standing.
What you are reading is both my decision to resume my blog writing and my focus for the blog going forward.
Maybe nobody will read it.
Maybe I am alone in my shock box.
Maybe this is a message in a bottle, and it won't reach anyone ever, or it will reach someone after I'm gone.
But even writing it gives me something more valuable to do than lie around absorbing shock.
We matter.
The past can't hurt us, but resignation to suffering, especially if we think we somehow deserve it, can.
Reach out for help and hope, even from a lying down position.
Know your own strength.
