Strategies for Coping with the Impact of What Is Happening in Our World

If you started Fieldnotes on Fortitude: Resilience in Resistance from the beginning, what you’ve read so far is a charting of the chaos and the undermining of democracy in this country. You’ve read about formation of the earliest democracies and the factors that precipitate their end, not to mention the ways different movements have undermined the promise of America. You’ve also read about specific legislation and concerted efforts by citizens that have propelled us forward in our struggle to become a more perfect union. And, you read how all of this has directly impacted people from a legal and social point of view. Now let’s take a look at various ways the current state of our country may impact you (your emotions, your thoughts, and your body) and ways you can handle the impacts you experience. 

I am a Black American woman therapist and a consultant to organizations about racial/ethnic/gender identity and the impact of racism and other forms of oppression. The perspectives and strategies I will offer you may seem obvious, and that’s good because these are all steps that anyone can take. They may also provide you with new perspectives and approaches, or leave you feeling challenged. They’re things I use in my work and with myself. I ask that you open your heart and your mind, and bring your curiosity and apply what may be useful to you in this arduous time. 

Reflecting on What Is Happening

Start by noticing and acknowledging that what is going on around you is real. For many of us, what we value and who we hold dear are indeed under attack. There is an attempt to dismantle institutions and eject people we care about from the country. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their loved ones, and some are losing their lives. 

A scene comes to mind that serves as an analogy for what we’re all experiencing. Imagine standing on a beach, seeing huge waves crashing ashore and creating an undertow that’s dragging people out to sea. You don’t know how to rescue the people being caught in the undertow and you are frightened the next wave may take you out to sea. The next thing you know, you’re surrounded by water, far from the shore flailing, disoriented. 

When we human beings are faced with a reality that is frightening or overwhelming, we experience fear and stress in our bodies, our minds, and our emotions. Our experience of a present frightening situation is also influenced by past experiences where we have been frightened or hurt. 

If our body and mind experience the stressful situation as traumatic, we may have a trauma response. The response to trauma is typically either: fight, flee, freeze, or fawn. There is no right or wrong way to respond, but the response is often immediate, without us planning or being fully aware of our response. But the good news is there are ways to reorient ourselves and to make it back to dry land. When we are aware of the “wave” and our reaction to the danger, what we can do is stop, notice our reactions, and remind ourselves to breathe. This helps our bodies to interrupt our automatic responses to stress or trauma. 

In addition to our internal individual responses to frightening or stressful experiences, we each exist in the context of our family and friends, our work, school, and neighborhood community, and the larger society. We are each impacted by these various contexts and by the history of these systems. We might think of ourselves and the contextual systems in which we exist as concentric circles. Each level of the circles can provide us with support or leave us struggling on our own. For example, if you suddenly lose your job due to governmental budget cuts, you may rely on your family and friends for financial help and encouragement. At the same time, governmental unemployment benefits and health insurance (Medicaid) may be limited or unavailable. 

Many of us notice that when the world around us becomes chaotic or frightening and threatens our access to basic needs of adequate food, shelter, and connections with others, we think and feel we are the problem. We may feel we are not doing enough; we are “crazy” to feel so overwhelmed; or we want to stop trying to perform at work or school. We may experience symptoms of depression: feeling sad, low energy, having difficulty getting enough sleep, eating more or less than we need, feeling easily irritated, and withdrawing from our usual contacts with friends and family. While any of these symptoms and feelings may be a result of your personal circumstances, such as a recent loss of family member, friend, or position at work or school, these feelings may also be a response to the chaos in the world around you that is described in this book.

First of all, you are not crazy, and the problem is not you. You, like the rest of us, are in the midst of the very powerful, chaotic set of circumstances as presented in this book. We are being overloaded at lightning speed with actions that are dismantling services, social structures, and institutions. You are under attack. Your body is under attack. Your emotions are under attack. The fact that many of us are feeling some version of “What’s wrong with me?” or “Why can’t I manage things better” or “I am not enough” should come as no surprise. Whatever your circumstances or your behavior, know that you are not causing what is going on. You can then reframe the question from, “What’s wrong with me?” to “What is happening to all of us and how is that affecting me and those around me?”

Understanding Racism and Its Impact

A major aspect of stress and trauma is the impact of systemic racism on Black, Brown, and Asian people. While much has changed since the legal segregation of Black and white people, or the racial violence of lynching and the burning down of whole Black towns (Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example), the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, or the sterilization of Puerto Rican women without their knowledge, racism is still very much alive and its impact on People of Color continues to be felt today. 

We are all witness to and impacted by the current demonization and violent removal of Latine immigrants. Families and individuals who are and have been contributing to the economy and well-being of everyone living in the United States are being terrified by raids carried out by armed, unidentified men at places of business such as restaurants, farms, factories, and even churches and schools.

Another important aspect of the stress and traumatic impact of racism is the intergenerational effects of racism. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of folks who experienced the various manifestations of racial violence mentioned above carry the emotional weight of their ancestors, seen and treated as less than fully human and subjected to racial violence. 

This intergenerational impact of racial stress and trauma exists alongside current manifestations of racism. These include inequitable access to quality healthcare in poor Black or Brown communities, higher high school drop-out rates for Black boys, greater difficulty for working and middle-class Black people securing mortgage loans to buy homes, and the forcible ejection of Latine people regardless of their American citizenship or length of time contributing to this country.

One resource I recommend to readers about how to heal racialized trauma is My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem.

Grounding, Centering Exercise

Now let’s look at some things you can do to manage the impact of what is happening to your body, mind, and spirit.

When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, here is an exercise you can do to shut out the noise, calm down, focus on what you can do, and reset yourself in the moment. Another way of describing the purpose of this exercise is to get yourself centered and present in the moment. You can use this exercise alone or in a group that is meeting to work together. If it is a group, invite the whole group to use this practice at the beginning of your time together.

Step One:  Find a place where you can be quiet and uninterrupted for about five minutes. I know that is a challenge for many of us. Here are some possible places you can find a quiet space to be alone: during a coffee break, take the coffee outside or to a quiet spot at your workplace; a bathroom (at home, not at your job or school where the bathroom is public); while walking outside for five to ten minutes; or sitting in your car alone. You might use part of a meal break to be in any of these spaces. Use your own creativity to discover a quiet space that will work in your environment and circumstances.

Step Two:  Sit comfortably in a chair or on a seat with your back against the chair and your feet solidly planted on the floor or ground, and drop your shoulders down so they are relaxed and not tense. Remind yourself that you are being solidly and well supported by Mother Earth who supports us all.

Step Three:  Pay attention to your body. Mentally scan your body to see how every part of your body is feeling at this moment. Notice where you are feeling tension and where you may be feeling relaxed or energized. Start at the tips of your toes; work your way up to your ankles; your shins; your thighs; your groin; your hips; your butt; your midsection; your chest; your shoulders; your arms, wrists, and hands; the cords of your neck (where many of us carry tension); your jaw; your temples and the bones under and above your eyes (where many of us experience sinus discomfort or pain); and up to the top of your head. You are noticing, without judgment, how your body is feeling.

Again, notice where in your body you feel any tightness, tension, discomfort, or even pain. Also notice where you may be feeling some relaxation or positive energy. 

Step Four:  Be aware of the space where you are sitting and the energy of that space.

Step Five:  Be aware of and open to the energy of the Universe, the life force. If you have a spiritual belief and/or practice, be open to the life force of the Divine. You might think of the life force energy coming in through the top of your head.

Step Six:  Then, making no judgments about any of this, open your eyes and take in who may be in the space around you. (If you are doing this Centering Exercise in a group that is working together, make eye contact with each person in the group.)

Step Seven: Take three deep breaths and exhale fully. Notice when you feel fully present to yourself and your surroundings.

Step Eight: To yourself or to the group, say that you are fully present and ready to start whatever you are about to do (e.g., start a work or school assignment, clean a room, participate in a meeting, start your day, make a call or have a meeting about something you are feeling anxious about, get your children up and ready for the day).

As you start the individual or group task from a more centered, present place, you will notice that you have more energy and less anxiety as you engage in the task before you. You might check in with yourself silently as you engage in the task or group to notice the level of your energy and attention. If you find yourself feeling bodily or emotional tension, or telling yourself something negative, take a minute to relax your shoulders, take three deep breaths, and fully exhale. This will relax your diaphragm and help you get more centered as you pursue your task. 

Acknowledge and Talk About What’s Going On

Beyond being centered and present to your experience and your surroundings, one thing that is helpful in coping with chaos, stress, and even traumatic events, is finding a group of people you feel comfortable and compatible with to talk to about what is happening. The group could be as simple as friends who already get together for an activity or to hang out. You can take a few minutes in your group to check in and share how everybody is doing in the current stress and chaos. It is also important to familiarize oneself and share with others in your group the historical and current manifestations of racial disparities, inequities, and violence.

Having a safe group with whom you can share your reactions to the current stressful conditions is enormously helpful because then you’re not sitting alone, in your head, in your body, with all this “stuff” that’s having a traumatizing impact on people. If you don’t have a group, here are some suggestions about how to find one.

Finding and Connecting with Community

Take a moment to note what informal or formal groups you already belong to. It may be other parents with whom you share childcare resources or who have children in the same schools. It may be a neighborhood group that meets to discuss issues like traffic concerns or activities like the upkeep of green spaces. You may be part of a group at your place of worship, or your professional association or union. It may be a group of friends who meet in person, online or via Zoom to hang out and share space with each other. Other groups you may already belong to include a therapy group or a twelve-step group such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, or Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Regularly attending any of those groups will help you stay more centered, share your experiences with others, hear that you are not alone, and share with others how everyone is coping with the stress of the current chaos. You can also encourage group members to come to meetings, if you notice they stopped attending. Reaching out to help others also activates endorphins, which are hormones that give us a feeling of calm, satisfaction, and pleasure. 

If you do not have a group you can meet with regularly, you could initiate one by inviting a few friends, colleagues, or family members to check in with each other regularly. The group might connect by regularly engaging in an activity that everyone is interested in, like walking, visiting outdoor spaces, attending cultural or sporting events, or having a meal together. 

If there’s not a group you can join in person, create an online group of people you know and are already comfortable with, that you can contact so you don’t have to face all of this by yourself. 

I know families whose members are spread around the country or around the world. They set up a family WhatsApp group, and they meet regularly, often at least once a week. It’s a great way use of technology to stay in touch with one another. 

Male readers may have been socialized to feel, “Nah, I’m good. I’m a man. I don’t do therapy. I don’t have time for all that sissy stuff.” Thing is, most men already have groups they regularly engage with—for sports, card games, fishing, etc. You may not think of those spaces as group activities, yet in those groups men often have conversations about what’s going on in the world around them. You might remind yourself, “I have a community, a group I already belong to, and they help my mind, my body, and my soul deal with all this craziness.” The point is that there are already things men do that they don’t necessarily think of as therapeutic, but they are absolutely feeling the positive benefit.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to decide whether to bring socio-political topics into any of the groups I’ve mentioned above. Whether you do or do not is dependent on the make-up of the particular group and your relationship with the group members. You don’t want to risk blowing up your spot in the group by bringing up the realities that everyone is seeking respite from. On the other hand, you’re reminding yourself that the group is restorative to you. Within that particular group, you get some “time out” and get refilled. Maybe you address it to the group in a way that says, “Hey, we’re going to check in with one another and how we’re dealing with all the craziness going on now.”

What I’m saying is that if you have a group that focuses on a particular activity or common interest, realize you’re already a part of a community that helps you survive or stay emotionally regulated—and by that I mean it keeps you from becoming so depressed or enraged that you act out. The group also offers an opportunity to rally around others in the group who are directly impacted by the current chaos. 

Whether your group is a community gardening group, parents of toddlers, or guys who regularly play basketball, when folks get together they are going to say to each other in their own way, “How’s it going?” Having that space to both check on others and be supported by others is a major way to help manage the challenges around us.

In these times, if you don’t have a group space like that, you might start looking for one. Or you can find a person you could start checking in with. If you’re more isolated, and are more online, is there anyone you chat with who feels safe, or with whom you have a common interest who could be a person you check in with? 

Opportunities to build connections also exist in volunteering, community service, and mentoring. When you take time out to give, you’re also receiving. Use your gifts, skills, and information to give back. By giving back, you’re validating your own lived experience. There are a lot of things in someone’s lived experience that have helped them become successful in their personal, work, and student life. A lot of people feel they don’t have anything to offer, but when they look at their life, their experiences, and accomplishments, they begin to realize all they have to offer.

Resisting the Chaos Around You

When we are faced with circumstances that are hurtful, demeaning, and overwhelming, we can easily feel that we are stuck with the circumstances and have no power to resist. Resistance to the current chaos is life-affirming, can restore our sense of agency, and can help to change the harmful, overwhelming circumstances. A form of resistance that we all see on television and social media in this current environment is public demonstrations that protest the treatment of Latine folks being physically taken from our communities by unidentified armed men and then sent to jails and detention centers that are often far away. No notice or information is being given to their families about where the loved one has been sent. Neither the person nor their family has an opportunity to challenge in court the person’s seizure and transportation to detention centers.

In addition to protest demonstrations, we often think of resistance as political activism, ranging from writing or calling elected politicians to protesting government practice or laws, or various forms of civil disobedience (like the Civil Rights sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters). I refer you to an often-missed but very important form of resistance, which is rest. Tricia Hersey has described the importance of us getting enough rest as a part of any resistance we engage in. Her two books are: Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto and Rest Is Resistance: Free Yourself from Grind Culture and Reclaim Your Life.

There are two other effective ways that you can regain your balance and centeredness in the midst of the current chaos: 

1. Engage with creativity, yours and others, and
2. Build and maintain intergenerational connections.

Express Yourself 

Creativity in any form—painting, sculpture, writing, music, dance, poetry—is powerfully restorative. One thing that people who use their gifts to produce creative works can do is to maintain their integrity about what they’re seeing and feeling in the world around them, and reflect what they and many of us aspire to. Artists have an enormous power in doing that. If you are not an artist, you can actively look for and read books and/or magazines and go to exhibits and performances. Consciously take in the creative output of artists to replenish, refresh, and keep yourself sane. Artists are an enormous resource to the rest of us.

Actively engage in the output of artists of every stripe. Music, for example, can be enormously healing. So in the midst of all this chaos, whatever music soothes and enlivens and feeds you—listen to it. This is another way to cope with all this craziness and not withdraw from the world. Or find some other things that are important to you. No matter where you live, even if you don’t have direct access to exhibits, you can access all sorts of creative work online.

Intergenerational Connections

Don’t get stuck in your own age group. Actively seek out and use your intergenerational connections. The benefits aren’t just that young people gain wisdom and older people become revitalized. Intergenerational connections work in both directions. Older people gain wisdom and insights from younger people’s fresh perspectives and younger people can be revitalized and even pulled back from the brink of depression by learning about and sharing all the activities seniors are involved in.

“This is what you’re doing, senior person? This is your story? I’m twenty-five sitting around feeling depressed. You’re seventy-five and you’re around here doing what?? You’re doing all this?!”

A Summary of the Coping Strategies Presented in this Chapter

1. Get yourself grounded—either alone, with a good friend, or in a group.

2. Recognize the reality of what’s happening and that you are not causing this. It’s not that you’re not doing enough or you aren’t capable enough, smart enough, or creative enough. You’re not feeling overwhelmed because of your inadequacy. You are feeling overwhelmed because what’s happening to you is everything you’ve read about in this book so far. You are feeling overwhelmed, sad, defeated or angry because you, I, and everyone you care about—and even a few people you may not care about—are experiencing a tidal wave of physical, psychological, and emotional chaos.

3. Connect with other people you feel safe with and talk about what you are seeing and experiencing. Naming what is frightening or stressing you is enormously therapeutic. Also share with those same people how you and they may be feeling inadequate, overwhelmed, and even responsible for what is going on. Then share how each of you is coping with the current chaos.

4. Recognize and share with your trusted others the ways that chaos has appeared for you, your people, and other people over several generations. Especially recognize and share the ways that earlier generations have resisted and maintained their balance in the face of earlier hurt and violence. That may have happened in this country or in places where your ancestors lived before arriving here. Acknowledge that some folks and their ancestors have been hurt and traumatized for so long that, in layman’s terms, they’re not thinking straight. They may just accept the reality of being harmed as inevitable: “It’s just the way it is for us.” They may not be aware of the resources available to them, let alone be using them. So in that regard, the tidal wave is working the way it is supposed to.

5. It is important to remember that cycles of oppression and harm exist along with cycles of resistance, and that there are lessons to be learned from ancestors, our own and others, about how to resist. We do not need to feel we can do nothing.

6. Resistance is life affirming and can change things. We can each find our place and ways of resisting. Resistance is an important part of healing. Resistance is a way to take care of yourself and loved ones, and a way to recover from harm.

You can engage in resistance in many ways. You can go out and organize and demonstrate with others; you can help others by volunteering with groups that offer care, like providing food, running errands for folks who have limited capacity to do that for themselves, tutoring, or mentoring. If you are already doing some of these caring things, remind yourself that these are all expressions of being in a community and of resistance. And remember that giving yourself enough rest is a form of resistance.

Final Thoughts

This chapter is all about maintaining your center, your balance, and your certainty about your own humanity in the midst of all of these moves that can destroy human connections. These are strategies anyone can use. When we are in the midst of feeling stressed or traumatized, even if we’ve learned these strategies before, the information can go out the window. So when you notice you are feeling overwhelmed, or hopeless, remind yourself of what you know and what you’ve learned here.

ome people have never learned this perspective or these strategies. All they have received are the most negative messages about who they are as a Black person, as a Latine woman, as a Person of Color, as someone from a low-income family, as a person living with a disability, as someone who has made life decisions that got them into trouble, or as someone who has lived in less than ideal circumstances. Some of these negative messages have come from parents, grandparents, or people they hung out with, because those folks have been overwhelmed and received negative messages. Sometimes the negative messages have led to folks not realizing or forgetting the coping strategies that they and their ancestors have in fact used.

These exercises and strategies are reminders of the human capacity to remain resilient even in the most adverse circumstances. Just know you’re not the problem, and practice ways to cope.

Chapter 13 from Fieldnotes on Fortitude: Resilience in Resistance.