The demoralizing exhaustion of life under Trump: Slate article.
I know I usually save this sort of link for twitter, but this article too accurately describes the psychic cost of this presidency not to share.
Pattern and Outrage : Dee Mallon
cloth, justice, writing, and food
I read this article when it was shared by Rebecca Solnit and was tempted to share it, but I didn’t want Trump’s photo to appear on my Facebook page. My mental health took a plunge last summer and I experienced a huge relief after election day. That’s when I knew that I had PTSD from November 2016.
Oh now I get Michelle’s later comment about the picture on her FB page.
Recently a friend pointed out how even if I perhaps had terrible unhealthy boundaries with my sister, perhaps I was better at compartmentalizing than I thought. Keeping the political stuff in twitter for the most part. And here I am not doing that.
I think many of us are suffering a form of PTSD and it’s worse than that because the nightmare is ongoing.
Rebecca Solnit is one of my go-to sources for sane analysis.
Good article. Putting it all down in writing, makes me tired…or maybe that is in addition to all going on in my world. Thanks for sharing. I’m sharing too. xo
I’m feeling increasing frustration with the media. Talking endlessly about trump’s words. Is he worse? Is it the same old shit? If he’s worse is he exhibiting signs of dementia? Is there strategy behind his deflections and word-salad-fires? Ugh. Stop already!
Course they’re not talking about dementia. Which they should be.
Yes, the media is a huge part of the problem…since the campaign really. They normalize or dissect to death with saying outright what should be said or by saying too much…repeating his words til the amount of airplay is as insane as he is!
It is truly pathetic.
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You need to do that yourself. Thank you.
Trump is using smoke and mirrors as are all the leaders of the world failing in their job of looking after our beautiful broken world by their complicity with the fossil fuel industries, Australia is the third largest exporter of coal and gas on the planet, the writer Richard Flanagan gives me hope-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/22/six-sentences-of-hope-defining-a-unifying-vision-in-the-face-of-the-climate-crisis
“It’s time to take our future back. It’s time to stand and fight.”
Great article. Loved these words: “This sense of futility haunts us all.
And yet within that failure is hope. Having only ourselves we finally discover bedrock: ourselves.”
Rebecca Solnit also drives home this point.
Our climate candidate has dropped out of the presidential race and will be offering support and expertise to others. (Governor If WAS state, Jay Inslee). This counts as good news.
I don’t think it is coincidence that two months after the 2016 election I began the auto-immune crisis that led to two years of illness. I still feel the cloud of fear hanging over me every day. I think we are at a major crossroads and I don’t know if we will join to “take our future back”. I hope we will.
I am friends with several psychotherapists who keep saying what a profound impact this all is having on their patients and their practice. The course for you makes a lot of sense. I think I can track my insomnia to around 2016. Whole nights where I lie awake.
The insomnia this week has been horrible. Of course, on this morning, the morning I have been waiting for all week when I could have had the blessing of sleeping late, I was wide awake before my usual alarm time.
I’m so sorry. I had one awake-til-four night this week. I usually lie there and lie there debating whether to get up and ultimately get up.
Good article and others cited within…however, like another here, I do not want that face on my FB page. Grace at Windthread last post was to the point: https://windthread.typepad.com/windthread/2019/08/my-entry-20.html
Every day I manage to manage the horror and disgust I feel by distracting myself with gazillion means, taking care of myself in simple ways (cooking, washing, art making, time spent on personal hygiene, communication with real friends and my virtual communities…etc. There may be some self defense denial sprinkled in the mix, or perhaps zen meditation and that healing, harmonious zendo across 23rd Street is what saves me from systems collapse.
I read selectively, pay attention (just enough) to ongoing tweeted inanities and course corrections, the non stop news stories and opinions, but I’m keeping my heart and head in the clouds, stars, moon and planets, not stuck in the sand. A beloved ten year old boy in recent conversation said ‘I have many scars on my ego.” Don’t we all, I thought and isn’t that a blessing in disguise.
I’m not sure what you mean about “not wanting that face in your FB page” since I posted this to my blog? Usually I keep political stuff more confined to twitter, but this article so captured my state of mind, I wanted to share it here.
I continue my life as a maker. I cook nutritious meals. Walk the dog. Clean my house. Write every day. I don’t know where I’d be without these activities. These forms of shelter.
I’m glad we have each other.
Love it when Dahlia Lithwick shows up on MSNBC … and her line “if you don’t feel you’re losing your damn mind, something [is] profoundly wrong with you” is spot-on. Sadly, there seem to be far too many people who don’t feel like they’re losing their damn minds. What’s with that?
And for those of us who do feel nuts … we are indeed doing too much [worrying] and not enough [active resistance]. 2020 is shaping up to be a very long year …
Last week was my yearly physical. The doc and I discussed the collective neurological changes so many of us are experiencing as a way of buffering against continuous personal as well as “incoming” disintegration. It was good to speak of such things very plainly and in a bit of depth. Am fortunate that I’m currently engaged in a couple of projects that are culminating after 2 decades worth of experiential research and seemingly perpetual note-taking but not a lot of “real” writing. Finally my efforts have begun to resemble the skeleton of a thing capable of standing on its own weight and merit. That’s a really good feeling that has shifted pretty much all of my perceptions about myself as well as life and illuminated arcs of humanity more generally.
But then there is always, constantly, this other very-far-beyond-horrible thing. It’s very very real and seemingly endless in its nightmarish ramifications. For the past couple of months I’ve been unable to meditate effectively in the type of ways I’ve done for years. I need relatively spontaneous motion-based meditations or complicated/long-procrastinated creative endeavors that keep my body as well as my mind thoroughly occupied.
So glad about the timing of your work. It’s arc countermanding the national disaster a little.
This cycle of mad 😡 scared 😱 sad 😢 it just keeps going round and round .. it’s dizzying. If only we could make it stop.
Yes. The fears about 2020 are really corrosive.
This is incredibly helpful! Thank you!
Good to know. I thought it was.
Hang in there, Dee. I just wish the press would treat him like those little creatures treated K in the first Men in Black. You know, those little guys who were always chain-smoking and drinking coffee in the back room at headquarters, the ones with cartons or cigarettes strapped onto their little wheeled carts, on their way off-planet because the bad guy had landed. Just pick up your steno pad and recorder and walk out of the room. Trump doesn’t deserve to be written about, or even listened to.
Thank you! The movie analogy is perfect. The press doesn’t yet treat him as someone with a personality disorder and now that it seems pretty clear he has swiftly advancing dementia, doubt they will ever get current. Fortunately, twitter is all over it.
boy am I glad to be living in boring old Holland!
I feel for you, all I have to offer is: choose you, above all choose yourself…
which of course you are all trying is what I’m reading here…..
I’m reminded of the Harry Potter series, the fight against he-who-shall-not-be-named, we know how that ended, we live in hope!
Ha! The Potter reference. Many will not name trump or call him president. Just heard interview with Ayanna Pressley who refers to him as, “the current occupant of the White House.” It is incredibly hard to stay the course.