What is Happening?

Naming a Few Things...

Hello ♡,

I have started and stopped this newsletter many times this week as I hold together the grief of watching events unfold in this country, and around the world, with events in my own little world. Much is happening in the lives of people I love, and my own. It’s a lot isn’t it? Maybe you can relate? It can feel hard to think.

Photo by Aubree Herrick on Unsplash

I thought about writing to you about immigration. I am the daughter of am immigrant (who is more accurately a father, grandfather, and brilliant, respected author, professor, and economist - I am so weary of individuals being reduced to a label) to this country, who lived as a legal resident (that means you pay all the taxes and get none of the voting) until this year. In case it may help someone understand things differently. Proximity is a powerful educator.

I thought about how I am not a news feed. I don’t have a staff of researchers and therefore cannot “update” you. And this may be one place to take a sacred pause from that.

And then I landed on what I feel most called to do in my work and writing, and that is naming things.

Sitting in my seat as a therapist I hear many stories, many needs, many focuses. And doing therapy through world crises (Covid), and current (and previous) political environments I observe the weight of “too muchness” on already heavy loads. A client might be in tears about their own story and then pivot to how desperate and helpless they feel in this climate. And how angry and exhausted they are, how frightened for themselves or their neighbors. It is like an accordian of worries: more localized in their lives, expanding out, localizing again, over and over again. And it is a sound that sounds less like music and more like overwhelm.

You may be fearing the detention of a loved one, friend, or neighbor. Or you may be trying to get your kids to summer camp. Or nursing an injury, looking for a job. Or all of the above. I don’t know. But in addition to “too muchness,” you may be feeling something called “hypernormalization,” “functional freeze,” or “psychic numbing.” So let’s name those together, to help understand ourselves more if applicable.

Hypernormalization:

“First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.”

More colorfully described in this way,

“It’s “the visceral sense of waking up in an alternate timeline with a deep, bodily knowing that something isn’t right – but having no clear idea how to fix it”, Harfoush tells me. “It’s reading an article about childhood hunger and genocide, only to scroll down to a carefree listicle highlighting the best-dressed celebrities or a whimsical quiz about: ‘What Pop-Tart are you?’”

Functional Freeze:

This can result in you operating in a “functional freeze” state. This is a state in which you may still be functioning in your roles as you normally do but you find yourself more emotionally disconnected, more distracted, more detached. You may have less energy or struggle to stay engaged in a conversation about something mundane that you normally could track with. You might feel “wired and tired” at the same time, like a frustrating hypervigilance. You might feel irritable. You might experience muscle tension or fatigue. This can look different for everyone, and can very in degree.

Psychic Numbing:

Or you may be feeling oddly numb. It may unlike you, against your values even,

“The phenomenon is called “psychic numbing,” indifference that sets in when we are confronted with overwhelming calamity, and it's only one of the glitches in our emotional makeup that keep us from working to change circumstances that harm other people (or the environment)…”

Naming is essential, you know I how I feel about this, writing a whole book about it. I found this a helpful summary statement too, “Naming an experience can be a form of psychological relief.” I couldn’t agree more.

Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash

Why start there? Because when we name things, we locate ourselves on the map. “Ah, here I am.” And in that act of locating ourselves on the map we reconnect to ourselves and how we feel. Then we bravely practice allowing ourselves to feel what we feel. And then? We find one small way to advocate for ourselves and our neighbors. We act on the feeling we named and bravely felt. All with compassion. All with understanding.

And then? When we predictably get overwhelmed, numb, and frozen? We don’t judge. We name, feel, and move. Repeat.

With you,

Monica

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Book News!

I found out this week there will now also be a Polish translation of my book! So if I am getting this right we are going to have Chinese, Portuguese, Indonesian, Russian, and Polish versions so far. So cool.

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