How to deal
Contents:
1. Current events in a connected world
2. Acceptance
3. Connection and grief
4. Safety and boundaries
5. Action
6. Look for more goodness
7. Herbs that can help
1. Current events in a connected world
One of the most interesting things to me about the modern world is that, because of social media and the internet, we are all connected in a much more immediate way. So much so that we hear about so many more situations than we naturally would have in a world where we couldn’t communicate with the other side of the planet easily.
On one hand, it’s amazing. I, personally, love being able to travel, to speak to my friends across the globe, to know what’s going on. In a world ravaged by the effects of colonialism and globalisation it is SO important for us to be aware of how our societies (and our demands for things like cheap clothes, and new cellphones) have affected the parts of the world that we cannot immediately see. There is a cause and effect that was not apparent to all of us, that is becoming more clear as we learn more about what is causing the genocides, wars, child labour, droughts, etc. I think its important to understand these things so that our choices can be better informed. It is easy, for example, to want to get the newest technology when it comes out, but when we are aware of the *actual* cost of that technology (as opposed to the monthly price we’d be paying financially), then we might think differently, or hold on to our old, cracked screen phone for longer.
But there’s a flip-side to this knowledge, and that is that there is always something new. We can become incapacitated by all of the things that we care about.
In a time when we didn’t have access to the full global network of natural disaster information, we’d often have downtime in between shitty events. Here in my very fire-prone town, for example, our fire season is on a break because we’ve been getting snow. The collective relief that happens when the first moisture falls is palpable, because it means that we don’t need to be vigilant for a while. But now there are fires on the other side of the planet, and I see the images, feel the distress. Our brains chemically cannot distinguish between what is happening to us in reality and in our imagination— that is, when we are reading about these things, our brains release stress hormones as if they were happening to us. So, the more aware we are, the less likely we are to get that necessary down time.
We can burn out on caring attention. Whether we want to or not. We simply aren’t built to be in disaster mode constantly. The effect of this is actually quite insidious: our brains, releasing stress hormones constantly, can actually enter into trauma cycles as a result of things that aren’t happening to us.
With this in mind, I’ve put together a sort of how-to navigate this world of terrible-thing-information-overload (TM).
2. Acceptance
One thing that I’ve found to be helpful, in a weird way, is acceptance.
Acceptance is not saying ‘I am ok with this’ or even ‘I want this’. It is simple the act of ceasing to resist reality. To illustrate this, I am going to give you a slightly less emotionally weighted example than any of the current issues many of us are struggling over:
I hate peanuts, and especially peanut butter.
I mean, really, really hate them.
If I had a deathly allergy (or horrific trauma experience with peanuts), then I’d be more justified in hating them! Alas I don’t, I just think that they are disgusting. Not just the color (baby poo), or the texture of peanut butter (*shudder*), but peanuts are satan’s kibble and I don’t want them or their mushy paste derivatives anywhere near me. I even judge people who like peanut butter (which I know is 93.56% of the population and that I am in the minority and could even possibly be wrong (shh) about my judgements).
And yet, there is a can of peanuts on the shelf in the pantry, because my husband likes them.
And every flight I take, someone with a smile hands me a packet and says ‘peanuts?’
Don’t even get me started on going to Thai restaurants and having to pick off individual pieces of peanut from a perfectly good papaya salad. Peanuts are everywhere!
I could plot ways to rid the world of peanuts. I could have started a peanut-hating support group for all 12 of us on the planet who simply don’t like them and we could spend all day talking about how terrible it is that peanuts exist. I could spend all my time thinking about peanut eaters and judging them. Or thinking about how peanuts are there, out there, in the world, and how I wish they weren’t.
And yet all of that would be spinning my wheels and creating stress in my brain, trying to change reality. When the reality is this:
Peanuts exist.
Satan’s kibble has permeated every aspect of society, and all I can do, as a person who hates peanuts… is not eat them.
Our current reality is change.
Change is happening. Faster than most of us have ever experienced before. This is our reality: droughts, floods, fires, tornadoes, species extinction… I could write a long list that would get progressively more depressing.
We could spend a lot of time talking about all of the terrible things that are happening, and how we wish they weren’t happening, and how great things were before, and how much we’ve fucked the world up (ooh maybe even pointing fingers because that always feels better!). But the reality is this: that which we’ve been fearing is already here. The first thing to do is to stop fighting its existence.
Acceptance, of course, goes hand in hand with grief.
3. Connection and grief
I have written extensively about grief in previous newsletters, and I think it’s important to touch on often, because it’s something that many of us don’t know how to deal with.
Grief is often the feeling that comes after surrender to acceptance. And I think that a part of the reason we resist so much is that resistance feels like fighting, and DOING something, whereas surrender and acceptance mean facing the deep grief that comes with change. Because one side of change is what’s coming in the future, but the other side is what is no longer with us: all of the things that have died, changed, left us, moved on. The past That can feel so heavy, and unpleasant, and it’s no wonder that we’d rather feel anger and denial. But… a part of the reason that grief sucks is that we believe that grief is our burden to bear alone, when in actual fact it’s something collective, that can, in some weird ways, actually be beautiful.
Our empathy and compassion for each other is as deep as our own suffering. When we hold our pain close, and don't let it out, then not only are we holding ourselves in place but we are cutting others off from the gift of our own compassion. To exist in the world with grief or sadness is to be human-- there is literally no way to get through life without experiencing horrible things at some point or another. To look at another person who is suffering and to be able to say 'I am here and I will not run from your pain because I don't run from my own' is such a great gift. It's what we all need. And it comes from bravery-- to do that you have to be able to feel your own pain, to feel the depths of it, to know that it's not going to consume you (though it might feel like it sometimes) and to open it up to another person (without pushing it on them to try and lighten your own load), to help them see that you are connected by this painful thing.
Our individual sadness is like a glass of salt water, but when we connect to each other we realise we are an ocean, all together, all connected by our compassion. And this, strangely, lightens the load, makes it more bearable. It's as if the feeling of being completely alone in the world compounds the pain, makes it that much worse. And when we see how deeply we are all connected, there might be pain, but it's not the pain of being singular. When this happens you realise that your pain isn't your own, it's collective. It's all of ours. And we can handle it, together.
But a part of that also means not taking on grief as our own that isn’t ours. What I mean by that is, when we allow ourselves to grieve for every single thing as if it is happening to us as individuals, we aren’t allowing space for the people who are going through the thing in their area.
So for example, if a friend has lost their house in a flood, and I have not been directly affected, it is my job to support that friend through allowing myself to be the supportive web, not to grieve as if it were happening to me and require the support myself.
4. Safety and boundaries
Our hearts need to be able to open to other peoples’, or places’ stories, without feeling the need to shut down, ‘other’, cast blame, judge, dole out solutions, or make it about us.
In order to be able to sit with what is happening and not close off, we need to feel safe enough to remain open.
This means… *drumroll*
HI BOUNDARIES!
When we establish boundaries with our words and actions, our squidgy soft centers feel safe and protected. As a result, our hearts don’t need to close off as a last resort towards safety.
It’s ok to take a step back from information overload: it isn’t shameful and it doesn’t make you a bad person to not want to be dealing with what’s going on all the time.
Yes, it’s good to be informed, but if that level of being informed is making you feel sick, anxious, constantly upset, or is impacting your ability to work, play, or be there for your friends and family, then it might be good to take a break from taking in new information, and do something to remind yourself of the goodness in life. Think of those neural circuits that I mentioned up at the top of this newsletter somewhere: the longer you reinforce the ‘terrible things’ circuits in your brain, the more they start to become the default. That’s unavoidable when it’s YOUR life, and your immediate surroundings. But when things that aren’t happening to us directly start affecting our stress levels as if they are, then it’s time to take some space.
What does taking space look like?
-It looks like taking in the news when you want to, not when other people decide you need to know about something.
-It looks like allowing yourself to step back (or completely disconnect) so that you don’t get swept up in the emotional current of a situation that is not your immediate situation .
-It looks like doing what you can, and accepting that this is enough (it has to be enough, quite frankly).
-It looks like understanding that sometimes you can’t do anything.
-And it looks like also understanding that you cannot be aware of everything, and that too is ok.
It also looks like paying attention to the way the things we give our attention to affect us emotionally, and being more careful about them during stressful times. We know how to pay attention to how foods affect us— everyone I know can say whether or not they can drink coffee before bed, for example, or whether cheese gives them nightmares (I think this is an old wives tale because cheese is a delicious and perfectly acceptable bedtime snack). People can say whether too much sugar will affect them, or whether their health can handle being vegetarian or not.
But most people do not pay as much attention to how, say, their anxiety levels are after a steady diet of the news; or how watching emotionally aggravating (be it through violence, or drama) movies or TV can affect their stress levels; or even how when a friend calls to vent, it can leave them feeling off for hours, or even days.
All of these things can feel threatening or unsettling on an emotional level, without us even being aware of it happening.
The more we become aware of how these things affect our feelings of safety and wellbeing, the more we have the capacity to CHOOSE the parts of our emotional diet that we provide for ourselves. We can then say ‘actually let’s watch Queer Eye instead of another documentary about the genocide in Rwanda’, or ‘I can’t talk right now, are you free later, or tomorrow?’.
Of course, we cannot control every aspect of our emotional diet (and quite frankly that would probably make life quite boring and way too predictable) but the more we consume things that feel good and healthy for us, the more easily we handle the fluctuations that come at us from outside ourselves. In other words, emotionally ingesting things that feel good and healthy for us (or choosing to ingest the things that are difficult when we feel prepared to do so) makes us more emotionally resilient, so that when the unpredictable does happen, we can bounce back more easily.
The more we do this, the safer our hearts feel, because we feel protected by our awareness and subsequent actions. As a result of feeling so much safer, it becomes much easier to remain open to the people and happenings around us. To be able to sit with the discomfort at times when we truly want to be able to.
5. Action
When all of these other factors are in place, then action becomes a lot more clear:
What CAN you do? There are things you can do for a specific situation if you have time, bandwidth and resources:
If you do have funds to donate, who can you donate too?
If people who are affected are asking for things, can you do any of these things?
But do not discount the bolstering effect of compassion, awareness, or solidarity. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t been through the wringer the last few years, and sometimes it has to be enough to say ‘I care about what’s happening to you but have so much going on in my own life that I don’t have space to help. I wish I could do more, but know that I care, and that I would do more if I could.’
But, when it comes to global issues, I think the most important way to take action is actually in our daily lives, and our daily habits.
I had a discussion with one of my closest friends last week, and we were discussing how distressing the fire situation in Australia is. She and her husband are people whose lifestyle I admire so very much— I think they, more than anyone else I’ve ever known— live their principles about ecology and the environment, with so much integrity. And she said ‘I wanted to be able to help out with the fires, so I shoveled my snowy driveway.’ To provide a little more context, there are now machines, fueled by petroleum products, that will clear snowy driveways with a lot less muscle-fatigue and sweat. This really struck home to me. So often we want to run out to do the dramatic thing— to BE there, in the mix, doing something heroic. To at least be doing something to directly affect the situation that is upsetting to us.
But, to be completely honest, a deeper, more heroic, but less immediately applaudable thing, is how we live our daily lives. I am NOT the poster-child for this (though I am trying), and I’m not going to provide a list, because a. It’d be super fake of me to be like ‘this is what you should do’, and b. I think there are plenty of people out there who already talk about this stuff a lot, and it can feel overwhelming at times. But, one small action, taken consistently, makes a difference. After a while it becomes a habit, and your new normal. And then another small action can be taken. It doesn’t mean a complete life-overhaul between now and tomorrow, nor does it need to be a reason to start feeling shame about all your life choices up until this point. All it means is, start with one small thing.
(If you’re interested in a list or some ideas, I have started a thread in the Wonderkin group that can be geared towards exploration of things we can try adding to our lives.)
The majority of these issues that we care about are the result of overconsumption, that we often do because we believe that we are not enough, and do not have enough, and do not do enough. Which brings me to an area that I do feel comfortable giving advice on:
Emotional things we can do:
1. Work on your own shit.
I mean this compassionately, but we can be of more use to the people around us and the world if our own personal history is not a landmine. When we have worked through something, we can then access the well of emotion and compassion to truly be there for others. (No pressure, obviously this is something that needs to happen in your own time, own space, etc).
2. Trust that you’re doing enough.
We cannot look at another person and know what they are going through. And, the same works for us in reverse. So while there may be tons of pressure from outside us to do more/ give more/ care more/ be more, we have to trust that if you care (and quite frankly, if you’ve made it this far, I’d guarantee that you do :P), then you’ll do what you can. And that’s all there is to it. There’s a bigger picture here, in terms of time-scale, and we cannot do it all in a single day. So trust that your daily best (which some days might not look like a lot, but does add up over time), is enough. And whatever you do, do not compare what that daily best is to anybody else.
Which brings me to…
3. Trust that other people are doing their best, too.
Just last week, before getting a plug-in to completely block my Facebook newsfeed (YAY!), I saw somebody tear into another person for ‘encouraging others to be lazy’ simply by suggesting that they are enough as they are. I cannot speak to the person who wrote that, but I don’t think that this is a healthy way of looking at other people.
Yesterday, however, I saw a favourite author of mine respond to a post, where her lack of talking publicly about an important issue was called into question by another member of her Facebook fan club (yes I am a dork and am in Facebook fan clubs for authors I like). And I’ll paraphrase her response, but it went something like this:
“I agree that really important stuff is happening but sometimes remaining neutral is actually taking a side. I also believe that some people need time and energy to digest important details to make an informed decision instead of jumping on the emotional bandwagon. In the last 3 weeks, X happened. Y happened. Z happened. I haven’t had time to digest all the relevant details. While it is important, this thing that’s happening has not been my main priority. I personally think that’s ok. You might not, and that’s fine too.”
I thought her response was elegant, and brilliant, and so clear on boundaries. And I think it’s so important for us to all remember that when we can trust that we are doing our best, it becomes a lot easier to trust the same about others. When we all give each other the benefit of the doubt, we like ourselves, and each other, a lot more.
When we don’t force ourselves past our OWN capacity and boundaries, then we don’t get resentful when other people appear to do less than us. We do what we can. And the changes will come, not as a result of one person’s heroic action, but as a result of us collectively moving forwards, at what feels like a snail’s pace, doing this thing together.
6. Look for more goodness
It sounds wrong somehow, or counter-intuitive, that we should be focusing on good things while everything else falls apart. And yet it is focusing on what is good in ourselves and each other (while not pretending the shittiness isn’t happening), then it becomes so much easier to stand in that compassionate, open heart-space.
Some ideas:
-Have a really meaningful time with a friend.
-Get out into nature.
-Spend time with animals.
-Make love.
-Do something nice for yourself like making a really delicious and nutritious pot of soup, or a big salad, or go for a long walk.
-Do something kind for someone else, like helping without being asked, or buy a stranger’s groceries, or holding their child while they go to the toilet (I’ve done this for a stranger in an airport; I have no idea how she was going to manage to get her pants down otherwise).
-Do something good for the earth, like planting a tree, or making offerings to your local nature spirits, or donating to nature conservancy charities.
-Do something good for the people in your life: when you find yourself wanting to close off and cast blame, be brave.
7. Herbs that can help
Rose // Rosa spp.
Rose is my all-time favourite boundary/compassion herb. And when it comes to interacting with others and managing the swirling mass of emotions out there in the world, we need both boundaries and compassion. I always picture that gorgeous, soft, open flower, releasing its scent into the world (which apparently jim mcdonald hates but that is HIS BAG OF POO), while utterly protected by its thorns. And those thorns? They’re not sticking a mile out. They’re not the first thing you see when you get close to a rose patch, in fact, the scent is so enticing (*glares at jim*) that you probably find yourself face-deep in a patch of wild roses before you notice you’re being stabbed (I picture the rose saying ‘back away slowly and sniff from a safe distance, dude’).
Rose, quite simply, softens us. The world is full of people who try to make themselves harder, tougher, faster, more driven, focused, and direct. All of this trying comes from a sort of tension— we tense ourselves as if to do battle daily, and to protect our soft hearts from the onslaughts of the world around us. Rose softens the tension that we hold to protect ourselves, but because its clever, it doesn’t leave us without our own thorns of defence.
Its astringency tightens tissues, and it does this on a tissue-based level, but it also does so on a grand scale, to our *energy* as a whole, which means that as we’re softening, we’re also tightening up, starting to be able to tell where we end and the world around us begins. It’s not a hard wall of a boundary, but astringency leads to better filtration. We become much more capable of knowing who we are and as a result, where our boundaries are. Softening and strengthening, relaxing and tightening, the most beautiful soft petals and sensual scent, and those thorns that will cut you without second thought.
Read more: Kiva's article
Hawthorn // Crataegus spp.
Heart-friend and support for the grief state, hawthorn is like the hug you receive when you've been holding yourself together, feeling alone and unstable, that finally allows you to let yourself fall apart. When you have to go in and delve into the deepest, darkest parts of yourself, hawthorn is a supportive anchor saying 'You've got this; I won't let you fall apart completely'.
How it does this, I have no idea, but I have an analogy that I like. When we fall apart due to grief, it's like most of our entirety gets swept away in a tsunami of it. It swallows us, breaks us into pieces, dashes us against the rocks, and washes us up on the shore, battered and broken. But as we're being pulled to pieces, there's always that constant thrum in the background that's 'you' there. I mean, it's the constant that most of us aren't even aware of because we're so caught up with the surface stuff (I am my job, I am what I wear, I am my reactions, I am my gender, I am my sexuality, I am gay/straight/poly/queer/neurodivergent/cis/trans/alawyer/adoctor/adeskjockey/acashier/ajock/anartist/aniceperson/abadperson/lonely/confident/cool/aplantperson/rich/poor/inarelationship/loved/etcetcetc.) Except, if we were to chip away at every single self-identifier we have, we'd still be there, still exist, still be *us*. When our lives fall apart, either in grand explosive fashion or in little pieces, and when WE fall apart as a result, that nugget of 'us' at the center of our being remains constant. And it's that nugget of 'us'ness that hawthorn connects to and strengthens, so that the rest of us can fall to pieces around it. If our entire being was a map and the 'you are here' sign moved around on said map depending on how we feel on any given day, hawthorn points to the land itself so that the lines on the paper can dissolve and rearrange themselves.
Protector of the heart, protector of the faerie realm, which in our own psyches is the tender young part of ourselves that still sees the world with innocence and possibility. Hawthorn wraps itself around this like a protective shield allowing it to blossom again. Hawthorn's thorns are hard and sharp, sticking out at (at least what feels like) random angles to catch you unawares. It's interesting to me that these plants that are so so easy to love are the ones that protect themselves so well-- my first instinct with all of them is to fling myself on them and hug them, and yet you can't do that at all. I have tried it with a big pile of hawthorn twigs and leaves and flowers, and, well it hurts. One of the things you learn is that you can experience something just by hanging with it, being near it-- you don't need to fling yourself on it and try to hug the daylights out of it. For those of us who sometimes lack boundaries, this is an important lesson, and it's a lesson that hawthorn especially can teach us well: to experience something deeply you don't need to lose yourself, but actually to inhabit yourself more fully.
Hawthorn helps us soften by strengthening the parts that burn brightly through the darkness. That is, hawthorn affects the core of who we are, our hearts, not just physical but that little spark of awareness that was you before you knew what an 'I' was. Hawthorn wraps itself around it like a protective shield, whispering things like 'you've got this' and 'you can fall apart now I'll hold you up' and 'a little restructuring is ok but we'll hold it together here' and for those of us who are afraid to soften, afraid that to let go a little bit means the entire world will cave in or fall down, or rush in like a deluge, hawthorn is the beacon in the storm.
Oplopanax Horridus // Devil's club
(image credit: Leslie Lekos)
See those thorns up there? Devil's club knows about self-protection. Growing in the deep, dark forests where moisture abounds, and where said moisture seeps into everything, boundaries are so necessary. This is the world of mycelium, where everything is a part of everything else, where the one-ness of the place combined with the moisture, the fog, the moss, the sponginess of it all, makes for one seeping massive organism. How to be an individual surrounded by that? How to stand tall in your self-hood and be not soft and spongy but a sharp beacon of individual strength? Giant thorns, that's how. I consider devil's club to be an archetypal plant of self-hood and inner strength because of this.
One of the reasons I think oplopanax is so incredibly powerful is that it's connection in our energy is to our deepest sense of who we are-- the part of ourself that has no words to describe it, but just *is*. It's the us when we were born, the us that is free of constraint and 'shoulds' and trauma and fear. It's our past and our potential, all wrapped into one. That part of ourselves is always there, but for most people it's buried quite deeply. It's an energy that exists deep at our core, and emerges from our ancestry and our blood, and it blossoms in our chests, driving us forward even if we can no longer feel or hear it speaking to us. Devil's club connects us to that part of ourselves.
One of the nice side effects of this connection is that things can no longer hurt us as much.
On a more physical level, oplopanax is used to balance blood sugar levels, to treat infections, to help raise energy levels over time in exhaustion. Among many other things. It's an amazing, powerful plant, and one I feel very grateful to receive boxes of in the mail.
Read more: Ryan Drum's article
Ocimum sanctum // Tulsi
While tulsi has [most likely] about a million medicinal uses, the vast majority of them owe themselves to tulsi's ability to boost our ability to handle stressors. These stressors can occur in different systems, be it the immune system, digestive, nervous or in the overall metabolism, and these stressors can come in many forms, be it chemical, metabolic, psychological or bacterial.
In the immune system, stressors come in the form of pathogens, but at its most basic, the immune system differentiates 'self' from 'not self'. Tulsi helps the body's immune response and is at the same time antimicrobial, helping the body to fight 'not self' both from the inside (by helping the response itself) and also by directly fighting pathogens.
In the nervous system, tulsi helps to increase our stress tolerance, not by turning us into super humans, but by once again working on that 'self' and 'not self' axis. I'd say, from my own perspective, that tulsi strengthens the innate sense of 'self' which then makes 'not self' that much easier to deal with. When it comes to mental stressors this is incredibly important: think of how much mental stress actually has to do with us thinking we don't have the capacity to handle something. Think of how much more stressful life is when we feel overtired and that our resources are too meager to actually be effective. If 'self' is small, and 'not self' is huge, then the entire world feels overwhelming and like it's too much to handle. This is an incredibly stressful place to live, and most of us who suffer from anxiety issues live here full time! Think on the other hand of how the world looks when you feel calm, centered and *big* enough. Like you have enough resources (energetic, financial, whatever) to handle what life throws at you. That is a place where the world can't swallow you whole, and it comes from knowing that you are enough to handle it. Tulsi, in my opinion, helps to strengthen that sense of self. It's not that it by itself is a stress relieving herb, but the effect of that strengthening is that you can handle more by default. Psychologically it calms the mind because the mind doesn't need to be as agitated if you're not about to be swallowed by the world around you. And your nervous system doesn't need to be on high alert because you feel safe.
Another side effect of this 'safe' feeling is that, since your nervous system is no longer freaking out over every minor thing, your view of the world is no longer clouded by fear or panic. As a result, people tend to see the world with more clarity when taking tulsi. In a way, it's incredibly expansive in the brain, because our perspective narrows intensely when we're feeling threatened, and when we feel safe, our perspective expands. Our worlds quite literally get bigger to us as a result of taking it. Tulsi's effect on mental activity as a result of this is incredibly interesting: it helps with retention of information, and also with clarity of thought.
This calming, centering, grounding extends to the digestive system,
where tulsi's aromatics help calm agitation in the gut. Once again, this same action: where some foods can feel like 'too much' for us, causing indigestion or gas or bloating, tulsi draws our attention into our guts and the centre of our bodies, calming, grounding, and assisting with the digestion of foods.