NOTE: This was edited on 1/9/21 to remove some lines that minimized the violent intentions of some of the insurrectionists, after learning more about what happened in the Capitol this past Wednesday.
Sometimes as a therapist, our clients become focused on a particular answer to their problems that may bring up questions and concerns for us. They’ve been starting to work on their core issues but suddenly put all their hopes on a new relationship, or a weekend retreat, or a new kind of medication.
All the attention shifts from the difficult and scary inner work toward focusing on this new situation. You can sense the hope that finally they’ve found the magic pill, the fix, the thing that’s going to solve their pain.
This new thing is not necessarily bad, though it can be. Typically the new thing may really help some problems, it may create some new problems, and it will leave an array of problems wholly untouched. That’s how life seems to go.
The problem is, when we put too much hope on the magic fix, if it fails or does not give us all the results we wanted—we may be thrown into a feeling of powerlessness. The despair may cause a bigger setback that leads us to give up everything that’s been helping.
Those underlying feelings of powerlessness preceded and gave rise to the hope for the magic fix. When we feel stuck in our problems and pains, and our efforts to change have failed too often, we may hope for someone or something else to rescue us.
One of my supervisors once said, “False hope is worse than no hope at all.”
On the other side of powerlessness, when even false hope is gone, lies despair and rage. The past several years have confronted me with the way my own mind tends toward imagining the big fears, anticipating enormous problems to come around climate change, civil unrest, resource wars—basically anything umar haque writes on Medium.
Such despair has bloomed in my mind in the past few years as any momentum and collective will we had to address these problems seems to have become whelmed in the expressions of an empire in decline: a flirtation with fascist doubling down on this doomed course, unrest, impotent governing structures eating their own tails, and the whispers of civil war.
Perhaps my attraction to doom comes from from growing up with the looming threat of climate change. One of the long-tried tactics to push for change has been explaining, with greater and greater alarm, the dangers to come if we stay on this course.
And I’ve been drawn to listening to the voices who speak to this most clearly and forcefully, those doom prophets. In 2015 I wrote of this in “Dread of a Revolution”:
What I know is that we need those on the edges: the radicals, the queer, the marginalized, the ones who speak up and remind me of what I’d want to ignore. These are the voices that see we are the Titanic plowing heedlessly into the ice and shouting for us to stop. We need these voices if we’re going to survive the changes that are already happening.
For a time, after the last election, I found my mind jumped to envisioning this future with a terrifying and overwhelming certainty. When talking with folks who I thought were in similar places I would share my fears of civil war and the others would get quiet and uncomfortable, and I felt more alone with my fears and even more afraid.
Now that concerns about civil unrest potentially spiraling into war have become more mainstream—I was able to talk about it casually with a neighbor the other day—I’ve felt freed up from my terror. What I’ve discovered is that, for me, what was most paralyzing is to feel alone with my concerns. When others can listen to my concerns with grounded compassion, together we can appraise the danger realistically and make practical plans to prepare. Then I feel lighter, freer, and better able to act.
Without that—realistic appraisals and making plans—the despair, powerlessness, and rage become overwhelming. When we focus too much on issues that are so big, so encompassing, so beyond our personal power to influence, it is hard to feel anything but those big, defeating emotions. This is, of course, worsened by media that capitalizes on making those emotions big and defeating so that we keep clicking, reading, watching, and consuming to deal with them.
And this is where I’ve begun to imagine “false despair” as a compliment to false hope. Having been so afraid of authoritarian governance, the rise of fascist movements, and the possibility of civil war, the realistic expressions of these tendencies has been unexpectedly grounding.
Which is not saying these experiences are not terrible. The pandemic is a horror and the national response to it is a disgrace on the people who were supposed to be our leaders. Destructive and disgraceful, too, is the deliberate stoking of polarization and the most fascistic impulses of the American people.
The deaths and grief are real. But what has surprised me often for the past four years is the ineptitude. Our would-be fascist was surprisingly bad at his job, which does not mean he’s not dangerous and the consequences of this won’t continue to unfold in harmful ways. The insurrection that stormed the Capitol building included people who had zip-ties, weapons, and incendiary devices clearly aiming for violent action, with calls for murdering elected officials, and also there were a lot of incidental folks who seemed to be swept in and not know what to do with themselves—milling about, breaking and messing with stuff, taking photo ops.
And while all that was happening, I needed to eat lunch and see clients. Life continued.
That paralyzing vision of utter horror and misery has done nothing to help me, and the certainty with which doom prophets make their utterances feels as unhelpful as the blindfolded certitude of the optimism peddlers and spiritual bypassers. Those who need to hear the doom prophecies are those with the power to do something about it. Those of us who are trying to live our lives and create something closer to the ground may need to hear enough of it to motivate us to act and gather power and influence.
What I seek is a path of clear perspective, which requires ongoing discernment and recalibration. Though this coup failed, that does not mean our struggles are over, and my fearful part worries that there are those who watched what happened that will reflect and come up with a better plan in the future. Thank you, fear brain! That’s an important concern. Now let’s finish this blog post.
What I mean to say is, even with that being true—even if somehow those chuckleheads had taken over the government—I would still need to make lunch and see my clients. That is the work of my life, what I am able to do, and the way I can be effective. Writing this blog post, as much as it feels like spitting into the ocean, is nevertheless something I can do.
On a fundamental psychological level, we need to begin acting where we have the most power and influence. It is not powerlessness, rage, and despair that make us effective—those emotions are valid and worthy of care and compassion within ourselves, but we cannot provide that when we’re flooded by them. What we need is to engage with these feelings from a place that is grounded and centered within our own agency—no matter how small or limited that agency may seem, we have access to it.
That story of despair and fatalism—”It’s all going to hell and there’s nothing I can do”—can crush us, or we can look at the piece of truth within it and let it guide us to where we can be effective. Me, the person typing, may have very small influence on the larger movements of history, but I have a great deal of influence on what we do with it. I have influence on my family and community in how we talk about and respond to what is happening, how we plan for what may be coming.
Whatever is coming, when it comes, may have features of what we fear, but it will also be different from what we can imagine. We will still have lives to live, floors to sweep, opportunities for joy and laughter and tears, people we love. There will be loopholes, secret places, and unexpected opportunities for power if we are awake enough to see them.
When you are feeling overwhelmed by despair, rage, or powerlessness, I would invite you to try any or all of the following:
Take a moment to acknowledge you feel this way because you care, and thank yourself for caring. Even if you see yourself as surrounded by a field of monsters in human bodies who care nothing for anyone else, recognize that within you, at the core of despair and rage, is your genuine caring for and love of life, the world, and humanity. It can be a lot simply to stop, take a breath, and acknowledge this. “I acknowledge I would only feel this way if I cared.” If you feel softer, you might try saying, “I appreciate that I care enough to feel this,” or even “I am grateful that I care enough to feel this.” But if you do not feel appreciative or grateful, it is great simply to begin with acknowledgment.
Next, do something for your body. Drink water. Take a nap. Eat some food. Go for a walk or otherwise get exercise that works for your body.
You might do something for your environment, too. Sweep the floor. Make the bed. Wash a dish. Clean anything. Pick up some litter. Don’t make a big, ambitious plan, just pick one thing to do and do it.
Then, you might also do something for your heart. Journal your thoughts and feelings. Draw a picture of how you feel. Talk to someone who can listen without offering advice or judgment.
Finally, you might also do something for your mind. Take time to write or speak out your fears. (Speaking could be to another person or to a voice recorder.) Really put them out as succinctly or clearly as possible. “I am afraid of civil war.” “I am afraid of losing my home.” Then take a break for a bit, and come back to this. Pick one of your fears and spend more time writing out what you think could happen that would make this come true. Once you’ve articulated this, think about what resources or supports you need that would help you plan to survive or offset these risks. Look around and start connecting with those resources, skills, or supports.
Your life is worth tending and honoring.