Sanity in Insane Times

Baby step...let's not lose it entirely

To quote Gwen Stefani, one of our X-ennial institutions:

This shit is bananas.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

I started drafting this post after the attempted assassination of a certain former President, at which point I was convinced we were hosed. For legal reasons, I decline to say what my first thought was when it happened, but once it was clear that it was a nick on the ear and nothing more, I felt unsettled. Even though I know there are no quick fixes for our problems, my brain was still searching for the deus ex machina, the plot twist, the Big Daddy in the Sky, the random unexpected event that would free of us from this prison of madness in which we currently reside.

No one is coming to save us, and I know this. I briefly forgot myself and slipped into magical thinking. Magical thinking helps no one, and makes us more susceptible to things like disinformation and conspiracy theories. I understand why our brains want this. The past several years have been nothing but nonstop chaos, stress, fear, and heartache.

I think this has been especially tricky if you have ADHD or ASD (or AuADHD). This chaos is destabilizing, dysregulating, and can make our symptoms flare up big time. I definitely found myself slipping back into some bad habits and thought patterns over the past few months. THIS HAS BEEN A LOT, so let’s not beat ourselves up. Even though we are in a much better place than we were a few weeks ago, it has been a crazy time shit show.

I thought I would share a few things I have tried to do in order to slowly pull myself back from the brink of insanity. I think we’ve all been on the precipice of a full nervous breakdown at some point or another, and learned the hard way what our limits are.

None of this is meant to be prescriptive (I am not an expert!), nor will it work for everyone, and I am still learning as I go. Take what you need and disregard the rest.

Also, don’t try to do everything all at once. We must take Baby Steps.

Try to take care of yourself

I don’t mean “self-care” as in going to the spa or posting photos of yourself in a beach cabana on Instagram (though, if you have access to a beach cabana, use it for those of us who don’t!). I mean boring shit like move your body, take your meds, drink enough water, cut down on sugar and/or booze, try to eat something nourishing, limit caffeine if it makes you jittery, focus on better sleep, blah blah blah.

It can also be doing something you enjoy - writing, painting, knitting, camping, hiking. Hobbies are good. Or, do something fun and silly once in a while.

I know this is not easy, and I still struggle. What if there is ONE thing you could focus on? Could you carve out ten minutes to turn the lights down and just lay on a yoga mat while you listen to a favorite song? Could you insist on taking half an hour a day to read a book? Could you turn your notifications off at night? Taking care of yourself doesn’t have to be all day, every day. It can be a little bit at a time. The small things add up.

Try to limit cable news/infotainment

After Trump won in 2016, my husband told me that he didn’t want to watch cable news anymore. He was like “You can do whatever you want, if you want to watch it on your laptop with headphones that is up to you, but I am done”. I decided this was a good idea, so I stopped watching it too.

Since then, we have watched very little cable news in our home, and even limit things like The Daily Show. We only put it on if there’s a major world event (start of COVID, Jan 6th, etc.) or on Election Night. I confess I have tuned into The Daily Show a few times when Leslie Jones was guest hosting and our beloved Jon Stewart came back. I know Jon isn’t perfect, but what can I say, I’m an elder millennial. I missed the guy!

On the rare occasions I do tune in, I am reminded how loud and abrasive it is. There are so many lights and booms and blings and dings and graphics. It’s like POW POW POW KABLAMMO BOOM BWAARPP BREAKING NEWS every 4 seconds. It seems more like an ad for pro wrestling or a monster truck rally. I am not a fan. Also, keep that election map far the fuck away from me. The sight of that thing makes me spiral. That, and the dreaded New York Times election needle thingie. Shudder.

This is not to say you should never watch cable news. I am just old enough to remember when the news was a mostly sober affair, with a staid, sturdy anchor like Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather giving information in a Very Official Voice. This is not that, and you’re not just getting straight facts, you are getting opinions and noise.

Of course, the journalists and anchors have a job to do, and I do believe most of them are doing that to the best of their ability (save for the assholes over at Fox, who don’t even pretend to be journalists anymore). They are not the problem, the networks are. These networks are out to make money, first and foremost. They are not interested in keeping you informed - they are interested in keeping you angry and scared. It’s good to keep in mind.

Try to limit your exposure to violent or triggering footage

My fellow Elder Millennials will remember the website Rotten Dot Com. Remember when you could get on the internets and see photos of people who had blown their heads off with shotguns and other various kinds of gore? It was a new thing. Most of us had never seen stuff like that.

Well, now we have. A lot.

I have seen people imply that in order to be a conscientious citizen, you have to engage with the horrors 24/7 or else you are “complicit” or “looking away”. Well, guess what? That phone you just typed your thoughts into has led to an awful lot of death and horrors, so let’s maybe get off our high horse. There is no such thing as a HUMAN BEING who acts ethically all the time, and the more you insist upon purity, the more I wonder what you are hiding.

Looking at graphic images does not spring me into action, it just sends my mind down a horrible rabbit hole from which I find it very hard to come back from, and at the end of that rabbit hole no children are magically brought back to life. It’s the same reason I don’t watch footage of animals who have been abused or any of the Republican National Convention. There will still be abused animals and there will still be Republicans, no matter how much YouTube I watch.

Our brains are more than capable of understanding that violence is terrible without having to inundate ourselves with these images. In fact, viewing violent imagery can be damaging your mental health.

Roxane Cohen Silver and E. Alison Holman are researchers and professors in Irvine’s department of psychological science who have been studying the public-health effects of graphic images, including those from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks; the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.

In studying people’s repeated exposure to graphic images immediately after these events and over time, they found a correlation to acute stress, post-traumatic stress symptoms, fear of future attacks and difficulty functioning in work and social life.

Viewing violent images changes nothing. There are plenty of ways to take action and fight for causes you believe in that do not compromise your sanity.

Try to limit social media if you can, because your personal social media does not move the needle that much OR make you saner

See: Bentley-Quinn, Kari. Twitter Feed. 2015-2020. Except I deleted most of it so you can’t.

It doesn’t mean that calls to action aren’t effective, it’s just that most of the ones that are effective are crafted by people who are good at online activism. Not all of us are. I’m not, as it turns out!

Again, not saying you should quit social media. I know a lot of folks have meaningful community there, and that is important. But if its making you crazy, it is okay to put the phone down and….

Try to touch some grass

I literally have this as an item in my habit tracker. This means I have to get off the computer, throw clothes on real quick, and go outside. It can be sitting in a park or going to the grocery store or just taking the recycling down. I find that the simple act of leaving the house and getting a few moments of fresh air or sunshine can hit the reset button. The pandemic made me borderline agoraphobic, so this has taken me a long time, but it really does help to leave the house.

Try to be with actual humans in an actual place as much as you can handle

Grab a coffee with a friend. Have a beer with your co-workers (if you like them). Text messages are great for quick chats and meme sending, but sometimes, it helps to talk to people face to face. As much as all of my friends are on the left leaning end of things, we are not hivemind. We all have our own perspectives and opinions. It is okay to disagree, and it’s far better to hash those disagreements out in person. Sometimes you realize you are on the same page and just have different ideas of what the solutions should be, and then you can whine and complain about how no one is doing ANY of said ideas! Commiseration can be healing.

If you can’t actually get together, you can always try this thing called a “phone call” that I have heard about.

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A note: I had backed wayyyy off politics, but I am getting a lot more involved now that Harris is in play, but I am being smarter and more measured about it this time. You won’t catch me on Elon’s Favorite Toy OR stress drinking and watching Maddow. No shade to Rachel Maddow. All the shade to Elon Musk. Fuck that guy. He’s a monster who deadnames his own child, though she has been owning his ass in such a delightful fashion! You go girl!

If you have any advice for staying sane in insane times, all and any suggestions are welcome in the comments!

I am still offering a yearly subscription for 25% off - FOREVER! That will be your set rate for as long as you remain a subscriber. And, until Election Day, I am earmarking 10% of the proceeds of ALL subs to donate to reproductive rights, in honor of JD Vance. If you want to support me AND make JD Vance sad while helping a good cause, it’s a great time to do just that!