Hey US folks!
Friendly reminder--with a big ol' hug--that you're living with institutional crisis stress.
New secret police popping up! Speakers ousted when the government should be negotiating to protect from shutdown! Ex-presidents endangering public officials by testing the limits of gag orders!
These are not normal situations.
They are attacks on your social contract.
And they're affecting your stress.
So step back if you have to.
Breathe.
And give yourselves credit for getting by. πͺ
Yes! I have come across this article many times now, and each time I stop and read it anew, because it's so vitally important that we not forget this.
Thank you for sharing it, so I can sit with it again. We have such a pervasive myth of being coherent individual actors, it's almost as if we can't accept the idea of collective trauma without it shattering that other (culturally enforced) self-perception.
And yet... until we do, it's just going to keep breaking us anew.
Yes, exactly that.
Add to that the authortative voices who define trauma with a specific range of symptoms and behaviors that say what is and isn't trauma.
Sigh.
@heyrhiannon @MLClark We sure are like a nation of battered women and Putin and his ilk are loving it :(
@MLClark
I've been reading and pondering this article today. Touches on some things I've been contemplating.
We Are Not Just Polarized. We Are Traumatized
by
Ann Marie Cox
https://newrepublic.com/article/175311/america-polarized-traumatized-trump-violence