Holding Tension
How Politics, Paradox, and Contradictions Impact Your Mental Health
By: Lina Guerrero, MPA, LMSW, LCDC-I
Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an annual restorative justice practitioners retreat. It was located at a gorgeous resort in the Hill Country, where the hustle and bustle of city life diffused into sounds of cicadas, birds, crickets, and the swishing of large Texas oak tree leaves. I was able to see friends and colleagues who I haven’t seen in awhile, and the warm embrace of community care that enveloped us all was the balm we craved after working tirelessly in our respective fields. The motto that was deemed for this retreat was “A Place to Breathe,” and yes, it was much easier to breathe in the quiet of nature and care of restorative practitioners. However, the weight of political chaos was entirely on our minds, as only two days prior was the attempted assassination of the former president, and all of us were *feeling* the tensions, emotions, implications, and impacts of the moment.
Now, please don’t stop reading because I mentioned something political. I want to state that I have no power, answers, or authority on anything I’m writing. I am just a human being, who happens to be a therapist, deeply cares about how we navigate living in a world where life inevitably gets life-ey and people are going to do people-ey things regardless of what *I* think about it. This includes how we all navigate the current political climate in the United States, which in turn very much impacts our mental health.
One of my favorite commentators on social media is Benjamin Faye, who constantly iterates: “You’re not crazy, everything else is.” On my retreat that week, I kept repeating this statement in my head, as it was quite obvious that we were navigating a wild moment in history where political stress and trauma were amplified, visible, and tangible in our bodies. Simultaneously, I also held the reality that political stress and trauma exists in blatant and subtle ways in our everyday lives.
To understand this a little better, one of the most popular definitions of ‘politics’ states that it’s “who gets what, when, and how.” Currently, the political landscape is very preoccupied with who, when, and how people get what rights, freedoms, resources, safety, and access to necessities for survival. When the rights and necessities for survival are threatened here and abroad, our nervous systems activate stress responses that can be excessively overwhelming, both physically and emotionally. It’s imperative to state that these political times, along with the stressors we experience from them, ARE NOT normal. However, your anxieties, feelings, fears, hopes, and tensions in response ARE NORMAL. They are normal responses to the abnormal contexts that threaten your sense of self, values, and livelihoods.
In many everyday circumstances (but in election seasons in particular), you may hear very polarizing rhetoric, arguments, and debates that try to place complex beings and issues into neatly categorized boxes or binaries: we are “good and bad,” Democrat and Republican, rich and poor, citizen and non-citizen, legal and illegal, safe and unsafe, White and non-White, abled and disabled, young and old, religious and non-religious, healthy and unhealthy, man or woman, parent and non-parent, “right and wrong” and so on. The truth is, as you may have felt while reading those, is that no one is completely one or the other. Everyone, regardless of who they are, holds multitudes of truths, identities, complexities, and histories, which can oftentimes be contradictory and paradoxical.
I write all of this as a compassionate invitation, that when the stressors of the current political landscape arise, to particularly notice the various parts of yourself that come up. There could be parts that want to fight, fear, worry, or get angry. There may be parts that are more open to love, hope, protect, and defend. There may be parts that yearn for “right and wrong,” or you may want to put yourself in a position to “find where you stand.” You may find that one issue or value that is not important to you in your world can mean the world to someone else. You can take a stand for what you believe is right, and also know that someone will probably take their stand against yours. Yes, there is absolutely right and wrong, AND, there’s many right and wrongs in-between. All of these truths can exist together at the same time, and it further shows the reality that we all stand in multitudes. When we hold our multitudes with tenderness, care and compassion, we are able to hear, hold, and care for the multitudes of others. This is a beautiful thing.
Therapy and mental health support can be a space where you can explore the themes of this blog post, particularly in this overwhelming and tumultuous political landscape. We at Colors of Austin Counseling are here to support you on that journey, no matter what multitudes you bring to the table.
I leave you with the following quote from Pema Chodron:
“As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”