What is a self-rescue kit for when you’re freaking out?
A self-rescue kit is a box or bag where you keep items that can help you when you’re not doing well or just need help shifting your physiological and/or emotional state. This is where science also comes in–applying what we know about how emotions work, what trauma does to the body, and more—to get us out of tight spots.
What the container looks like, what gets kept inside, and what the items help with is entirely customizable and personal. Though this is not my original idea (check out “comfort boxes,” “cozy corners,” “safety boxes,” “grounding boxes,” and so on), this is my take on them and I hope it’s useful to you!
You can share what this kit looks like with other people, but you do not have to. This is for *you*. Top 3 tips to get started?
Put it somewhere that is easily accessible to you: Think of a first aid kit—you don’t want it on an unreachable shelf you forget about! If you deal with ADHD / issue with object permanence, consider using a see-through box/bag clear so you can easily see the insides. Consider labeling it too, especially with a neon color or something that stands out.
2. Start ASAP: don’t wait until you have “everything perfect.” Just grab a box or bag and start putting stuff in it. You can always change it up later.
3. Practice using it outside of emergencies: Sit with your box a few minutes a day for a week or two even when you’re not freaking out so you build the habit and muscle memory of actually using the box. Then, when you’re freaking out, your body is already primed to reach for it versus having to think about it too hard.
The specific items you put inside will vary widely depending on what “brain hacks” you most often need, what you most often struggle with. Do you most often need support calming down? To change your body temperature? To hype yourself up? To stop ruminating? To destress? Think of objects that could help with those and put them in there. Shifting temperature, breath, and focus are 3 big strategies to calm a body in distress. There’s also science around the uses of scent and memory, the importance of nutrients/food (hello protein bars!),
Just no perishables, please, unless you make sure to check it frequently and toss things out so it’s not gross. If there is a perishable item (an ice pack, a banana, etc) that is key to your self-rescue kit, you can instead include a post-it note that says “EAT A BANANA ASAP”, or something like that.
There are two “types” of items that I personally recommend having at least two or three of: sensory aids, and cognitive aids.
Sensory aids are things that are about addressing your body (not your thinking mind) and you experience with your available senses—whatever those are for you. Here are some examples:
Smell: a scented salve you can rub on your temples or wrists, a candle, a favorite cologne/perfume spritzed in the air, an essential oil and cotton balls to put it on, sachet of herbs, coffee beans, Vicks vaporub
Taste: gum, water bottle, mints, lozenges, favored snacks, water-flavoring drops (the idea here is that you’ll have something that is soothing and familiar, or perhaps something where the temperature, texture, and/or flavor can be nicely distracting to experience and try to describe out loud—or if you have issues with skipping meals or blood sugar, perhaps small snacks that offer some good protein and nutrition)
Look: paper-clips you can focus on bending or linking, meaningful photos, a note with names of videos or films you like, coloring books and pencils, bubbles you can blow (super helpful for regulating breathing!), and even shades/eyemasks if what you need to do is REDUCE the things you’re looking at or take a nap!
Hear: a bell, small plastic maracas, a CD / link to a playlist, small sound-machine, beads and shells on a string
(Pssst, this can also be where you keep emergency stashes of your herbs/medicines/tinctures/etc.)
Cognitive aids are things that can help in a “brain reboot” of sorts and address your thinking mind. Things like post-it reminders or mantras, how-to manuals (for panic attacks, rage fits, grounding techniques for when you disassociate, etc), therapy notes, emotion flashcards, your support system’s contact info, a list of crisis hotlines with their numbers, “gratitude lists,” distraction items (sudoku, crossword puzzles, etc), nice poems or passages from books you like, etc.
Remember: I call it a self-rescue kit, but that does not mean you should not need anybody else to support you in rescuing yourself. One item in your kit can be a note that reads in big, glittery letters: “CALL YOUR FRIENDS, YOU GRUMP” and their numbers, or a note from a loved one that reminds you that they are there for you.
What if I made my kit but then I did not use it when I needed it?
That’s okay! This is a new thing you are trying. When the distress has passed, try examining why you didn’t use it. Perhaps the location of the kit made it so that you were physically or mentally blocked from accessing it.
OR perhaps what you put inside is not what you actually want or need when you’re unwell. My friend and assistant, Lui, insists that what can help them feel better is exercise but they never do it, which makes us both think that it is not something that can actually help them in their current life. It is just what they think should help them, or what they’ve been told to do. What actually helps them temporarily calm down or get distracted enough to move is having a smoke outside and laying on the floor making broken-machine sounds. So, y’know, your mileage may vary.
As an example, the list of things that my box contains or has contained:
A fat bird sculpture two of my sweeties sent me when I had COVID. I love fat birds and their existence got me through graduate school so it was both a preexisting symbol of hope and resilience AND it gathered renewed meaning in this care package.
Fidget toys (the rainbow pop toys? Love those!)
A few small samples of fun fragrances (here is Waffles which smells like actual waffles with maple syrup and Salt Air which makes me think of home en Puerto Rico)
Slimes. I love slimes. The end.
A jar of soil from the home where my parents and abuela live.
Minty gum.
A bone found in the woods of The Rêve that I then decorated while crafting with my chosen family. It reads “Planting seeds for a regenerative future” and “love” with stickers and rhinestones and glitter.
Herbal blends from the boricua transfeminist media collective Espicy Nipplez.
A small glass vial of water from an intention-setting ritual I led at the Sex Down South conference in 2021, which includes dissolved paper with messages of love and abundance for our future.
This is not my first kit. Some items have stayed, some have been replaced by others when the older version no longer worked for me. It will probably change in the future, as my needs and tools evolve.
There is no wrong way or right way to make a self-rescue kit for yourself, and there is no limit to how many things you put in there! Whatever and however many things can help you in a time of need is okay. Perhaps you prefer a smaller kit, if many options overwhelm you, for example. Or maybe you prefer a wider variety, if you have changing sensory needs and boundaries.
And if you need inspiration, here’s a poem you can print out / write down and keep inside your own box—
Are you hydrated? When did you last glut your thirst with a handful of spring?
Have you eaten anything besides emails or your fingernails in the last three hours? Have you pulled the protein out of an oak tree or palmed an avocado pit this month? Are your forlorn probiotics
languishing on your butter shelf? Are you dressed? If so, does your skirt strike matches alight as you walk by? Can you melt it a little around your waist and ribcage? Are you resisting
a dream? Wrestling a dreamless night? Let yourself take a bath in your bed clothes for fifteen minutes, no pressure to fall asleep. But make sure to turn off all your beehives first. At least take them out of your bedroom.
Have you uncoiled the ropes of your legs and strung them along the length of the city today? Have you let a lake or a snow bank sketch silent letters on your back? When did you last give away
your unworn clothes, your well-fitting metaphors? Tell a neighbour or a person across the coffee shop counter how well they catch the light.
Have you snugged into a seedpod in the past couple days? Do you need a massage? Complete something
smaller than a lichen: return a library book, or a letter, or a look, or a relationship you regret. Sew a button on that’s come loose. Crack a window. Crack an egg.
Do you feel unattractive? Rub your skin with smooth stones or strong magnets. Wear sunglasses. Take your reflection in on the surface of a puddle.
Give yourself ten minutes. Give yourself ten years. Give yourself an orgasm. Give yourself a change of seasons. Give yourself a new lover. Give yourself a to-do list written with sidewalk chalk and hopscotch across it.
Have you been working really hard shovelling all the sidewalks of your friendships? Remember it takes time to recover from exertion, especially when you are a seedling.
Know that your friends want to send help. They want to send daffodils and their extra hands to braid your hair. They all want to be deciduous trees and long semi-coloned sentences for you. They want to.
Remember: you are a comma, one beloved earring, a house circled on a traveller’s map, sometimes misplaced, but never an imposition.
Everyone feels like a hallway at some point or another. But you are a room that people enter to stay.
You’re cozy in your bed, drifting off to sleep when a voice calls out: “I’m scared! I need you!” You leap out of bed, heart pounding, and rush into the child’s room. He is sitting up in bed, his face stained with tears, cuddling a stuffed walrus. “Sweetie,” you say in the kindest voice you can muster, “it’s time to sleep now. I was asleep. You need to sleep too.” You give him a hug, he lies down and you go back to bed. Fifteen minutes later: “I’m awake! I need you!” Back into the child’s room, less patience now. “Baby it’s time to go to sleep.” “But I NEED you.” “We all need to sleep. Our bodies need sleep. Lie down now and I’ll sing you a song.” You sing a lullaby and tiptoe back to bed. Begin to close your eyes, and the child calls again.
A friend told one of us this story recently. At her wit’s end, she talked to his teacher who said, “he just wants to feel heard.” Instead of reminding kids of the rules, rationalizing, or focusing on soothing, you’ve got to home in on what they feel in the moment. You have to take them very seriously and ensure they believe you. “Use a lot of ‘really’,” the teacher said. “I really, really hear that you are scared.” Or “I can see that you are really, really sad right now.” When children hear this, they know you have connected their meaning to their behavior, they feel heard, and they can let go.
If you’re wondering whether you accidentally clicked on a parenting article, here is the connection you may be waiting for: Our feelings can be just like small children. They have a deep need to be heard, to be held, without judgment or rejection. To be held with compassionate curiosity. How can you be with yourself in a way that says “I am here. This is okay. Whatever comes up right now is okay,” especially if you’ve been taught the opposite?
In this article, we’ll go over what can happen to buried and inconvenient feelings, the science of emotion and survival, and how you can manage and process all these things differently and/or with new awareness.
Feelings Gone Underground or in Disguise
The tricky part here is that kids (and feelings) don’t always make “rational” sense (and sometimes they do, but you don’t have the tools to understand them or are speaking different languages). When you ignore feelings, they don’t go away; they go underground. When they’re buried, they don’t stay buried forever. Once they’ve gone under, they often come back in even more confusing, less recognizable ways.
Feelings don’t always have the language to tell you what is happening or why. They only have the crude tools to make themselves heard. They manifest in adjacent feelings and other behaviors that may be hard to connect to the “originating” event or situation.
Explosiveness and irritability: You’re filled with rage in certain situations – maybe your boss didn’t reply to your email, or your mom cut your toast in half when you wanted to “eat it big.” Maybe you snap at someone when they interrupt you while you’re working at your computer, or respond curtly when they ask how you’re doing. Either way, when explosive anger and irritability are disproportionate to the situation in front of you, it’s a hint the feelings are coming from (or being magnified by) somewhere/something else.
Inertia: Getting out of bed, getting dressed, showering, eating – basic daily tasks become a struggle. A child might refuse to put their shoes on when going to play with a friend who has been mean to them or lie on the floor when they are supposed to go to school but are not feeling confident in a subject. You may find yourself blocked when trying to write something and stare blankly at your notebook for hours, or perhaps keep delaying getting ready for a date until you’ve made yourself so late that you have to cancel instead of show up.
Physical sensations: Headaches. Tiredness. Lots of poops. No poops. Tight chest. Shortness of breath. Twitching eyes. Muscle tension. Any bodily sensation can be an avenue for feelings to express themselves. For example, one of the authors of this article—as a small child, before they could explain feelings of fear and apprehension—experienced them as stomachaches. On a trip to a theme park, they kept asking to go to the bathroom every time they’d get in line for a big intense ride. For them, stomachaches meant “obviously you need to use the bathroom,” so they would go to the bathroom. They’d feel temporarily better (because they were away from the scary ride), but they wouldn’t actually do anything in the bathroom itself, much to their own confusion. Eventually, they and their family figured out their stomach hurt because they were afraid, and what they needed was soothing and reassurance, not a bathroom visit.
Avoidance: You pick up your phone, turn on the TV, go on Facebook, anything to distract yourself or buy yourself time from the thing you’re avoiding. This can also look like not answering emails from a professor who asks about a missed deadline, getting lost in daydreams frequently, leaving a friend’s texts unread, etc. In a child, this can often present like outright ignoring something that’s right in front of them as if it simply didn’t exist.
Difficulty naming: You make plans with a friend, and when they ask you how you are you say “fine,” and then go home frustrated that they didn’t support you. A child calls out again and again in the night, sounding fearful, but when you go to them they say “I can’t find my bear.” Saying the fear or worry out loud feels impossible.
Do any of these situations sound familiar?
Inconvenient Feelings and Directing Them
But I don’t want this feeling, you tell yourself. This is such a bad time. It’s not the right way to feel – I’m not being fair to my partner, my boss, my friend. I’m exaggerating. I shouldn’t care about this. I’m being childish. This is irrational—there’s no need for this. Other oppressive and normalizing forces like to show up here too – often gender. I need to man up and get over it. I’m being needy. Extra. Too much. Hysterical.
You can think of a million reasons why the feeling isn’t welcome, isn’t convenient, does not deserve the space it’s taking up. You push it away, push it down, reject or ignore it. You find ways to quiet it. Janet Bystrom, a therapist in Minneapolis, says we have three choices about what to do with this energy:
Point it at ourselves (fuck me) – substance use, self-harm, dissociation
Point it at others (fuck you) – aggression and physical violence
Point it at the sky (fuck this) – discharge the feeling safely through movement, art, communication
Here, let’s just acknowledge that options in the first two categories might serve us very well, until they don’t. It’s not always safe to feel feelings, or to inhabit our bodies. If we are experiencing ongoing abuse or trauma. If we are experiencing dysphoria (a sense of disconnect and unhappiness, frequently tied to ways that one’s appearance may not line up with one’s internal sense of self). If we are in a medical or family crisis that requires us to remain organized and productive in the face of big emotions.
Even as we move toward making space for and accepting feelings, can we also be compassionate with ourselves about the reasons we’ve delayed feeling them? Can we honor the roles our survival strategies have played in protecting us, thank them for their work, and let them know they can rest for now, or at least for a bit? (And of course, if you are still in a situation where you are surviving with some of the strategies named here, trust your assessment of safety and, if it’s available, seek guidance and support).
But let’s say we’re safe. Let’s say we have most of the support we need and are relatively stable. What do we do with these feelings we’ve been avoiding?
The Science of Survival and Feelings
We carve our own neural pathways with our actions. A famous adage in the field of neuropsychology is “neurons that fire together, wire together.” If we come to a fork in the trail, and one branch is flat, well-tended, and clear of debris, while the other is steep, rocky, and full of thorns, most of us will choose the clear path. It seems to take less effort in the moment (though the effects of that choice may have longterm implications). It’s familiar. We know where it leads.
Striking out through the brambles requires more equipment, more energy, more persistence. But a magical thing happens when we keep choosing the overgrown path. We begin to clear it. We bring our machete. We wear hiking boots. When we come to that fork again, choosing the overgrown path is a little bit easier. Of course, there will be days when we are tired, when we are overwhelmed, when we must choose the familiarity of the clear path. There is no shame in that. But when we choose the overgrown path, we make that path more available.
All this is to say that the new path may not feel comfortable; it may feel dangerous, and even viscerally wrong. When we have been trained to react in certain ways, our bodies may resist changing—and of course they will! They think changing will put us in some mortal danger! And, in fact, if we have a history of using suppression as a strategy to manage tough feelings, starting to open up to feelings overall will likely feel worse at first. (This is a common experience among folks working through emotional changes; stick with it if you can.)
So when have come to a place of realizing we do indeed need to change, we have to get ready to manage that new set of feelings and reactions. This doesn’t mean we have to dismiss our gut reactions, but that we have to dialogue with them in a new and different way. It means we have to take our worries, assumptions, and immediate reactions through a few more filters before we accept or use them.
For example, people who have become hypervigilant due to trauma pay attention to a lot of ambient cues of danger. Sometimes these cues signal realistic and imminent danger, but often they do not. Figuring out which is which can be very tricky when your body’s been trained to see them all as equally dangerous threats – getting on the subway taking on the quality of intense danger, for example. Conversely, some people are “hypovigilant” and rarely notice threats even when the red flags are glaring to those around them. (Read more about the science of this and “the window of tolerance” here from the perspective of a therapist.)
What Can You Do?
There is no magic one-size-fits-all recipe for how to shift your relationship with your feelings and create more space for them, but it’s key to go slow rather than trying to rush it. Self-compassion as you figure out this new path is also essential, because you’re doing something pretty damn hard—figuring out how to change the wiring you’ve been building for years, and even decades. That’s no small feat. Take care of yourself along the way. Turn back if you need to. But keep finding your way. We promise it’s worth it — even if ONLY to minimize the devastating effects chronic stress can have on the body (note: that linked article, while very thorough, conflates sex and gender).
In the next section, we offer a list of ideas for processing and feeling feelings in no particular order. Not all of them will feel right or available to you. Some may feel great in certain situations and terrible in others. If a strategy feels strange or uncomfortable, that is also information to pay attention to.
Practices for Processing and Accepting Feelings
Some Notes on Externalizing:
Externalizing is the process of separating one’s sense of self from the feelings, problems, social forces, and relational patterns that influence it. It is also the belief—and its associated worldview—that people are not their problems. What this looks like in practice can take a lot of different forms. You might do this reflection and separation on your own, with a therapist, or in a group. You might write down the stories in your mind about a situation or problem, and use color-coding or headings to link the stories with their related sources (i.e. “my dad,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “the mean administrator at my school”). You might develop an externalized metaphor or personification for a problem, like “the void”, “the sneaky hate spiral”, “the ferile cat.” Creating this separation between self and problems creates a reflecting space to take a position on the things that are influencing you.
therapist: and what do we say when we feel like this?
me: my depression is likely tied to capitalist alienation which leads to meaninglessness and isolation.
For those of us in highly individualistic environments (like the United States, which has historically been very influenced by concepts of “rugged individualism”), it can be tough not to solely blame ourselves for our issues. Western medicine and mental healthcare also have a long and unpleasant history of conflating people’s identities with their diagnoses. However, it’s critical that we see the full spectrum of influences, because there are many. It is both a disservice to our healing and a factually inaccurate way of assessing problems when we solely locate them in the individual. (This is also why it’s important that therapists discuss systemic oppression and politics rather than presume they should—or even can—be “values neutral.”)
That said, total separation isn’t really possible, and that’s okay; the point is to create a bit of room in our heads so we can see the issues from a different perspective. We can take a position – maybe we like the influence of the thing we’re evaluating and want more of it. Maybe we want less. Maybe we want to feel it, but don’t want to act out toward others in the ways it invites us to.
We come into relationship with the force or the problem, and in so doing, stand with a self that is separate from the problem. Externalizing can be an antidote to shame saying “we are bad” when we have done something bad. (This may be tricky for people whose systems of faith and value say that doing, or even thinking, “bad things” automatically means they are bad and full of sin. For people in that situation, more discernment work and evaluation will likely be important to address those challenges. People in this situation may also wish to externalize the views of their faith community and step into conversation with those views in new ways.)
An important thing to remember here is that externalizing is not a single strategy, it’s a process and a lens. Acknowledging the influence of oppressions, or positioning yourself as separate from your problems is not a thinking experiment to trick yourself into feeling better. Imagine what it might mean to truly believe that people are not their problems. Think of someone you don’t know very well who activates your defenses – what would it mean to your relationship and interactions if you believed that they were also under the influence of problems at times, just the way you are.
Externalizing is also not a get out of jail free card. Separating yourself from your problems or the societal forces that influence you does not exempt you from responsibility for the things you do while under their influence. For example, while it may be true that toxic masculinity lays the groundwork for sexual violence, the violence itself, and its impact on its targets, remains the responsibility of its perpetrator. However, taking a bit of space and a position on the influence of a problem on our actions could change our response to those influences in the future. For more on issues of accountability and larger social forces, you can explore the Transform Harm Resource Hub.
Below is a list of specific strategies you can use to process and manage feelings and how to bring them into your day-to-day.
Give It A Name
A perfect example of externalizing is on the show “Big Mouth”—a sitcom revolving around a group of middle-schoolers experiencing puberty and all its ensuing shenanigans. In this show, puberty is not just a set of seemingly random bodily changes, but instead changes that come as a result of Puberty Monsters & Monstresses influencing their lives. These creatures are ones that the teens can see and directly interact with. (At the same time, since teens can only see their own Puberty Monsters, the viewer is invited to hold the possibility that these monsters are actually just personalized manifestations of puberty that exist in their own heads.)
This makes puberty an inherently relational experience—one that the teens can navigate with someone else even in its most private components. For example, the Puberty Monsters & Monstresses give the teens advice (as well as argue with and sometimes even sabotage them), jumpstart physical reactions, provide a sounding board for their worries, and more.
The teens can also take a position in response to the puberty monster’s suggestions, argue with them, step away from what they are encouraging, or take their advice and jump in. The teens are autonomous objects, rather than subjects under the influence of external forces, who can reclaim their power, autonomy, and choice, from the forces that seek to influence them.
The technique of giving feelings a name (and even an image) can help us approach them creatively and with enough distance that we can deal with them in a different way than usual.
Practice:
What would it look like if you could dialogue with your feelings as if they were an embodied, physical presence sitting in front of you? How would interacting with them feel and be different? What kind of questions would you ask? What kind of things would you say?
Pick a feeling you struggle with and give it a name (e.g. jealousy, grief, pettiness, anger, happiness, etc.). Draw it, imagine it, and/or write a description of what it looks like. Consider how long you have known it, when it flares, what it suggests you do or don’t do, when it yells versus when it is silent, what people it tends to get excited around versus the people that make it go away.
Practice having a conversation with the feeling. (While you are doing this you might notice that other feelings or forces hang out in cahoots with this feeling – for now just name those and set them aside (“oh, hi, internalized racism!”). If this felt useful you can go back and repeat these steps with those too).
Be With The Feeling & Let It Land
In a Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle writes:
[Meg] leaned her head against the beast’s chest and realized that the gray body was covered with the softest, most delicate fur imaginable, and the fur had the same beautiful odor as the air. I hope I don’t smell awful to it, she thought. But then she knew with a deep sense of comfort that even if she did smell awful, the beasts would forgive her.
Can we be with emotions this way? No matter how smelly, how distasteful, how unwelcome, just be with them. If they don’t have words for what they are bringing us, if they have only tension, or big angry energy, or silence, or tears, can we be with them?
For most people, that is actually a huge ask. Many of us are taught to suppress emotions, especially ones culturally labeled as “too big”, “unhealthy,” “negative,” “bad,” or “inappropriate.” But suppressing emotions doesn’t make them go away, and indefinitely punting them off to “deal with later” only leaves them room to grow and fester.
Therapist and mindfulness teacher Tara Brach calls the practice of being with the feelings “the turn of acceptance.” Brach guides her students to put a hand to their hearts in moments when challenging feelings arise, and to practice welcoming them. We might say “It’s okay that you’re here.” But maybe it doesn’t feel okay! We might instead say “I notice you.” You can take it a step further and say “And I am willing to listen to what you’re trying to tell me.” We might just tune into the sensations in the body and be silent. The hand to heart gesture may not work for us – we might rather plant our feet on the ground or connect with our belly, hands, or forehead.
No matter how you do it, experiment and find a way that works for you to simply create a welcoming, accepting, or compassionately curious environment for the feeling to land in so you can see what wisdom it has to share with you. Even the most uncomfortable of emotions usually have good insight for us!
Practice:
Watch or listen to “Here Comes a Thought” from the popular TV show “Steven Universe.” How can you integrate this kind of approach into your daily life? For some people, it means they keep a bookmark to this video on their phone to watch whenever they’re overwhelmed, or quietly sing the song to themselves when they’re spiraling in negative thoughts! For others, it means they do the same visualization as in the show: seeing intrusive thoughts or challenging feelings as butterflies (or the flying creature of their choice) than can then slowly float away once noticed.
Practice acknowledging feelings and explicitly naming them (this is where a Feelings Wheel can come in handy to help you identify which ones are present).
Try emotion mapping, which gives space to notice emotions without tying them to narrative. You just take a blank paper and draw/shade in the space taken up by each emotion that was in your day. You can color code so that each emotion has a color or spectrum. (Some people like to color their own feelings wheel as their map for this).
Separate Sensation from Story
From this place of acceptance, or even just curiosity, we might find it useful to notice sensations in our bodies without immediately attaching meaning to them. A crucial part of managing stress, trauma, strong emotions, etc. is about helping our nervous system recalibrate, and to do so, we need to pay attention to what’s even going on in there in the first place! For example, the amygdala—a small structure in the temporal lobe of the brain—is in charge of a couple of things, including detecting environmental threats and kickstarting our survival protocols (commonly known as the “fight/flight/freeze/fawn” responses). When we pay attention to what our bodies are doing and feeling, we can better figure out how to sit with it and what to do about it, including telling the amygdala to chill out.
So, especially when our mind screams urgently, it can be useful to instead slow down and get curious. Is there tightness in the body? Pain? Fluttering in the belly? Shortness of breath? Try to be with what is in this moment. Might this stance bring you more peace, even just for a few minutes?
Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.
–Dorothy Hunt
At the very least, learning to listen here can help attune you for your next steps!
Practice:
Explicitly connecting mind and body here can be very useful, but it’s hard to do if you don’t have practice (and especially if you frequently are disconnected from your body and have been trained to ignore its sensations). Sometimes this feels more accessible in less charged moments – maybe an interaction with a coworker rather than a lover, or in a moment where you are activated by your own internal monologue rather than an external stressor. Even something as seemingly mundane as someone getting your order wrong in a coffee shop – can these interactions become opportunities to practice working with emotion?
The next time you have a strong emotion, pay attention to what’s going on in your body (e.g. areas of tension and relaxation, heartbeat and pulse, breathing, perspiration, etc.). Do your limbs feel tingly, heavy, twitchy, numb? What’s going on with your stomach? Is there any part of your body that feels an urge to move? What happens if you follow the movement? Is your breathing fast, shallow, slow, deep, measured? Is your jaw clenched and throbbing? Is there a knot in your throat? Does it feel like there are bees in your sternum?
Check or Challenge the Stories
Maybe you are riding in the car with a partner and having a tense moment around navigation. A storyline might start to form in your mind: “they hate how I have no sense of direction. Why can’t I be better at this? They must be so annoyed with me right now.” You might go further down the road, imagining fights you might have, how long this conflict might last. You may get anxious and quiet, or even preemptively defensive and irritable. Things may escalate and end up in an actual fight with your partner, or in a secret internal fight with yourself that your partner is oblivious to!
It’s very possible you were attuning to your partner’s body language and making an educated guess about their judgment of you. However, sometimes these thought spirals are actually forms of twisted thinking that are a bit more removed from a shared experience. It’s possible you assigned value and meaning to their actions that didn’t match their own, and reacted to your own story rather than a shared reality or even their intentions. So how to differentiate?
Rather than immediately blaming yourself or punting off responsibility to your partner, when your mind returns to the past—or begins to spin more stories about what this all means and churn up anger, self-blame or resentment—what would it be like to interrupt those stories, or even let them go? What might it look like to ask for reassurance, or get external help with those interruptions? What other ways can you engage to check in on the story you’ve built? How would your feelings and behaviors change if the story were different? What past experiences are informing your reactions?
Practice:
Read through a list of common cognitive distortions. Which ones do you find yourself doing frequently? Read through a list of antidotes to those distortions. Which might you be able to try out? Try practicing these first in “lower-stakes” situations and going from there. If you like a daily reminder, there are a number of “mood tracker” apps which can help you spot patterns and distortions in your thinking.
Related to this and the previous strategy set, consider what meaning your physical sensations may be trying to communicate (e.g. dehydration, low blood sugar, need for sleep, chemical imbalance of some sort, etc.), and how your emotions may shift if you address your physical body (e.g. decreased irritability, greater focus, heightened ability to manage emotions, etc.). If you want a guided walkthrough of common things to look for and how to address them, http://youfeellikeshit.com/ is an excellent and down-to-earth resource.
Clarify Attachment Wounds
The way we learn how to process our emotions is partly based on what we see others do around us. This is part of why our experiences with early childhood caregivers is so important (and is a cornerstone of “attachment theory”). As kids, we learn the “rules of emotions.” What feelings are acceptable, what feelings are not, what we’re supposed to LOOK like when we’re having a feeling, and so forth.
We also learn how to have (or not have) conflict, how to address (or not) interpersonal issues, and so on. These things continue to evolve as we grow, and it can be very useful to note what “core attachment wounds” and defensive patterns have emerged as a result. When we know those core wounds that sometimes flare up or lead us to react to present-day people as if they were people from our past, we can better address them both individually and collectively.
For example—one of the authors’ therapy clients loves cats. This person lived a complicated childhood, where responses to her needs were unpredictable. As a result, she experiences a lot of insecurity in her closest relationships as an adult. When her attachment wounds are activated by things like a partner not texting back immediately or her detecting a frustrated tone in their conversation, it is very difficult for her to engage. Instead she might back into a corner, make herself small, take space in solitude, pretend she doesn’t have needs or even lash out if confronted about it. It reminds her of how feral cats react.
So, she and her partner have developed a shared language about her “feral cat” showing up. Because her partner knows her “core wounds,” he does not position himself as her adversary, but rather joins with her to move through the past relational patterns that are currently activated. The “feral cat” language locates the problem outside of her, giving herself a bit of distance from shame and judgment about her actions when triggered. At the same time, her partner knows not to take her actions personally in those moments, to give her space, and to approach her cautiously and with a lot of compassion. Together, they figure out how to care for “the feral cat” and help it feel safe again.
When in a conflict with another person, try to join forces to tackle the issue, problem, challenging dynamic rather than each other. Part of doing that is through externalizing and clearly stating how you and your other person are aligning together rather than being adversarial toward each other. Try to name the problem as a specific thing that is external to both of you, or a “part” of you rather than the WHOLE of you (e.g. you and me and My Depression, or you and me joining to address The Anger).
Remind yourself that the person in front of you, when you’re activated, is likely bringing up a memory of people from your past. Try to specifically identify who you’re remembering, and recognize/affirm that the person in front of you is NOT that person. (Basically, help your body stop time-traveling and orient to the present moment.) It can help to focus on what makes the two people different, or in the case that you can’t or you’re in fact remembering a past version of this same person (e.g. a partner who cheated 10 years ago but has been faithful since), think of how *you* have grown since then and how you are a different person with new tools now to deal with the situation.
I was back in my homeland of Puerto Rico—the first time in two years—for a professional conference when I heard the news about the Orlando shooting.
I sat around a table, ordering pancakes as big as my face, surrounded by fellow members of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network. We ate, talked shop, and decompressed after some difficult events that weekend. There was a TV on next to us—flashing lights and “ORLANDO SHOOTING” in big letters displayed on the bottom of the screen.
It’s too early for this. We’re already so weary.
Not until later did I actually pay attention to the news. I was in work mode, though, and nothing sunk in. Later that night, I hopped a plane back to Boston and came home to an empty bed. I craved human contact, craved my queer partners, craved community as I read the names of the dead late into the night, crying and unable to sleep. I wanted to light candles, whisper Spanish into the sky and honor the dead, but I could only witness the little information available and sob in the dark, thankful I only had a few clients to see the next day.
On Monday, I watched a mother recount the last words she exchanged with her son as they texted during the shooting. On Monday, I watched the last Snapchat videos various victims filmed that night, including one with gunshots in the background. On Monday, I couldn’t feel rage because my nerves were too tangled in sadness and exhaustion. On Monday, I told one of my partners that I was randomly crying throughout the day.
“It’s not random if you’re grieving, boo. They killed your *family*”
Their words settled in my chest. They killed my family.
I’ve never been one to grieve over strangers, but this felt personal. They were fellow queers, fellow people of color, fellow Latinx, fellow people of complicated genders, out to have a good time.
23 out of 49 victims were Puerto Ricans like me.
So I could try to speak of the rage at how many White queers have put themselves at the center of this grief like they were the center of the universe. I could try to speak of the disgust at how many have spun this into Islamophobic propaganda, speak of the frustration at how this has been turned into a detached debate about gun control.
I could try to speak to how I see this as part of a web of violence, threads connecting the ALMOST WEEKLY murders of trans people and especially the violence against trans women and femmes; the slaughter and erasure of Natives; African enslavement; police brutality targeting Black and brown bodies; harsh immigration policies; lynchings and gay-bashings; harmful legislation about where we can go to the bathroom, how we can dress, and how we can reproduce (or not); and the present-day colonization of Puerto Rico.
And I could try to speak about the hope for the future and the ways we are strong and resilient, of how I see love as the long-term fuel we need for our movements.
But all I can speak to right now is holding sorrow in the same hands I try to hold hope, and how sometimes my hands don’t feel big enough.
All I can speak to right now is my fear that one day it will be me and my familia… and realizing that it already is.
All I can speak to right now is how intensely I want to protect my communities and how I want to care for my QT/POC lovers with such ferocity that the world trembles.
All I can speak to right now is the grief at those misgendered after death, those outed to families who would reject them, those whose undocumented status prevents families from reaching their bodies, those who survived and are wracked with guilt…all the ripples of pain spreading throughout Orlando and mi isla and the entire continent.
The atom of the Latinx universe is the family, not the individual, and so the number of broken hearts balloons much larger than the 49 dead and 53 wounded. This is why community matters. This is why we gather together at places and times like these.
So I hold space for all those who grieve in secret, whose workplaces and families and surroundings don’t acknowledge how this has carved open their chest. I hold space for those who are in helping professions trying to keep their ish together in front of clients as their insides splinter. I hold space for you, for me, for us. For those who are confused about their grief, for those who are numb, for those whose rage rises like bile, for those who have lost so much already and feel this as another drop in the bucket that’s already overflowing.
By being queer and trans we have inherited legacies of mourning, loss, and persecution. By being Latinx, we have inherited legacies of discrimination, colonization, and diaspora. And we must remember that we have also been passed down resistance, power, healing, life.
Como dice el refrán: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”
To all those who were taken too soon: descansen en poder, and may you never thirst.
I usually post a lot about current events on Facebook, and I have no qualms about bringing POC struggles into White spaces, but my Facebook friends list has a lot of POC and I’m going to be limiting these posts for a while [or, if needed, put them under heavy content/trigger warnings]. It’s important to raise awareness, and White people shouldn’t use “I don’t wanna traumatize POC” as a cop-out to NOT talk about these issues, but right now I am taking a step back and hoping my wall can offer more healing for my communities, and especially the Black folks with whom I stand in solidarity because even in POC spaces we aren’t the same.
To my Black loved ones:
I see you, I witness you, and I stand with you.
So consider this my main post, and read this news roundup by Autostraddle. I’m not quiet and I will never be quiet about these issues, but right now, my wall will not be the place for them. That said, as someone on Twitter so eloquently put, if you’re calling 21 year-old Roof a “child” and had no issue calling 18 year-old Mike Brown a man, you need to check your internalized racism. If you call Roof “a lone wolf” and focus on “wow, he must have a mental illness” instead of on the fact that this was a hate crime against Black people in a country that wholesale devalues Black people while it appropriates their culture, you need to check yourself. You need to recognize that the narrative of White crime is always “lone wolf” and “mental illness” whereas any POC get immediately labeled thugs and terrorists. As someone IN the mental health field, discussing mental health and care is vital, but NOT when it’s a tactic to derail conversations about hate crimes and structural racism, or try to explain away actions like the shooting in Charleston.
Beyond our U.S. borders, we need to open our eyes to see the connections between the mass planned deportations of residents of the #DominicanRepublic who are of Haitian descent and the “social cleanses” in other countries. The Holocaust is not our “biggest and baddest” systematic extermination of people, and we need to stop pretending it is or was. We need to see the connections with mass deportations and ICE holds here in the U.S./Mexico border.
If you think that racist jokes are harmless, and that “it’s not like my friend Joe Schmo would actually hurt Black people or something,” remember that that’s the same exact thing Roof’s friends thought. Think of how many POC have been forced to leave spaces they once considered home because of racism, big and “small.” Think of how many POC on social media now are needing to take breaks from all their platforms because this is too much to bear—too much violence, too much hate, too much White silence and complicity. Think of how many POC feel an undercurrent of fear and anxiety everyday due to White supremacy in this society. Think of how many POC are not even in a PLACE to avoid most racism in their lives even if they try. Microaggressions are violence, period, and we need to stop acting like the only “real racism” requires a massacre to qualify.
If all you see when you look at videos of police brutality—and especially of police beating up 12 year-old Black girls, of police arresting and dragging Black youth at pool parties—is “police in a tough situation making the best of it,” you need to crack open a newspaper, read a good history book, open up social media sites, look around, and see what’s actually going on and has been going on for years. If you reply with “All Lives Matter” to Black cries for justice, accountability, and visibility, you need to stop and understand that BLM exists because in our current society, all lives are NOT seen as mattering, and that’s what some of us are seeking to change. If you “don’t even see race, and didn’t even realize the races of the people in the videos,” it’s time that you bucked up and acknowledged you do see race unless you are LITERALLY VISUALLY IMPAIRED and you’re pretending it doesn’t matter in this world. Your “postracial, colorblind” rhetoric helps no one but White supremacy and those who benefit from it. If you think this post involves or implicates you, it certainly does.
Cynthia Hurd, 54, branch manager for the Charleston County Library System
Susie Jackson, 87, longtime church member
Ethel Lance, 70, employee of Emanuel AME Church for 30 years
Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, admissions counselor of Southern Wesleyan University
The Honorable Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, state senator, Reverend of Emanuel AME Church
Tywanza Sanders, 26, earned business administration degree from Allen University
Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, retired pastor (died at MUSC)
Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45, track coach at Goose Creek High School
Myra Thompson, 59, church member
I try to channel as much empathy as I can muster, and I work hard to educate others, and I remember when I was a teenager who had no clue how racism was still so very real because I was consistently told “it was still there, but mostly a thing of the past,” and I try to be compassionate…but once you see the belly of this beast, it is the most tiring of endeavors to have to unearth it again and again for people who claim there’s not even a beast in the first place.
It is painful, and often even lethal, to have your humanity and the humanity of those you consider family denied. It is horrifying to have friends, family, siblings in fraternal bonds, co-workers, colleagues, deny these realities and try to explain away these inequities. If you don’t see this pain manifested, it’s probably because the POC around you don’t trust you to share their pain with you. Just because you don’t easily see it around you doesn’t mean it’s not there. How many POC friends do you even have, if you’re White? For a great majority of Americans, the answer is zero/few. Think about that.
If you do have POC around you, especially Black folks at a time like this, don’t ask them to explain racism to you. Don’t force them to discuss these issues. Ask them how you can help. Work to honor their feelings, their likely rage, and their inevitable sadness. Help them heal, or give them space if that’s what they need. Respect their words, as well as their silence. Stand in solidarity with them, with us, and ACTIVELY do something to make the world better and less racist. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.
A version of this post was originally published on my personal FB account. Never fear: I will continue actively blogging on here and other platforms about these issues.
I love open letters, especially humorous ones like those I used to read back when I was 13 years old and were aimed at celebrities like Tom Felton (who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series—don’t judge me). Coming in close second, my other favorite types of open letters are those that shed light on things that had previously been hidden in the shadows.
The CSPH has faced a fair amount of adversity since its inception in 2009. Members of the Citizens Against Trafficking (an anti-rights, sex work abolitionist group) continue to harass staff and supporters of The Center, particularly regarding our outreach on college campuses. These bullies use both overt and hidden tactics in an attempt to delegitimize the importance of conversations about sexuality, pleasure, sex work, and sexual rights.
Most recently, Dr. Margaret Landman Brooks, director of the Economics Department at Bridgewater State University, sent a series of emails to the provost of Vanderbilt University using a series of red herring, slippery slope, and equivocation arguments as well as ad hominem attacks in an attempt to convince the school that it would be legally liable for sexual assaults that occurred on campus after the Study Sex College Tour workshop, “Brilliant in Bed.” While not the only protestation, Dr. Margaret Landman Brooks decision to use rhetoric causally linking pleasure focused sexuality education to sexual assault on campus is both inaccurate and insidious.
We at The CSPH have chosen to address this issue publicly because the tactics used by Dr. Margaret Landman Brooks in this case are irresponsible and dangerous when the context of the climate at Vanderbilt University, as well as the current conversations around sexual assault, BDSM, and Intimate Partner Violence.
While part of me kind of wants to commend Margaret Brooks for her passion, it’s terribly saddening that it manifests in the ways it does and I cannot in good conscience do so. We shouldn’t stand for the bullying of youth, and we should also not stand for the bullying of adults at the hands of other adults. Obviously, if you’re working toward social justice and not ruffling feathers, you’re not making big enough waves (to, uh, mix some metaphors there), but man—the repercussions aren’t pretty, and we need to change that.
Pictured here: the Snowpocalypse that’s as cold as the attitude from Donna Hughes.
It’s not like we haven’t reached out to Ms. Brooks, either. We’ve personally invited her and her crew to our events, and extended olive branches in the spirit of dialogue both online and in person, and none of them have been acknowledged or even accepted. In fact, we’ve been pretty straightforward and transparent in all our dealings. To her credit, I guess, she DID shake my hand once? This is when I was trying to show her I was a real person and not some nameless undergrad she could just bully without having to ever face. That is more than I can say for Donna Hughes (a professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island—how appropriate, right?), who very much did not shake my hand when I greeted her and gave me a cold shoulder of Boston weather proportions. It was pretty epic. But I digress.
Margaret Brooks is the same person who (along with Donna Hughes and Melanie Shapiro) tried to get a slew of events (including KFAPVD) I organized at Brown University canceled while I was an undergraduate. This is the cohort that misrepresented SO many things about the work the Sexual Health Education & Empowerment Council (SHEEC) at Brown and The CSPH were doing. This is the person that sent countless emails to Brown’s administration (including the President) warning them of the “dangers” of these events, blatantly spread inaccurate/misleading information, and wrote bulletins claiming that we were to blame for a spike in young RI men contracting HIV. This is one of the people that made my time at Brown tough for a while, and made me have to watch my back really carefully.
On some level, I’m glad it started early so I could protect myself before things got too serious, and I’m very fortunate to consistently work in spaces that respect my endeavors and where I can be open about who I am and what I do, but many people aren’t as fortunate.
This is the person that sent my personal Twitter account to professors and deans before it was something I shared as publicly as I do now. This is the same person that sent critique-laden, alarmist emails to my supervisors at Sojourner House—about my personal life and affiliations to organizations that believe in kink/BDSM education and reproductive justice—trying to possibly get me fired, and definitely trying to put me in hot water and endanger a health fair I was coordinating. Fortunately, I was out about my identities at Sojourner House, because if I hadn’t been, she would have outed me to the director and my supervisor, as well as other colleagues. That is not okay.
I am eternally grateful to all the professors, deans, staff, friends, and colleagues who were and have been supportive, understanding and wonderful throughout all this and its multiple iterations. You know who you are. Thank you for believing in me and in sexuality education. While Brown is a deeply flawed institution, certainly, I am incredibly proud that they institutionally backed up my right to hold the events I did, and supported my health and dignity during that process. I firmly believe I didn’t bear a bigger burden while I was an undergrad because I was still a student and thus not as “fair game” as professionals in the working world.
You know who was the fairest game of them all, and the original target? Megan Andelloux—one of the best and most hardworking educators in the field today.Margaret Brooks is the person that time and time again contacts places where Megan Andelloux and her close friends/colleagues present with scare tactics in efforts to squash their/our attempts at education. This bullying not only harms the institutions and their populations who are sometimes deprived of accurate sexuality education, but it takes a huge emotional toll on honest, hardworking sexuality educators and advocates who are trying to make the world a better, more sexually literate place. The case with Vanderbilt is not the first time this happens.
This is the cohort of people that tried to stop The CSPH from opening back in 2009/2010. The same cohort of people that have accused my colleagues of pedophilia because they believe in giving kids accurate sexuality information and answering their questions at whatever age they start asking them. This is the cohort that, under the guise of “academic” and/or “professional” writing used blatant inaccuracies and decontextualizations (not to mention shoddy record-keeping and citations) to “make points” about how, basically, we are The Worst.
As far as ethics and academic integrity, I would expect better from a Brown alumna/Economics professor and a Women’s Studies professor.
This needs to stop, and we need people to listen. We will keep doing the work we do because we believe in it, and these things are not going to stop us, but we are not made of steel. We are committed to bringing these issues to light, but remember—all this takes a toll. How are you helping break down this misinformation? How are you supporting the victims of bullying and stalking and professional attacks? If you’re not already, imagine having to watch your back constantly for people like this. Where will they be next? What professional gig will they try to wreck soon? What kind of misinformation will they try to spread? This is why we need to speak up and support each other.
Margaret Brooks is the person that time and time again contacts places where