Dear therapists, are you feeling a cloud of doom hovering over your head?
You are not crazy. Authoritarianism is not on the horizon, it’s here and now, and amidst the poly-crises we face, it’s adding a huge weight of despair to everything. If you are a sensitive, caring therapist, you may be feeling it’s effects/affects from all directions: your clients, your training, your business challenges.
Do you toggle between facing it and avoiding it just to stay sane? Welcome to the world of being an ordinary human.
If you didn’t spend a fair amount of time in avoidance or distraction, you’d burn out more quickly than you already are.
The trick is not to avoid avoidance; rather to cultivate high-quality avoidance 🙂
Burnout is a side effect of having drunk the “you must be extraordinary just to survive” Kool-Aid. That doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t work hard, play hard, be passionate, and use your brain to think.
Rather, I’d say that our ordinary selves are incredibly amazing and we are already fabulous. So if you do nothing, there’s nothing to worry about. Just for a moment!
Maybe it’s the queer in me. I’ll never forget my dear friend Patrick, one of the first people I knew to survive long term with AIDS, said:
“Why does everyone have to do these fundraising marathons and 300 mile bike rides to raise money? Why can’t they just have a tan-a-thon or something?”
There isn’t one profession or person or institution that is responsible for making this “excellence Kool-Aid”. It’s a systemic, witchy brew that is composed of many different elements. It can co-opt almost any resistance.
Hence, much lip service is given to burnout in the healing professions; but it’s clear that on a meta-level, our culture is not becoming friendlier to human biology. We are not using technology to really love and care for our bodies.
We are being forced to entrain and bond our bodies to non-organic systems like AI.
In fact, AI itself is our main economic driver at the moment. It’s like the methamphetamine of tech. There is a feeling that if you can’t keep up with it – embrace it, adapt to it, address all the issues that it raises – you will not survive as a professional.
I’m not saying that isn’t true. It may be. However, as an embodiment professional, I am here to tell you that we need to slow down in order to do that! Slowing down is becoming a very valuable skill, and its definitely in my wheelhouse as an embodiment expert.
Today, though, I’m not selling you anything or offering an exercise.
I’m saying do nothing. Or at the very least do less.
Mind you, I don’t think that tech is bad. I do hope that we pause, stop, and reconsider AI. That’s not my area of expertise though. I’m going to keep my focus on you, my fellow humans.
My mission is to help therapists and somanauts to cultivate a nuanced, fluid, and easy relationship with your own body in all your relational work.
That nuanced relationship is the compass you use in all the healing work that you do. It’s the non-verbal depth that supports every movement you make, every gesture, every word and sentence you say, every story you tell. That intelligence is what you can use, if you need to, to figure out how to relate to AI.
I think the pressure of keeping up with AI, multiplied by authoritarian rule, is part of why our hearts are aching.
All of the main AI ventures here in the USA are financially propping up Trump’s terrifying, authoritarian regime. They are willing to contribute to a profound moral collapse for profit. How can that possible serve humanity? Means and ends are connected.
I never thought I’d be calling myself a religious person, but I’m finding that without a weekly ritual connection to mystery, I don’t do very well. I’m a member of a small Buddhist community here in Brooklyn.
I’m also finding that unless I’m doing something small but regular to resist the rise (and fall, and rise) of Trumpism, I don’t feel grounded or OK. The struggle is to be realistic about what I can and can’t do. It’s a day at a time question.
Recently, I attended a conference on religious resistance to authoritarian regimes with a few members of my Zen community. The conference provided an historical view as well as more recent examples of how religious institutions either capitulate or resist.
Something Soto Zen scholar Duncan Ryuken Williams said about what happens when your rights and freedom are stripped from you stopped me in my tracks:
“Simply to exist was a form of resistance.”
Williams’ amazing book American Sutra tells the story of Japanese resistance during the horrific mass incarceration in WW2. Many people died during the first winter, when they were forced to live in animal stalls and racetrack barns, in spaces designed for livestock.
Yet, they built small, beautiful alters in those spaces and practiced Japanese arts and rituals as best they could in those circumstances. They never lost touch with their practice, their humanity, and their commitment to care for each other, even though the rest of our country lost it’s way.
Hang in there. Everything you do matters, and everything you don’t do matters too.
Don’t capitulate. Be human.
