Your Overwhelm Is The Goal - Here's How You Resist It!
How To Overcome Trump's Scare Tactics
I’m sure that you, like me, are pretty overwhelmed by what’s happening in this country under the new administration. I’m almost grateful for going through the trenches of parenthood because, between diapers, spit-ups, and interrupted sleep, it’s hard to keep up with all the news. However, the snippets I’m able to consume via social media are more than enough to wreck my nervous system.
Watching Trump slash one important climate policy after the next is beyond enraging — it’s heartbreaking!
But here’s what we must remember: He wants us to feel overwhelmed. His strategy is to bombard us with outrageous actions and leave us feeling paralyzed in our responses. As Anna Akana said in her video,”It’s a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.”
In other words, he knows what he’s doing.
So don’t let him! Because even though he is currently in control of this country, he does not deserve to be in control over you!
This week, let’s talk about what we can do to calm our nervous system, use connectivity as our superpower, and reclaim our leadership when it’s needed most.
Let’s talk climate optimism in action!
Stress + Your Brain
A lot can be said about stress and its impact on our brain, but a new piece of neuroscience is worth paying extra attention to. Neuroscientist Norman Farb has studied the connection between stress and our ability to see reality for what it is, and it says a lot about how we must go about our climate activism.
What’s really interesting about his findings is that a stressed-out mind tends to get stuck in the past.
Let me try to explain it:
Our brain uses both its frontal lobe (where strategic thinking, recollection, and memory take place) and its sensory part (where you access your five senses to pick up information from the environment around you) to paint a picture of the reality you’re facing. Also referred to as “mind mapping,” we carry old worldviews that were mapped out by previous experiences, to quickly make decisions that best fit our needs.
This function is incredibly useful because we don’t always have to relearn a pattern each time we’re introduced to similar kinds of information. However, add stress to the mix, and things get troublesome pretty fast.
Rumination
Once we stress over something, may it be a work task or the political landscape, our brains weaken our sensory intake and start to depend more on our already mapped view of the world. As a result, we begin to ruminate — we get caught in mental loops.
The more stressed we are, the weaker the sensory part of the brain becomes, Farb’s studies showed.
In patients suffering from severe depression, this part of the brain is almost completely shut off.
What does this mean?
It means that stress in any form strengthens our reliance on the past and makes it harder to see reality for what it is. In other words, the very thing you’re stressing over starts to take over. It becomes your reality.
People might try to tell you that you shouldn’t worry so much because so and so, and “Can’t you see it’s not that bad?”, but if you’re caught in rumination, you literally cannot see it.
All you can see is the belief you’re already caught in. If that belief tells you the world is going under, it’s extremely difficult to pick up any information proving you it’s not.
The Secret Weapon: Connection
When caught in rumination, we all tend to stumble across the same mistake: Believing we can think our way out of the thoughts that keep us stuck. In reality, we’re only deepening our rumination!
So what can we do instead?
Norman Farb says that the most fundamental action step when caught in this trap is to tap into the part of your brain that uses a completely different metabolism, namely sensing.
You’ll want to hijack your mind-mapping and reconnect with the world around you. In simple words: take a break, step outside, call a friend!
It’s not important what you do but that you do it. The more time people spend in nature, the easier they can connect to the “bigger picture,” Farb says, and not get stuck in repetitive cognitive loops that keep you stuck in the past.
Back to Trump + Why This Matters
I understand that spending time in nature on its own won’t stand up against Trump. However, these seemingly small but oh-so-important practices will enable you to remain grounded as our work carries on.
Again, the strategy of many leaders is to make us feel overwhelmed and paralyzed in our actions. They want us to feel defeated, to lose hope, and give up.
But this is not a time to give up. This is a time to get very serious about the practices that will allow us to keep showing up.
So let’s not get stuck in the past. The world is continuously unfolding and the more we can stay connected - to self, others, and nature - the easier it will be to see beyond current realities (no matter how crazy they may seem) and tap into the imagination that will guide us forward.
Plus, since connectivity is such an important antidote to overwhelm, let’s remember the power we have when we come together as people. Not just politically, but for our nervous systems too!
Last Chance: Dream + Win!
Don’t forget that March is almost over and therefore, you only have a few more days to enter the IMAGINE challenge. All you have to do is follow the guided meditation, submit a vision, thought or feeling that came through, and you’re in the raffle of winning some amazing prizes!
Learn more and find the guided meditation here!
