On shifting from fearful doom scrolling to calm presence
On Sunday afternoon I spent several hours doom-scrolling on my phone. I was trying to understand what was going on with Trump and Elon Musk.
The more I read, the more my mind kept skipping ahead. I found myself trying to imagine what the world might look like after these guys were done wielding power. What came to me were visions of a grey world where most people’s lives were dominated by scarcity and fear.
Maybe you have similar visions too? I’d like to help if you do. Keep scrolling to the end if you want to learn more.
But first – I thought I’d share how I handled it on Sunday:
The thing is, as I contemplated those visions of a Trumpian future, I realized they looked familiar. They looked a lot like the future I kept imagining at the beginning of the pandemic. And they also looked strikingly similar to the world I envision whenever I think too much about the climate crisis.
That’s when it occurred to me that there was something about those visions that had more to do with me, than it did with the situation.
So I put my phone down.
I knew I needed to ground, so I went to the washroom and splashed my face. Then I took note of what was happening in my body.
“My breath is shallow, my heart is racing, and I feel lightheaded,” I said to myself.
Then I tried to go further: What did this set of sensations feel like? Did anything about it feel familiar?
The best I could come up with was that I felt like I was four years old, and my six-year-old brother was taunting me with scary ghost stories.
Huh, I thought. I don’t remember my actual brother ever doing anything like that, but it was the metaphor that came to mind.
Sometimes when I go inside in my meditations, the inner parts I discover come as a complete surprise. This was one of those times.
I considered the six-year-old. From an Existential Kink (EK) perspective, one thing we try to explore is whether unconscious parts of ourselves are experiencing pleasure from situations our conscious ego doesn’t enjoy. So I wondered, was this little boy inside of my unconscious finding any pleasure from the situation? I went inside and yes indeed. I could definitely feel a little zing of excitement. It was fun for this little boy to torment his little sister.
Then came another surprise. A Mom-figure entered the scene. “Stop it”, she said to her young son. “It’s okay for you to feel excited. But you don’t need to scare your little sister to feel that way.”
“Really?”, the boy asked. The mom hugged him and said, "Really".
So I tried an experiment. I went into the physical sensations again – my pounding heart, my shallow breath, and the lightheaded feeling. I tried to feel those sensations simply as excitement, unattached to anything else. It wasn’t easy. My mind kept telling me it was wrong to feel pleasure from visions of scary things, but I tried to let those thoughts just float by. And eventually I did feel a few uninhibited flickers of pleasure flow through me.
I can’t really explain what happened next. As usual with EK, the process felt a bit mysterious. But after a few of those flickers of pleasure, I felt a downward rush of energy. My awareness went down to my feet, my breathing got deeper, and the lightheaded feeling went away.
I felt calm again, for the first time since I'd started reading those articles about Trump and Musk.
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Why am I telling this story?
I’m certainly not suggesting that “we all need to meditate more” is the answer to Elon Musk usurping power over the US Treasury.
But I also know when I’m stuck in the mindset of my inner four-year-old, it’s not good for me. Why? Because my doom-scrolling visions are not founded in reality. When I allow myself to follow them all the way to their ultimate conclusion, I see myself all alone in a hostile world where my money is gone and my house has evaporated. In that barren world, I have no resources, no friends, and no way to support myself.
Those are not the grounded fears of an adult. Those are the night terrors of my inner child.
In trauma work, when clients are having a flashback, the thing they teach us therapists to do is to ground the client in the present moment and remind them that the flashback is a memory. Whatever they experienced in the past is not happening now.
So with my scary visions, I am learning to do a similar thing. When I start creating doomsday scenarios in my head, I feel into my body, and remind myself that the future I’m envisioning is not what’s happening now. Right now, I still have a life full of friends, and love. I have a home, and I have money in my bank account.
That helps me feel calmer and more able to be present.
And thanks to what I learned in that little meditation on Sunday, now I’m also going to spend some time getting to know that six-year-old boy inside my psyche – the one who likes to torment his little sister with scary visions. Thanks to my Existential Kink training, I feel certain that underneath his bluster he really wants something good for me/us, and when I show up with curiosity, he and I will be able to make friends.
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If you feel like you’re being tormented by scary visions of the future, here’s my advice
1) Remember to ground. A simple technique is to notice the support of the chair underneath you. Let that support sink in to your bones. Then take a few slow breaths. With each inhale and exhale feel for subtle changes in the chair’s support. Are there places where the pressure gets firmer or softer as you breathe? Bringing consciousness to our lower extremities in this way sends signals to our nervous system that we are safe, and it takes us out of the fight or flight response.
2) Once you feel grounded, reach out to connect with a friend or family member. It’s important not to feel alone in these chaotic times.
3) You could also check out this post about the many legal actions that are underway to stop Trump and Musk’s unconstitutional actions. I found the list quite heartening. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/161bV82y8H/
And if you have your own inner version of a tormenting big brother that you’d like to make friends with, I’d be happy to explore that with you.
The practice of dialoguing with inner parts—whether it’s a “scared sister”, a “tormenting brother,” or an “inner mom”—is at the heart of the work I do with clients.
I help people who feel stuck, overwhelmed, or paralyzed by inner critics and scare-mongers to make peace with those voices and transform them into allies.
If this resonates with you, and you’d like some support, feel free to book a Discovery Call through my Calendly: