Mental Health Check- Then Vs. Now

Today I was tasked with the writing prompt of how do I feel now, vs when I first started this journey. 

It’s a little strange because I am a little less motivated now than I was at the start of this journey? The final nail in the coffin to actually take this leap was the sudden blatant rapid decay of American democracy and the NEED to escape. That is what really got me going even though I had entertained the idea of living abroad for many years. Once I started really going for it, learning about it, making real plans, it feels both easier and harder than I ever imagined. 

The urgency has lessened a bit but not because the atrocities have lessened… if anything they get worse everyday and I fear the problem is that I am becoming numb as a defense mechanism, rather than fired up and inspired. And that’s the point right? That is what the media has been training us towards for decades, and it is what the current administration is using to their advantage. When we are constantly overwhelmed with trauma after trauma after trauma with no breaks in between we don’t become resilient, we become numb. 

I feel like, in my life, this started with 9/11. That is the first major political trauma that I can recall in my life, the first big world issue that I was aware of. I was only 9 or 10 so I really didn’t pay attention to the world stage before that, I was concerned with catching frogs at school and hanging out with my friends, not political enemies and fabricated wars.  

There was a break after that, it wasn’t constant -yet, but it was what opened my eyes to the bigger picture outside myself. I was actually living on an Airforce base in England at the time and I remember my mom picking me up early from an after school program and the guards on base checked my ID… a child… they never checked my ID as long as I was with an adult so that memory is very visceral in my mind as my young self realizing that something is really wrong. We stayed home from school the next day while we waited out the uncertainty of what was happening. 

But then things got better. It was tragic and terrifying, but for my young brain, especially being so far removed in another country at the time, it blew over fairly quick and I don’t recall any significant memories beyond the day it happened. But it made me more aware in a way that I didn’t even recognize at the time. 

We returned to the States about a year later, I think, and I was headed into middle school. My parents were always fairly informed and political so I got some exposure through them, but like most kids, I didn’t really do any research myself, just followed what they said- thankfully, my parents are smart. The next major political event I remember was George Bush getting elected. I was just old enough to really start having an opinion on these things and I was not happy. My biggest concern has always been the environment and republicans have never been on the side of the environment in my lifetime. Also, Bush certainly seemed like the dumbest person we could put in office (oh how wrong that turned out to be, imagine if Bush was all we had to worry about to today!?)

And it seems like it has just been a slow- but exponentially increasing in speed- descent into madness since. Obama was a really nice reprieve from the insanity and we were really on the right track for a while there… but the oligarchy couldn’t allow that we took a HARD right… off a cliff… into the swamp of sorrow…straight to the bottom…pretty sure we passed the skeleton of Artax like a mile back. 

So then…. Then Trump happened. This was really the bomb that leveled all I had been building in my life, not immediately, but what didn’t break with the initial impact was shaken to pieces during the resulting aftershocks. 

I vividly remember that election night in 2016. I remember feeling sick as I watched the numbers and crying.. I mean hard core CRYING when they called it… I remember going in to my college class the next day and my genetics professor, just as disgusted as I, expressing his disdain because his research and his health was directly affected by trump policies. I remember the stereotype white frat boy standing up and saying he was here to learn and not listen to the professor insult the president… not unlike Galinda telling Dr. Dilliman that he should be teaching them history rather than harping on the past. I remember people saying I was overreacting, that it wouldn’t be that bad, that the president is restricted by the checks and balances of the country and he can’t actually accomplish to much as a result. And I remember seeing everything get worse as a result. Climate policies tossed aside, puling out of the Paris climate accord, the removal of Roe vs Wade and the sweeping introduction of anti-woman laws as a result. I feel sick even thinking about it now because that was just the start. Those first 4 years seem like nothing compared to what we have seen in the last 4 months! It’s horrifying. And lets not forget that covid happened during all of that as well and that had a much more direct effect on my financial stability and the dream I was building with my rescue. But by that time, there were so many traumas occurring daily it’s hard to even isolate and focus on covid, even for the bigger impact that it had. 

9/11 to Bush to climate worries to never ending wars to trump to covid to more intense climate worries to more and more extreme weather events to bird flu to attacks on women’s rights, attacks on trans rights, attacks on the fucking humanity of anyone who isn’t a straight white male!

It has been going on for YEARS… and it hasn’t stopped. I am sure there is a name for this in psychology but I will relate it to lizards… because animals are what I know.

Baby iguanas at pet stores are one of the worst things that pet stores do but that is a whole different rant, I will refrain from the the ethics for now and focus on the behavior. People see these cute little bright green lizards and think there’s a good pet! 

They will run when you try to grab them but once you have them in hand they will stay still, often closing their eyes. SO MANY people mistake this for calm. “Oh he’s closing his eyes! He must like it!” They say as they restrain the little lizard in their giant talons and stroke his head with their giant fingers.

That iguana does not enjoy that. That iguana is so utterly terrified and overwhelmed with the danger it is in that it is literally shutting out the world and preparing to die. In it’s mind, it has just been caught by a predator and its death is imminent. This is an extreme stress response, and a lot of prey animals do it. Some can even die just from that stress of being caught (in wildlife rehab it is called capture myopathy) even if they are released after a few minutes of “cuddling” from the human. (fun fact, this is why rehabbers get livid when we see someone cuddling the baby bunny they found and thinking it is taking comfort from them because it is sitting so still with its eyes closed.)

This is what is happening to humans. We are so overwhelmed by the constant stress and traumas and disasters that we are checking out. We are closing our eyes and freezing up as a stress response. Not everyone is. Some of us are fighting, some are fleeing, but many of us are freezing. And it gets so much more complex with humans because we have higher level thinking which allows us both to see and understand what is happening while simultaneously not believing it is happening. 

I often wonder if this is how people felt in Germany… it can’t be real, this isn’t really happening, it won’t be that bad. It’ll pass. It’s only 4 years…  It’s only “illegals”…. Well we made that jump from illegal immigrants to legal fucking residents real quick. At least in the 1940’s you could actually claim ignorance (at first) and it might be partially true. In today’s world where we have access to the entire world of information in our pockets, there is no excuse for ignorance… we can see the people being detained and deported in real time, we can see the laws that are being broken, the laws that are being proposed, and the horrors that are occurring daily AS THEY OCCUR. We are more connected than ever before, and more apathetic and checked out as well. 

And that is by design.

When you keep people in such an elevated state of stress for so long, exposing them to new horrors every day, they become desensitized… numb…. They get tired of hearing about the negative and the constant need to fight. They burn out. 

We are all burnt out. 

And the smarter you are, the more burn out you are. There really is some truth to the phrase “ignorance is bliss”  because if you don’t even know whats going on around you, you can’t be stressed out about it. 

So this is kind of spiraling into catastrophizing, which is really hard to avoid when going down this rabbit hole, so i might cut off here. It is always frustrating to start blogs like this because there is SO MUCH more than what is mentioned here that contributes to the overall feelings and stress, but I could end up writing a novel about it so I have to draw the line somewhere. 

Let me try to circle back to what I started with…. What did I start with?

Right, how do I feel about the whole moving abroad process now, vs at the start?

Unclear. I am anxious to get out of Oklahoma because that initial moving date is coming up at the end of this month. Then I will spend 5+ days driving to Washington and there are still a lot of steps to focus on for that. So maybe it is just that I am compartmentalizing. Focusing on the immediate, and less so on the future. It might be a necessity for where I am at now.
I think I will address this question again after I move and get settled in Washington.

(someone remind me to do that)