How to Process Communal Disbelief and Shock

Something terrible has happened. Everyone is upset. What now?

Let's start by trying to find perspective. Ask yourself these questions:

What can you change?

Remember: You have an extremely limited ability to affect change regarding what's happened. You have a limitless capacity to worry. Identify what you can and can't change, then create your own personal lines of engagement. Stick with what you can change. Let go of the rest.

Who do you need to protect?

Who I care about most.

• If you have a child, it's up to you to protect them from the pain you're feeling and adult perspective you have. This means using tactics to help protect your own mental health in order to protect theirs.
• At times of crisis, focus on the people you care about most in order to refocus yourself on something positive and good.

Otherwise, who wins?

Do not let racism, misogyny, and ignorance indirectly affect you by thinking about them all the time. Refocusing is crucial for your mental health.

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What your actions looks like, tactically.

Vent.

As much as needed, but in safe places. In person venting is ideal. Be creative when you can--make yourself and others laugh through the pain.

Find Mental Distance.

Remember when you were young, and politics was at best an afterthought? Did you have a period like that in your life?

Go back to it.

Take a long view. 

What would a 90 year-old say?

Avoid the news and social media as much as possible.

It can't actually help right now.

Send positivity to others and feel connected to them.

Smiles from the members of Facebook group Pantsuit Nation.

This morning I smiled at every non-white face I saw. Because if it's hard to be me this morning, it's even harder to be them. Imagine feeling directly targeted. Protect your fellow citizens by sending them positive feelings and feeling them in return.

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I'm writing this because I'm working to process it myself. Attempting to cobble together tactics helps me find a way to help protect myself at a difficult time. I would love to hear what's working for others in the upcoming days and weeks. Share here in comments or in Bevoya Haus.

How to Catapult Yourself Out of Caveman Brain

My brain, as played by Buster Keaton in Joseph M. Schenck’s The Three Ages.

I have a hard time recognizing brain spin as it happens. 

Even now, though I’ve been aware of my own overthinky tendancies for years, I still find myself randomly carried away by my negative thoughts. It’s understandable. Getting abducted by thinking is the way my life has always been. My brain is habituated by years of caveman practice.

Evolution = standing up to the brain.

To get away from a possible clubbing, it’s clear what I need to do:

Evolve quickly.

I need to recognize when the caveman brain gets overly active. Then I need simple, useful tools to get set free.

There’s another word way to describe the technique I'm about to share: redirection.

Redirection comes down to realizing when you need to change course, then knowing how to do that.

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The dismount

Every person goes about this differently. For me, Tight sentences, short phrases — even cliches — help greatly. They pop me off the caveman’s back, like a tiny but powerful redirection catapult.

Mass = me

Here are some of my favorite catapult redirections:

• What someone else thinks of me is not my business.
• You gotta be gawky to get to graceful.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• Small stakes, cupcakes.

To that I add today’s tip. It's very simple. One new 5-word catapult redirection.

• When in doubt, get out.

Try to get to the nearest place with the biggest sky.

Feel free to give my catapult redirection a try the next time you feel your shoulders start to constrict and your head start to throb.

When in doubt, get out. Where is the place nearest to you with a lot of sky? Go to that place.

The caveman feels very uncomfortable in vast, open spaces. He’ll usually be gone before you reach your destination.

Use Color to Stop the Spin

It's today's tip!

My friend Molly and I were discussing our internal spinning loops of repetitive thought.

Have you ever experienced these loops? They’re the ones that keep us from reaching our goals. Instead of solid ground, we pace in place, or even worse, slip around, like contestants in a log-rolling competition.

I asked Molly about her loop cutting tricks, since anyone who experiences the spin has them. She said:

Years ago, someone shared this trick for stopping brain chatter. It’s very simple. You look around and name the colors you see out loud. That’s all.

Black. Red. Purple. Pink. Fuschia. Taupe. Grey.

Your goal is to get out of the loop and into the present.

This simple exercise does it. And I’ve found it works especially well when you’re traveling.

As she said that, we began to name the colors surrounding us.

Soon enough we found ourselves noticing the birds overhead.

We smelled the evening breeze as it arrived.

We felt the moment as it rushed around us.

Don't Go Spelunking Without a Flashlight

I’ve had this nauseated black hole feeling in the pit of my stomach.

It’s coincided with looking down at my belly and saying “Oh hey, you again. I really wish you didn’t look like that.”

Tonight I decided to turn it around. And I don’t mean panic-embarking on 2:55 AM workout session. I realize that for the last couple of months, I’ve been fixating on the middle third of my body, ramping up the internal fight. No more. It’s time for a truce.

Making friends…with a part of your body.

How do you make friends with a body part? It starts with sending mental love beams down into the black hole. You follow behind, wading into the darkest fear, peering around. Your eyes adjust to the darkness, and you realize, “Fuck it, this isn’t so bad. Is that a moonbeam I see over there?”

There are answers in there. This is where the fear lives. There's a reason it's as dark and hidden as it is. The only way to get to the answers is to use the love beam flashlight in my pocket.

If you're reading this, and you have no clue what I'm talking about, let me say this in a different way. Have you ever gone swimming and allowed yourself to zone out? Did you find that something new popped into your mind that surprised you? Or have you ever meditated and had new piece of information bubble up? Spelunking comes in lots of different forms.

Remembering that I can conjure up a flashlight whenever I need it is one way I stop fighting and start getting ready to find answers.

The Bevoya Two Sentence Solution

In this new series on the Beautiful Voyager, I put a metaphoric hand into this cheesy Grab Bag to share a fast tactic or tip to help with stress management and problem-solving.

It's today's tip!

I started getting headaches as a really little kid. Before I could talk, my mom tells me that I would hold my fist to my forehead and cry. In 2014 and 2015, the headaches were worse than they had ever been: I was getting a headache nearly every day. On preventative medication, I had researched every latest finding so closely that when I visited the UCSF Headache Clinic they told me that there was nothing more they could do for me. As I was leaving, the head physician told me to say hello to the experts I was in touch with for him. At that moment, I knew I had done as much as I could.

I was worn out and confused about how to proceed. My husband stepped in. He said, “OK, now you know that there’s nothing more you can do. So why don’t you figure out something to say to yourself to feel better when the headache comes?”

He was right. I needed something solid and clear. Something that would help ground me. With him, I came up with two sentences that I could repeat to myself whenever I felt migraine pain,

I’m seeking out better treatment for my migraines than I have in my whole life. In the future, there may be new developments in the world of migraine treatment and I look forward to learning about them.

It sounds so simple, but this two-sentence approach worked wonders. It stopped me from spinning out with fears about the future when I got a headache. It was a definitive statement, and I needed that. And I knew that the statement was true.

In the time since then,  I’ve indeed found new ways to treat my migraines that have significantly improved the headache situation, but this two-sentence approach is my grab bag tip for today. It works for lots of thorny issues. It’s a matter of asking yourself: What is true about this situation right now? And what are the limits of what I can do?

Your goal is to give yourself a frame for containment on a topic that likely, for you, feels anything but contained.

The two sentences really work! Give them a try.