Tag: #EmotionalRegulation

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What is “doing” healing?

I have talked about my healing process from coming out of the K-12 education system with my kids, who are ND and have invisible disabilities, on my other website P.A.T.H. I have titled these two blogs Life After K-12 and Life After K-12 – 6 months later.

In these blogs, I talk about “doing” healing. It’s an activity. An action. Healing doesn’t just happen over time. It’s something you have to be determined to do, face and work at it.

So what did I do? And what do I do to maintain myself in systemic work?

These are all going to sound small and insignificant, but it’s the consistency and doing these things whether you are in the mood or not. A lot of these items are a privilege to be able to do and access. It’s not an all-or-nothing; this is a prescriptive list that you need to all of it or don’t even bother. Little bits of everything consistently over time will build. Whatever speaks to you.

  • Be out in nature. It’s grounding, and the science behind our contact with nature and our mental health is solid. It will encourage reflection and feelings of peace.
  • Counselling. I am lucky that I get free counselling due to the nature of my work. I take full advantage of access to that and appreciate my counsellor very much.
  • Regulate my nervous system. Look up box breathing, meditation with guided YouTube videos, tapping, butterfly taps, stretching & movement, massage/touch/physical closeness to another person, and exercise. Research nervous system regulation activities. Intense emotions come up; launch into nervous system regulation activities immediately. Movement allows the emotion to flow through you. Emotions are like weather. We name it to tame it and watch them pass by.
  • Write and journal. Everyday. Get it out of you.
  • Gratitude List. As part of my journaling, I write things that I am grateful for. I particularly look for the little things I am grateful for amongst the challenging situation I was in.
  • Read. I read books about healing. Poems. Read about human resiliency and bibliographies.
  • Learn. I have been learning a lot about neuroplasticity and how malleable our brains are. How much influence we have in deciding to change our brains.
  • Be selective about your social media. There are some very helpful people offering great information on our brains and psychological health. I recommend the Pocket Psychologist.
  • Rest. I don’t overschedule myself. I need a lot of down time/alone time. I make sure I get it. Having healthy sleep hygiene. As I was healing, I noticed I was getting a lot more energy, and I was sleeping better at night.
  • Processing with a friend who gets it. I have friends who totally get this world and understand healing.
  • Mentor. Find people who are optimistic and who know or have skills that you would like to learn from.
  • Activity. Find an outlet. Helping people can be incredibly healing. Action. Either volunteer in the area that created the challenge to create change, or create your own volunteer activity.
  • Naturalpath. I started seeing a naturopathic doctor to optimize my physical health.

Apply. Rinse. Repeat.

This is what has worked for me.

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Disappointment

Finding out how systems really work is disappointing. At least it was to me.

We grow up watching children’s movies where the good guys always win, and everything works out. We are taught honesty. To do the right thing. So when we find out that society, which taught us those things, is not living those values itself, it’s jarring.

We never imagined our systems were actually this corrupt. This dirty. It’s somehow still surprising when this stuff gets revealed now and then.

It turns out our human brains are wired to root for the underdog. No wonder we like those movies so much. We always hope the underestimated one wins.

Part of managing yourself in long-term systemic advocacy is going to be dealing with disappointment. Not mild disappointment. The kind of disappointment that makes you want to give up. But then the kind of disappointment that makes this all unacceptable, propels action.

People will disappoint you.

They will know less than what you expected them to know.

They will be more rigid than you thought they would be.

They will fight to maintain the system, harder than you ever imagined.

They will be less courageous than what you were hoping for.

The larger the gap between our expectations and reality, the more depressed or angry we will be.

The simple solution is to change our expectations.

Say goodbye to the world you thought existed. The way things should be, but are not. And say hello to reality.

Embrace grief.

Welcome acceptance.

People are flawed. Imperfect. Tall children. Really. Our brains are working wonders and telling us stories of what we need to hear so we can carry on and survive.

What is the narrative in our heads?

What do we tell ourselves about how we think the world should work?

The crack in our thinking is uncomfortable at first.

But necessary.

We need to build a new world and better systems.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi

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Embracing Grief

Anger is for things we can change. Grief is for things we cannot.

Anger has been my fuel. It has propelled me forward. I felt I was doing something. The action kept my sanity.

I really didn’t feel like I was choosing to advocate on a systemic level. That type of advocacy chose me. I unknowingly had my ankle tethered to a long rope attached to a bull. The school district smacked the bull, and that bull took off.

Anger, when funnelled well, can be a beautiful emotion. Filled with love. We can run on anger. Do things we never imagined.

For me, as I advocate and navigate all different kinds of systems, I still find myself grieving. Every now and then, it sneaks up on me when I am not prepared. Why am I sad all of a sudden?

To process the reality of systems. What they are, and what they are not. Grief is about acceptance. The non-death loss.

Embracing times to grieve and acknowledging the sadness has been really beneficial for my mental health.

Naming emotions and being aware of them, I believe, will assist you in your advocacy. The more self-aware you are, the more you can regulate and know when you need breaks. You can catch yourself before you start to dip.

Crying is so beneficial for our brains. It triggers our parasympathetic nervous system and helps our body to lower our emotional distress. It’s soothing and releases feel-good chemicals.

Sometimes we need to take a moment and embrace the grief. It really is sad that the _______________ system does _______________. It is sad that all these people are stuck navigating it.

I may not change things today by 2 o’clock, but I am not helpless. I can do what I can in my corner of the world. I can help other people.

Grief, like weather, comes and goes.

However, my actions are consistent. I am optimistic; all I can do is try.

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Under the Microscope

Systemic change is not meant to be examined under a microscope. It is intended to be viewed through the zoom-out lens.

Don’t examine the ant that is part of the anthill. Be the hawk flying above that is spending years surveying the changing landscape.

If you want to see if the needle has moved, the smallest time period I would recommend would be a 10-year comparison period.

And really the best view would be 40-50 years.

What has changed in the last 40 years?

Are we getting somewhere?

What issues have changed? Which ones are persistent and have remained?

If you are going to judge your systemic advocacy progress on the last 6 months of your work, you will absolutely frustrate yourself. You will feel like you have gotten nowhere. Which will not necessarily be true.

Systemic work is about seed planting. Things grow over time.

Creating a new normal that society just accepts. Raising the bar. Changing expectations.

Micro level advocacy progress: you can see the steps. You can see the incline or decline.

Macro level advocacy progress: the steps are invisible. They are forever moving and floating around, changing levels and going up and down. Constantly taking steps forward, one step back.

Save yourself the mental anguish. You are torturing yourself with your own mental framework. This is where we can become our own mountain. We all have our moments of frustration and wanting to scream from a mountain top. After we wake up everyone on the mountain top, we need to walk down off the mountain.

I highly suggest you save yourself and don’t apply the micro-level view to a macro-level problem. You will get bitter, burn out and weed yourself out unnecessarily.

Keep yourself in the game and change your lens. Examining ants = burnout = risk of health problems.

Understand systemic change = be the hawk.

All the little things add up over time.

Systemic advocacy involves multiple approaches from multiple groups. Which is why we need everyone. We need the legal route; we the community building route. We need the loud advocates, and we need the behind the scenes quiet advocates. We launch litigation and build case law, and different groups collaborate and pull people closer to us. We build. Slowly. One shovel at a time. Taking legal advancements and APPLYING it. Because laws are nothing unless they are used by the people who need them, especially when the system would prefer for them not to exist.

Systemic change takes teams, sustained over long periods of time.

It is hopeful to see so many people eager to engage with the process.

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Sometimes You Just Need to Laugh

Systems can be so ridiculous, so ludicrous, so illogical, so over the top that you just need to laugh, or you’ll go hysterical.

I come out of meetings with Ottawa and wonder what planet am I on. They must come from planet Make-No-Sense.

The circles that systems send you through and then defend them like it is purely logical is a friggen joke.

They can be so over the top; what on Earth is there to do? Where do you even start with this ridiculousness?

It all seems so HUGE.

Try to explain this to someone else, and you just have to laugh. It turns into a comedy show. I envision this all as a cartoon. A Broadway musical. All explained in song.

The sad part is, is that these systems cause a lot of harm.

And there is no quick fix.

No simple solution.

So, in those moments when you finish the most ridiculous meetings, you just don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Choose to laugh.

You have to look at the ridiculousness and make jokes around the office. Find the comics that resemble the meetings. And think of the songs that would be perfect to explain all of this in the Broadway musical of all this.

Save yourself to keep yourself in the game.

You can choose to keep yourself afloat, and a great way to do that, I have found, is through comedy.

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What is in our Control?

Do you want something to completely suck out your energy and make you contemplate quitting?

Try to control things that are completely out of your control.

You will drive yourself up the wall.

One of the things that I have found to give me peace amongst chaos is to reflect on what I have control over and what I do not. What is out of my control, I need to wash it off and let it go.

When the feelings are intense, I find the only way to do this is to either write it down or draw out a mind map. But some visual representation that I can post where I work is a constant reminder that I have found to be incredibly helpful.

Systems are huge.

They are interconnected.

It’s incredible how some things that are so small can make a difference, and yet some things can be such huge successes, and the machine fights back.

Do what you can. Develop a plan for what you can control.

It’s those little step-by-step tasks that matter the most. But if you are involved in systemic advocacy, there are going to be a lot of people and a lot of relationships that you will not even have access to. You will be dependent on other people. Focus on you and the rest; wash it off. Do the ritual to end your advocacy for that day. Close the book. Blow out the candle. Turn on a 3 min guided meditation on YouTube and carry on. Do something you enjoy. These issues aren’t going away; it is a work in progress. No matter how hard you work, it won’t be solved today.