resistance | My Eyes Are Up Here

My country, the U.S., is in peril, which impacts the entire world. Our President has gone from the horror show that he was during his first term to a whole new level of malevolent incompetence. The President excels in a few areas 1) breaking things, 2) stealing money, 3) scaring people, groups, and countries, 4) sexual assault, 5) probable child rape, and 6) packaging his evil into some kind of cartoon campy package that makes his followers think they are watching a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) villain instead of a powerful head of state. Speaking of WWF villains, we have one as Secretary of Education, who is breaking our education system, a head of health and human services who is taking away our access to vaccinations as well as recommending that we all eat more red meat, and a snake oil salesman in charge of Medicare, who just like the snake oil salesman in the Wizard of Oz, is actually named, “Oz.” And yes, the reality star presidency has a Fox news host who habitually arrived drunk to work in the MORNINGS as the head of the largest military in the world. We now have our own Gestapo, headed by a woman who actually shot and killed her puppy and the WROTE ABOUT IT in her autobiography. People are being hunted, especially dark-skinned people. I almost forgot to mention that the President invaded Venezuela, took out their head of state as well as the country’s autonomy to select their own government and up until a couple of days ago, he was threatening to take Greenland, by force, with his stated excuse that he needed it because he was not awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. The President is also clearly not in charge. There seems to be a cabal of appointed, non-elected people in his administration who are mostly in charge. Currently, the main leader is Stephen Miller, a truly frightening Neo-Nazi with a fixation on conquering people and nations by force.

This country is exhausting and I say this as a person who is one of the least personally impacted citizens of this huge nation. I am not being hunted and terrorized. However, now that ICE has escalated their attacks of protestors to murder, anyone can be hunted. The state of Minnesota, especially the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, has been targeted and attacked for what seems like months but is a much shorter amount of time. Thousands of ICE agents, masked, unidentified, and heavily armed have been terrorizing immigrants, native tribal members (not the “right” color), protestors, children, people driving home from the grocery stores, and even breaking into homes without warrants.

Minnesota, however, is not backing down. They are increasing their protests and their protection of their neighbors. There are major protests today, thousands of people out in the bitter cold (the high temperature there today was -10 F, which is -23 C), marching through the streets of Minneapolis. About 100 clergy members were arrested for protesting outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. They were quietly lined up, kneeling on icy pavement, exercising passive resistance as they were taken into custody. Hundreds of businesses across the state closed today in solidarity with their neighbors and in protest of this cruelty.

Our major media outlets have been corrupted by oligarchs and people who benefit financially from this administration. Consequently, the coverage of the resistance efforts, the ones I’ve described and so many more across the country, have not gotten the coverage that they deserve. But people in this country are catching on and I hope that our fellow humans in other countries are getting more accurate information about what is going on here. Trump should never have earned the admiration of so many, let alone be voted into office, regardless of the voter suppression, our Electoral College (favors less densely populated states), and Russian espionage that helped put him over the top. However, he is a historically unpopular president, losing support by the day, and I hope this continues. He is also clearly hitting a new low in respect to his psychological and medical health. He’s showing obvious dementia and it appears to be accelerating.

As Trump is falling, and I hope this fall continues, the consequence is increased desperation, danger, and aggression. We’ve long past the period of opportunity for a graceful exit from the decades long march toward oligarchy headed by a despot. It’s no time for complacency, as tired as we already are from the first year of this first term. There is also the grief of knowing that a significant and powerful minority of our fellow citizens are consumed by delusion, hatred, and fear.

Timothy Snyder, a well known historian of authoritarianism, makes nearly daily social media videos. He is a serious and sober person committed to resisting the authoritarian takeover of this country. Something he said a week or so ago really stuck with me and has been a well-spring of strength, “You never know when you are about to win.” He was speaking of past non-violent resistance efforts. Dr. Snyder explained that it is important to keep resisting because even the day before success, can feel like losing. For me, his words work a lot better than, “It’s always darkest before the dawn” because this latter saying is absolute and often untrue. “You never know when you are about to win” acknowledges the uncertainty of success. It does not guarantee it and for that reason, for me, it sounds like truth.

You never know when you are about to win.

Much love, friends.

Elizabeth

A big part of my work as a child psychologist is working with parents. I help them make goals and plans. I teach them skills to help carry out those plans. And then they leave my office. This process is repeated over the course of treatment.

Sometimes parents do not put their plans into action. They might say, “I was too busy.” They might say, “I didn’t do it because it was too hard.” They might say, “I tried it once and it didn’t work so I didn’t try it again.” They may even say, “I didn’t do that because I knew that it wasn’t going to work.” Sometimes I need to re-explain the rationale, the skill, or the fact that the skills are not magic tricks that produce instant success. Sometimes we set smaller goals that are easier to implement.

Sometimes, we do not get any where, week after week. An interesting observation I have made over the years is that even when parents are aware that they have not put plans into place as recommended, they still expect positive change to result because they made the plans and are doing SOMETHING. They are coming to therapy and paying money for it. They are talking about problems. And if it is believed that the skill is too hard to implement, there is often an implicit assumption that if one has a good excuse for not carrying out a recommendation that there will be no negative consequences for having not doing so. They think their child should improve, anyway. As psychologists go, I am on the frank side. I try to be as sensitive as I can be and communicate clearly. Parents tell me, “I can’t do that. That’s too hard. I can’t be expected to do that.” I empathize with the difficulty of parenting, the severity of their children’s challenges, but also say, “Yes, it is very hard and it is harder than what most parents have to do. But just because it’s difficult, doesn’t mean that it is not necessary for your child. What can we do to make this more possible?”

In the good case scenarios, the parents either start rallying and planning during the session, or upon thinking about it later, start re-adjusting their priorities and making things possible. They are able to get past “parenting shouldn’t be that hard” to the reality of their situation. Most of the time, this is what occurs. But sometimes it doesn’t and there is a seemingly endless spinning of wheels, complaining, and expressions of distress and despair. I respect that many of the parents with whom I work are going through a grief process of having a child with chronic difficulties. But some of them can get really really stuck.

There’s nothing wrong with New Year’s resolutions in and of themselves. They are a starting point. The problem is when we don’t implement them. Another problem is when we use them as an opportunity to beat up on ourselves about not having carried them out. Or we think carrying them out is too hard.

I have been working on changing a habit that has a negative impact on my family and on myself. I have been working on it as part of the 6 month long class my family is taking. One of the things each of us did was to write a little pros and cons list for the behavior we wanted to eliminate as well as for the behavior we want to replace it with. Then we were told to choose three of the pros and/or cons that we most important to us and to memorize them as a little script. The habit I chose is one I’ve been trying to modify for decades. For the first time, I am making progress on it and not only that, experiencing positive benefits.

Wishing you a happy and motivated New Year!