My lane

On grief for our country, surviving and staying in my lane.

It is hard to stay in my lane these days.

I want to spew outrage, assert historical parallels, or jump into reflexive actions in response to the first week of the DJT disaster drill. Instead, I read Steve Schmidt, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance and other experts who are far better at those than I will ever be.

My lane is psychology, and there is plenty to say about the way we are feeling, the way DJT wants us to feel, and the overriding background grief that makes our healthy response complicated.

First, the grief. It is profound, still raw, and composed of the same world-shaking despair I’ve seen when a child dies from an illness we believed we had cured, insisted we could overcome, and treated with confidence, optimism and hope. We lost. Joy lost. Fairness lost. Most of us don’t care why yet. We are the parents who wake up the morning after their child has died, in a rage that the sun dares to rise on another day.

Second, DJT wants us there. Exhausted, bereft, not sure we can find the energy to move forward. That is why the “shock and awful” deluge of executive orders, legislative directives, pardons and dismissal. Its purpose is to overwhelm and distract. To feed our panic, despair and confusion so that mobilizing emotional and cognitive skills seems pointless, impossible, terrifying. The longer that stage lasts, the more powerful he feels.

Third, chaos is a tactic. Most of us do not thrive in confusion. DJT does. He has used it throughout his life to undercut those with greater intelligence, business acumen, and integrity. Pit people against one another, keep even those closest to you on the funhouse floor, not sure what move will rain fire on them, and you undercut their ability to respond. Uncertainty undermines self-confidence, and that is what we all need to find again.

How do we do that?

I suggest we all remember three things as we find our way back.

One, this is a man who throws ketchup on the walls of the White House. You do not need a psychology degree to tell you what level of emotional development that reveals. This is a man whose bullying language falls approximately at 5-6^th grade schoolyard level; whose impulse control when insulted may be below even that. He has neither the raw intellect or the emotional maturity to be planful, self- restrained, or diligent in the execution of his goals. He needs others around him to do that.

Second, those around him range from brilliantly evil to blatantly incompetent. We need to sort quickly among them, finding those who do have long held agendas they can begin to implement decisively and effectively. The rest are people whose loyalty has put them in positions of power they would never otherwise earn. Expect them to be clumsy, ineffective, overreaching, and therefore unable to overcome skilled responses from experienced government officials, courts, and legislators.

Third, many of the policies he promised will not be popular when the reality hits the streets. No department of education sounds great, until it’s your child whose special services are terminated; social security cuts are fine until it’s your parents who don’t have the money to survive. Backlash will happen, and we need to guard against feeling only Schadenfreude and satisfaction when it does. Compassion for those whose ignorance was manipulated is essential to rebuilding a majority of people who understand what democracy really protects in their lives.

Long ago I wrote that the current GOP is composed of a coalition of three elements: the Ignorant, the Arrogant, and the Greedy. I view them separately, and my emotional response to each group is different. The labels may seem unkind, but they allow me to discriminate, finding compassion and understanding for some, and refining my efforts to counter or build unity with others. That’s also staying in my lane. Trying to see the world through the eyes of each person who chose to vote for someone, something I believe is profoundly wrong.

“Don’t tell me your diagnosis,” I told psychiatry residents. “Tell me what you see when you climb in behind his forehead and see the world through his eyes. Tell me you can find empathy for something in that view. That is the beginning of change.”

This is my lane, and I’ll keep writing.

Please share yours and do what you can to support us all.