On the Terror of Not Knowing

A powerful essay by Dr. Mindy Nettifee on the election, advance uncertainty studies, and what can help all of us move through fear.

Photo by Jon Tyson

Friends,

We are in the final days before an unprecedented election that is, without question, frying the central nervous systems of people across the globe. Whether you watched from another country as Trump’s nazi rally unfolded at Madison Square Garden or, like me, live just a few train stops away from where it took place, this election is sending us all into a kind of never-ending fight-or-flight mode that feels almost permanent, inescapable, and exhausting.

That’s why today I’m sharing this extraordinary essay from my friend Dr. Mindy Nettifee, publisher of the newsletter In the River of What’s Happening Now, on how to fight fear and face the unknown. Mindy is a depth psychologist, poet, and somatic practitioner who specializes in trauma on the voice, and this Monday—the day before said election—Mindy and I will be in conversation live over Zoom for November’s The Short and Sweet. We’ll talk about how to deal with election fears and our shared experiences as political junkies and poets. Then Mindy will lead us in a little somatic exercise to calm and center our bodies and minds in preparation for the coming weeks. All of this is taking place live over Zoom this Monday, Nov. 4 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET for paid subscribers of this newsletter and Mindy’s newsletter. If you know someone who might be in need of a gathering like this (there will be more of them, no doubt), you can give a gift subscription or update your own by clicking below.

When I read Mindy’s essay a few days ago, it felt like chicken soup for the tattered political soul (this reference is so cheesy, I know, but it’s true) and I knew I wanted to share it with all of you in its entirety, with Mindy’s blessing. It feels exactly like what we need right now: to re-center our torpedoed hearts, reconnect with our freaked-out bodies, and try out some practices of self-care in the process. Enjoy this read by one of my most favorite writers, emotionally intelligent thinkers, and friends, and Mindy and I will see you this Monday for a much-needed edition of The Short and Sweet. (Note: The Zoom link will be sent out to paid subscribers of Listening in the Dark and In the River of What’s Happening Now thirty minutes before the Zoom begins.)

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I Don't Know What's Going to Happen

Advanced uncertainty studies and what helps me move through fear

by Dr. Mindy Nettifee

A perfectly serviceable image of a void or vortex, by Talal of Psy Creative

By the end of last week, I finally succumbed to something I’ve been successfully avoiding this whole year—looking up Nate Silver’s take on the polling for the US election. First, as a recovering political adrenaline addict, I’m really proud I made it this far. But also, without a doubt, this is a concrete symptom of overwhelm for me; a red flag sign that the tension and uncertainty is finally getting to be too much for me. Also, of course, it turned out that looking for someone to tell me what’s going to happen who can’t possibly know what is going to happen was not helpful; if anything, it increased my feelings of uncertainty and fear. But one thing Nate said did land in a helpful way and I’ve been sitting with it: he admitted that he is full of fear, and pretty sure he’s not connecting to his intuition. I think that is correct, and important to be reminded of right now, as we close in on this latest, high-stakes U.S. election. When we are flooded with fear, and the future is uncertain, it gets extremely difficult to discern whether any of our gut feelings are actual intuitions or just, you know, our body responding to our mind, which is freaking the fuck out.

I’ve since taken a short break from the news and social media. I’m still getting all my newsletters, and with them quite a bit of news, but I can’t be trusted to surf responsibly. The collective trauma vortex is active and very powerful right now, as is my own personal trauma vortex—particularly the one created in 2016 and then expanded in 2020 and then reactivated repeatedly this year, by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. When I’m in the trauma vortex I am terrified, and terrified of how terrified I am, and generally upset and focused on how stressful everything is and how right I am about that. I know the slip into it is initiated by my mental defenses, which are trying to keep me safe by telling painful and scary stories about the past and the future, real worst case scenario stuff. Then my nervous system starts responding to those stories as if they are very real and happening right now, releasing cortisol/adrenaline and ramping up energy so that I can run or fight, contracting my large muscles in my legs and hips (run) and back and neck and shoulders (fight). Only there is nowhere to run, and nothing physically to fight off, especially when I am just on my computer or phone, reacting to other people reacting, so that energy and tension just builds. This creates a feedback loop between my mind and body that actually just increases my fear, and pulls me even deeper into the trauma vortex; it’s hard to break out of.

But it is possible to break out of it. We might not be able to prevent ourselves from entering it at all—we are not, in fact isolated individuals in perfect control of our energetic boundaries— but we can notice we’re in it, and we’ve been in it for awhile, and interrupt the descent. What’s needed first is a powerful counter vortex, or healing vortex. I wrote about this six months ago a bit, on the full moon in Scorpio (How We Heal)—so of course it’s coming back up now, as we near the new moon in Scorpio. Just imagine the trauma vortex is made up of all the stressful, frightening, terrible, triggering things—and it disrupts the regular flow of your lifeforce, pulling it into this swirling whirlpool. The counter vortex of healing is made up of all the goodness, all the resources, all that is beautiful and steadying and sort of shimmering with safety and love. Where the trauma vortex has us reliving the painful and overwhelming past and clinging to the known world, the healing vortex has us reliving all the goodness and safety and love we have known, and builds us a bridge back to the present, back to the flow, where things are changing and unfolding in real time. We feel the same uncertainty in the counter vortex, and we are still alert for danger—but we are actually taking new information as it arises; we might even feel some curiosity and wonder.

If you have a nice strong healing vortex built up, it’s actually safe and good to go into the trauma vortex from time to time; it’s how we reconnect with and support the parts of us still stuck in processing the past, ultimately helping them to complete their survival responses and come join the whole of us in the present. It’s also not an inherently bad or dysregulated thing to feel stress and fear—that’s what we should be feeling if we are in danger. A healthy nervous system is able to pendulate and move between noticing stressors and noticing resources, upregulating and downregulating accordingly, expanding and contracting, mobilizing and relaxing. But when things get extra stressful and intense in an ongoing way, as they are right now, nervous systems can get stuck in upregulation. When that happens, it feels like being stuck on “ON.” We might notice we are having trouble relaxing at the end of the day and getting to sleep; our jaw and neck and shoulders might be very tight, or our lower back and hips; digestion issues might kick up. And if we are in any way trapped in the stressful situation we are in, or if there is on oncoming or ongoing attack that we cannot run from or fight off, we will eventually freeze and start shutting down. The nervous system goes into a kind of play-dead mode, conserving energy for when the danger passes. And if the danger doesn’t pass, we may stay stuck in downregulation, which feels flat, unmotivated, lifeless, depressed—like being stuck on “OFF.”

I have a pretty resilient nervous system after more than a decade of trauma therapy and meditation and friends-who-also-go-to-therapy-and meditate and gardening and soup making and moon singing. I’ve built up and live inside of a beautiful and healing counter vortex. But I’ve also been through a lot this year personally, and I’m still going through a lot. And now we are actually approaching a time of increased danger and difficulty. It is completely reasonable that my system is showing some signs of wearing out, and being near, at, or over its window of tolerance. This is the moment to notice that, and interrupt it with some strategic care. I’m sharing this with you all so that if you are also starting to struggle (more than usual) to self-regulate, you can join me in this strategic self-care.

Because whatever happens next, we are going to be in it for awhile, dealing with fallout and consequences, at least through the rest of the fall and winter. We are entering a highly liminal, highly uncertain, highly death-y and in-between death and rebirth time. It’s all potentially regenerative, but current conditions are rough and pressure is increasing. We will need to actively prevent burn out. And we will need to do that while settling in for an extended period of tolerating healthy fear, and discharging our old or unnecessary fear with beams of trust and love, so that we can fight for what matters most. If we want change for the better; if we want to be more free to take the necessary risks to create a life we deeply want to live, and work we want to do, and a world full of care, then we will need to embrace uncertainty and work with fear.

I don’t know what it will take exactly, but for my first act of strategic self-care this week, I’ve started compiling a list of things that have helped in the past.

An Incomplete List of Things That Have Helped Me During Times of High Uncertainty Or Fear

Helping my body to feel safe by orienting to the earth and anchoring into it. I do think this one goes first, and is primary. Someone once taught me that sensing safety in the body has a lot to do with the vestibular system—that sensory system that involves, in part, our inner ears and how we detect gravity, know where our body is in space, and whether we are falling. If we want to come into the present, and sense safety, we have to do so physically, by sensing the physical location of our body, by feeling the earth. So rather than trying to think safe or positive thoughts, I direct my attention to the chair beneath me, or the floor, or whatever surface I am. I try to take my time, feeling all the points of contact. I try to sense gravity pulling me down, anchoring me to the earth. I am sort of locking in which way is down, and which way is up. Where fear spreads my attention and energy outward, this connecting to the earth right beneath me, holding me up, it calls it all back to me, back to the center of me, back to my spine, my axis mundi. And once I feel even a little of this centering and settling happening, I just hang out there as long as I can, breathing on purpose, saying prayers of gratitude to the earth,

Opening up my hands and feet with attention and touch. The specific way I do this practice now comes from my teaching partner Trinity Capili, of Creature Pace. While opening grounding sequences for somatic work almost always spend some time with the hands and feet, Trinity was the first to show what a pleasure it could be. I start by putting my feet on the ground, and one at time, gently pushing each foot into the earth or floor, back and forth. I test out different pressures, I play with the pace, just to see what feels good. Then, one at time, I pull a foot up and hold it, and give it a little massage. I take some time with each toe, or anything that just feels good. When my feet feel nice and open, I move to my hands and do the same thing. I might push them into something—the ground, the couch pillows, a table. And I definitely take some time to rub my hands together and warm them up, building up chi. And if it feels good, I give myself a hand massage. How does this help with fear? Fear and adrenaline release a lot of energy and charge, and the easiest channels for grounding that charge are out of the feet and hands. So this opens up those physical and subtle body channels, so energy can flow out of them more easily.

Shaking it out, walking it out, dancing it out. Again, the game is tending to all that excess charge that mobilizes in response to fear but then can’t be used, and stays stuck in our bodies. After grounding, and opening up my hands and feet, I give some time for that charge to now release on its own through spontaneous movements and twitching and shaking. If I am not relaxed enough (if my vagus nerve hasn’t turned on my rest digest repair system yet) I may need to hum or voo or sing to get that going a but more. Or I stand up and get into some erratic shaking movement, the way athletes shake their arms and hands before a race. Or I go try to spend some of that charge by walking or dancing, or even better, some combination of the two.

Listening to music that makes me feel brave. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, and that a few songs are starting to wake up in the back of your mind. This suggestion goes really well with dance-walking or dance-running, or just dancing.

Connecting to “deep time.” Peter Levine taught me that physically looking far away—like looking out at the sky, or a vista, getting a long view—can help to discharge energy from fight or flight. It does help, but I’ve found that what takes that even further is something different but connected to that—panning out from the present moment to the larger timeline, to the vast scale of geologic time, or cosmic time. I feel how this is just the smallest ripple in that long bow of time. How this lifetime is just one of hundreds, thousands. I feel how big Life itself is. I feel how the project of liberation has been going on before me, and will go on after me. I feel how strong and amazing my ancestors were and are, how they kept the road open for me through their labor and love.

Talking to old trees. Old trees are experts on deep time, compared to humans anyway. Go try to connect with one and tell it what you are afraid of, it will probably laugh at you. Tree laughter might sound like the leaves rustling in the wind, while the trunk of the tree stays completely still. Or it might just sound like silence, an invitation to sense the system of roots and mycelium beneath your feet, connecting all the trees and plants in the vicinity.

Pendulating to trust. This is one that took the longest to get a handle on, and the one that continues to have the most impact. It means that when I am particularly afraid, I need to acknowledge that fear and feel it in my body, and then I need to also locate my capacity to trust, and also acknowledge that, and feel that in my body. One of my most potent trust-in-the-face-of-fear lessons came a few years back, after my mom had received her terminal diagnosis, and it’s what I think of all the time now. It made it into a poem I shared after the equinox, so you may have already heard a better version of it. But I was down in California for a visit with my mom, and while we were having lucid conversations still, I could tell that the dementia had started to eat away at her ability to regulate or contain her emotions. She would get hit with these big waves of grief and fear, and the waves would just get bigger and bigger. I was sitting with her on her couch one day, and she was in the middle of a particularly big wave of fear. At first I tried to just sit with her and tolerate it, because she had every right to be afraid, and I wanted to honor that. But I could hear in her voice and breathing that the more she felt it and talked about it, the more scared she was making herself, and she was on the edge of full panic. I realized that she wasn’t going to be able to pendulate on her own. So I tried to intervene. I said to her what I say to myself, and what I say to my clients sometime. I said something like, “You know, there is another possibility right now. Instead of being afraid, you could trust. Like, would it be possible to trust just a little more than you are trusting by now?” She took that in and thought about, and then asked, “Do you mean trust that I will heal and get better?” And, I took a breath and said, “No. That’s not what trust is. Trust is trusting that even if you don’t get better, it’s ok. Everything will be ok.” I don’t know how much it helped her, but it helped me, both in that moment, and for the rest of her illness. Remembering that trust was an option—trust in a process, trust in the universe, trust in something bigger/the whole—and I should give it a try. Whew.

Saying aloud, “I will deal with the future in the future.” This comes from a wonderfully practical book by therapist Jude Bijou called Attitude Reconstruction. It’s this handbook for how to transform feelings of sadness, anger, and fear into joy, love, and peace. Jude teaches that one way fear arises is from an attitude toward time that has us living in the past or future. It leads to overgeneralizing, losing sight of what is true and real, and impatient, rigid, and panicked attempts at control. She recommends several mantras and actions for residing in the present, staying specific, keeping sight of the true and real, and instead of trying to control things, just observing, allowing, participating, and enjoying. My favorite of her mantras is this one: “I will deal with the future in the future.” I have noticed that 90% of the time, if I am feeling really anxious, it’s not that I’m dwelling in the past, it’s that I’m trying to see into the future, 10 steps ahead of where I am at now. And I’m worried, because I can’t see the future or the big picture, and I think I need to or should be able to. Jude helped me understand that the only effective intervention is to come back to the present. Even though I am really good at dealing with shit, I can’t deal with it if it’s not actually happening. So I actually make myself say, aloud, “I will deal with the future in the future.” And then I look at whatever is right in front of me to deal with, and I do that. And it works.

Co-regulating with friends, artists, plants and animals. We need other people. We are social animals, and so we actually physically need to be around other people. I strongly recommend reaching out to other people through this uncertainty and fear as often as possible. People you can hold hands with and snuggle with might be really nice, but even sitting in a cafe, alone but surrounded by safe others, will help. When there are no people you feel safe with, turn to plants and animals. I think no one would be surprised that my cat Domino helps me to stay in the present and let go of unnecessary fear. But you might be surprised to learn I also get a lot of help from my giant indoor aloe plant that lives in my kitchen and has kind of taken over the place. Sometimes I go wipe down its arms and tell it how beautiful it is, and it chills me out.

Befriending the dead. We are entering the days of the dead this week, the time of year when we celebrate the midway point between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice. The days are getting shorter and the dark nights longer, and it’s said that the veil thins between the world of the living and the dead. More and more, I would say that the veil is actually thin all year around. But I am still appreciating this week as a special opportunity to connect with my ancestors, and remember that all things are impermanent, especially as an antidote to uncertainty and fear. When I make offerings to the dead, like a bit of a favorite meal or treat, some tobacco, or a glass of vodka, all given out at the ancestor altar in my backyard, I also send them my love. I open up to them and ask them for help — usually very specifically, I give them tasks to help me with. And then I just hang out with them for a bit, letting them love on me. If you are curious about this but have never tried it, consider giving it try this week.

Befriending my own death. This will sound intense to some of you, since death is typically everyone’s greatest fear. But I am in an ongoing relationship with my own death. This isn’t so much about trying to imagine what death will be like, but rather treating Death as a great and powerful being and teacher, and choosing to welcome it as a natural force, one that helps clarify what is most valuable about being alive. Whenever I have been at a fork in the road in my own life, and been scared to make a decision or change, I have called my Death near, and consulted it. I think about being old and on my death bed, What regrets might I have? What unfinished business? What will I definitely not care about? What matters most? I know for me, it’s all about loving relationships, and doing beautiful meaningful work, and enjoying the simple pleasures.

Making a new kind of bucket list. Poet Andrea Gibson has been writing publicly about their journey with cancer and living in very close quarters to their own death in their newsletter Things That Don’t Suck, which you should go follow if you don’t already. They’ve written twice about this, their latest is the post To Make A Snow Angel On a Stranger's Grave. In it, Andrea recommends reimagining the bucket list from this list of big flashy things you want to do, to all the little things you want to do. They quote Suleika Jaouad (another writer who is also living with cancer) who says, “Rather than living every day as if it’s my last, I’ve shifted to a gentler approach of living every day as if it’s my first. I want to wake up and meet the day with the wonder of a newborn, to cultivate childlike qualities like curiosity and play.” I love this, because it exactly names the opposite of the traumatized fear state — the state of curiosity and play. And a couple times this year I have found this sweet kind of list making, imagining the little things you want to do and enjoy, as an antidote to fear, uncertainty, and the kind of future-tripping and goal-setting that feeds my anxiety.