One of the most valuable lessons that I have learned from years of therapy is the importance of staying present. What do I mean by that? Staying present means just that you are in the present moment and not time traveling through past trauma or future projecting and worrying. It’s not catastrophizing. It’s not running around playing chicken little shouting 'the sky is falling.' It’s not coming up with potential future outcomes and actions based upon conjecture. It’s staying present in that - what do you know in this exact moment while not having a future tense anxiety over things that may or may not transpire What do we know in this moment?
Staying present can be easier, said than done, but in this day and age with the world on literal fire all the time and the fascist government in America, it’s easy to play chicken little love -- 'Oh my God they wanna kill us all' while that may very well be their plan, it still is important to stay present. Will they kill us all? probably not. In any situation there will be people that will not survive it. I am keenly aware of this being disabled that I’m not the person that survives the thing anymore -- so believe me, I’m not being glib about this or dismissive.
What do I know in this moment right now as I am writing this? I am safe in my own home. It’s almost 9 PM. My cats are sleeping on the floor and I’m going to start getting ready for bed. That’s what I know in this moment of being present. I can’t worry about tomorrow because I could die in my sleep or an asteroid could hit the planet. Tomorrow is never guaranteed and that’s why it’s important to stay present. I can spend as much time spinning out and crashing out about things that may or may not happen and sometimes we become our own worst enemy in that situation, we do more harm to ourselves in the present by either dwelling on the past or future projecting and what I’m saying here is don’t traumatize yourself over a future that may not happen -- again easier said than done.
So the big question is, how do you stay present when the world is on fire and the country is decaying under fascism? It takes practice and redirection. When I find myself spinning out and constructing all of the conversational variables based upon any situation that may be ongoing or that may come up, instead of doing that, I pivot back to be in present. What do I know in this moment right now? Sometimes I weaponize my ADHD against myself and knowing that I can be easily distracted. I’ll sit there just flipping through reels of cute animals. I am a total stan for Neil the Seal in Tasmania -- if that’s what it takes to stay present then I will stay present. I will divert myself from whatever the crisis is at the moment. I will do any number of things from picking up a book to read or taking a bath. I will talk to someone. None of these are over the top convoluted practices.
Staying present also means staying grounded and centered. Take a moment, put your feet on the floor and ask yourself -- what do you know in this moment? I know in this moment as I’m writing this. It is 9 PM. My cats are sleeping on the floor and I’m going to get ready for bed. That’s all I know right now. If that doesn’t work, one of the things that I find is breaking the cycle or breaking the thought cycle that keeps you projecting into the future or time traveling to the past. Another method would be listing out the steps of a common procedure. It could be something from your job. I wouldn’t pick something particularly triggering, but what do I want do to disrupt that thought process. I will run down a checklist like a pilot would do a pre-flight checklist. In my case, I could outline the process I do to make a particular product so as I’m doing this, this is starting to break me out of the cycle of time traveling back-and-forth and staying present in my body and there’s plenty of grounding and centering exercises. You can do whether it’s deep breathing any kind of meditation practice
I find that staying present has really helped me manage my symptoms and keep myself mentally stable because at this point I’m pretty much raw dogging the apocalypse outside of medical gummies. The best thing we can do for ourselves because the system wants to overwhelm us. It wants us to be drowning in cortisol, to live in fear, and the fear is going to have more immediate repercussions. If nothing else that you take away from this staying present is an act of defiance, resistance, and resilience.