Are you feeling out of control? I am.

In which I consider ways to manage this terrifying feeling

Obviously. We are all out of control. Our very leaders are out of control. If anyone reading this feels in control, please share your superpower with us in the comments.

But does being out of control have to feel this bad? Isn’t there some way to lift out of the exhaustion, depression, and chronic anger for even a second?

Maybe there is.

Hold it

A fundamental need of all human beings is what some psychoanalytic theorists call a “holding environment.” This is the environment within which we all live, grow, and develop. People like my main man Donald Winnicott thought a lot about the requirements of holding environments for the healthy development of children: requirements like limits (the line where “yes” becomes “no”), boundaries (where I end and you begin), consistency, care, honesty, empathy. Children who don’t have these things in their homes are at a developmental disadvantage. Adults who do not have these things in their homes or workplaces are also at a disadvantage.

We do not have these things in our nation right now. Limits, or laws, are being broken right and left; boundaries are being breached (is Trump our president? Or is it Musk? and why are high schoolers in charge of the Treasury?); consistency doesn’t exist (executive orders are issued and then rescinded); care has been replaced by hatred and vengeance; honesty — hahahaha!!! everything Trump says is a fabrication; and empathy, an impossibility for psychopaths, has yielded to objectification (immigrants and “elites”are “vermin”) and cruelty (deport them! lock ‘em up! withdraw their security details!).

We are not being held. Because our “parents,” the people who are responsible for keeping our nation and its people safe, are themselves uncontained. They are chaotic, horrifically negligent, and demonstrably insane.

(Let me define “insane”: having a tenuous or wholly disconnected relationship to reality. Being pumped up on power. Caring nothing for anyone but oneself. Lacking empathy, contrition, and other checks on self-serving impulses.)

So, no matter how sane we might be, no matter how healthy and rational and productive, we are now living in a holding environment whose leaders possess the exact opposite set of qualities we need them to possess to keep us safe.

And, like children living in a chaotic family, we can believe we simply do not have the power to change our holding environment. So the feeling of being out of control right now isn’t just frustrating or maddening; it is terrifying.

So now what?

Fighting to right a nation that isn’t holding its people healthily is a huge task. And we must undertake it. By protesting, donating to organizations like the ACLU and Indivisible, calling and emailing our senators and representatives. Fortunately, we are not children living in a chaotic family. We are adults living in a chaotic family. And we do have power. We have to find it and wield it.

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about managing the feelings of being out of control. The feelings of exhaustion, depression, disassociation. Feelings we can’t afford to have for four more years.

If my metaphor of the holding environment holds, it implies that our top daily priority is to do everything we can to craft a mini-holding environment. For ourselves. Right here and now. Inside ourselves and, if at all possible, outside ourselves. Taking up as much space as we can.

By

• making our living and working areas beautiful (by bringing in a plant or a picture or an inspiring quote — or two, or three)

• establishing routines for ourselves that we’ll find enjoyable (this brings precious consistency into our lives)

• scheduling in exercise that will help blow off anxiety and anger

• eating cleanly (despite the urge to binge on comfort food, which tastes great while it’s happening but then wreaks havoc with your body)

• hugging our spouses, partners, children, friends — a lot

• connecting and laughing on a regular basis with people we love and trust

• giving ourselves permission, and planning ways, to avoid or escape people in our orbits who only bring us misery and stress

• listening to beloved music

• journaling

• cuddle with and coo at pets

• getting out in nature (which is quietly, powerfully, calmly consistent)

• doing puzzles (a personal favorite)

• meditating (highly recommended)

• dancing (also highly recommended)

• embodying and modeling the behaviors we admire

• noticing what we’re feeling, wondering about it, doing what we can to affect it, and watching it change

• living our values boldly, emphatically

• remembering that we can only control ourselves and aspects of our immediate surroundings (we can not control anything or anybody else)

• doing what is good and right even when we don’t want to

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Except for this: I’m offering a frame that can organize the miasma of feelings and experiences you’re having right now. (If you’re anything like me.) Feeling like shit? Anxious? Enraged? Frightened? Despairing? You should. Your national caretakers are lunatics.

What can you do? Create the holding environment inside yourself and in your immediate surroundings that you and others need. Push back against chaotic forces by embodying order and consistency, embracing limits, respecting boundaries, enacting physical and emotional containment and discipline, being lovingly honest and reliable, valuing health and care. These are, after all, the only things we can (ever) control.

Please share your methods in the comments for controlling your holding environment and keeping yourself sane.

Coda: For what it’s worth, after I wrote this, I took a long walk with my dog and felt energy, joy, and gratitude for the first time in over two weeks. Coincidence? I think not!