Yesterday was Inauguration Day. You might be having a lot of feelings – some expected, but some surprising. I know I sure am.
We’ve all be holding our breaths for 4 years. We’ve been carrying an invisible weight around with us, and it’s become so much a part of our lives that we’d forgotten we were holding it. Now that it’s time to set down the load, we’re finding aches and pains we didn’t even realize we had.
The bursting of the emotional dam
A few months ago, before the election, a family member posted a link to the COVID plan on Biden’s campaign website. As I read about his plans for widespread testing, vaccination distribution prep, ensuring equity in access, mask mandates on federal property, and other precautions, I was surprised to find tears rolling down my cheeks.
As I cried, I laughed at myself. I thought, “This is a tedious bureaucratic list… why am I having so many feelings?”
But then: “This is just so sensible. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed sensible.”
I was crying because it was possible. I was crying because it still felt out of reach.
Then, a week ago, I read a New York Times article about Biden’s plans for his first 100 days in office. Among other things, he announced that he was planning to upend the Muslim travel ban, rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoin the World Health Organization, sign an executive order reinstating transgender protections in schools and the military, and create a roadmap to reunite children who were separated from their parents at the border.
Again, tears.
I was crying with relief. I was crying because these things needed to be done in the first place. I was crying because I remembered when they were undone 4 years ago.
Numbing as Self-Protection
I sometimes tell clients that when it comes to dealing with really hard things, there are two important skillsets.
First, you have to be able to take everything and zip it up so that you can function in the world. If you walk around feeling all of your big feelings all of the time, it’s going to impact you in really big ways – at work, in your relationships, in your ability to make yourself meals, shower regularly, and get out of bed in the morning.
But then, second, and at least as importantly, you need to have safe outlets to let those feelings out – to unzip and let your guts roll out of you and splay on the table in front of you, so that you can sort through and process them.
But in the 24-hour Twitterverse-led news cycle of the last 4 years, a moment that feels safe has been hard to come by. So a lot of us have just been walking around feeling zipped up. But now, maybe, it feels safe enough to start letting our guts pour out.
In other words, you’ve probably been exerting an enormous amount of invisible energy keeping yourself safe and functional by numbing out. People do this in a lot of ways – drinking, drugs, binge eating, working too hard, self-isolating, watching Netflix – and boy howdy, the pandemic has amplified these numbing tools!
Post Inauguration Day Feelings
Now that the dam has begun to burst, you may be having a lot of feelings. Some are things you expected to feel, and others are not. Some of the things you feel may feel in conflict with other things you feel.
To borrow a line from Ron Weasley: “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”
But since you probably don’t have the “emotional range of a teaspoon” (thanks, Hermione!), here’s a partial list of some things you might be feeling this week, as Biden and Harris begin their terms.
Relief
This is the thing that I most expected to feel.
And I do. Again and again. I felt it 2 minutes ago, when I decided to see what’s currently happening on the POTUS Twitter account.
But what I didn’t expect is that letting those muscles relax doesn’t feel like a relaxing spa day… it feels like a deluge of other emotions, like sobbing at the drop of a hat, like going limp.
It’s a good feeling, for sure, but it’s also a hard feeling, because it makes you aware of the areas you’ve been clenching for So. Damn. Long.
Grief
Remember when people said, “how much could possibly happen in just 4 years?” Depending on who you ask, the answer is quite a lot.
For example: people who have lost loved ones to COVID, children who have been separated from their parents at the border, Dreamers who have been deported, Black people who have lost their lives to or been traumatized by police violence, folks who have lost their houses to the devastating impact of climate change.
Even if none of these things have happened to you, you’ve lived in a world for 4 years where they were happening around you. More specifically, people allowed these things to happen around you. There is a lot to grieve, and that work will take time.
Cynicism
This looks like: “Yeah, but is anything really going to change?” Or, “Isn’t the damage done? It doesn’t make a difference.”
This is so understandable. Hope and optimism are so vulnerable, and for 4 years, every time someone said, “well, at least it can’t get worse than this,” it did. If you’re feeling cynical or skeptical, what you’re doing is protecting yourself.
Elation
Oh boy, I felt this one when I saw that Dr. Rachel Levine is Biden’s pick for Assistant US Health Secretary. Not only would she be the first transgender federal cabinet member confirmed by the Senate; she’s also overwhelmingly qualified for the position.
Everyone Biden has appointed is overwhelmingly qualified for the position. And so many of them will be the first person of their race, gender, or other identity to serve in federal government. This isn’t just a return to normal. This is flat-out progress.
I want to pop champagne and throw streamers!
Increased Irritability
But wait.
Is Pete Buttigieg really the first openly gay person to be appointed to a cabinet position? How did that take so long?
And was it really so easy to re-join the WHO? Why would we have ever left?
If you’re feeling flat-out ANNOYED that things haven’t been handled better, as things return to baseline decency, during this challenging time period where things are literally and figuratively on fire, that’s entirely understandable and relatable.
Decreased Irritability
On the other hand – or maybe at the same time – you might find that your capacity to hold minor annoyances has increased a little bit. Perhaps your partner’s loud chewing, your child’s whining, and your mom’s passive aggressive comments aren’t sending you spiraling quite as easily as they have for the past few months or years.
Therapists call your ability to handle things a “window of tolerance”. This means how much you can take before you either get overwhelmed or shut down. And you might just find that as there are fewer offensive tweets and terrifying news stories flying out into the world, your window of tolerance begins to increase.
White Hot Fury
Okay, yes, we’re beginning to see the restoration of common sense and decency in government.
BUT WHY WAS THE ELECTION SO DAMN CLOSE??
Seriously. Who are all of these friggin people who witnessed the calamity of the last 4 years and thought, “yeah, sure, I’d re-hire that guy?”
Also, why are there STILL people not wearing masks? Or wearing them wrong? IT GOES OVER YOUR NOSE, JERK!
There’s still a LOT to be angry about, and that’s totally valid. I feel it too. AND – I want to take this opportunity to remind you that when you feel anger, it’s because it’s a secondary emotion that serves to help protect you from softer, squishier, more vulnerable feelings.
And I have a theory about what one of those feelings might be:
Fear
Oh god, that riot at the Capitol was terrifying. It looked like the beginning of a Civil War. These are dangerous, furious people.
(Of course, underneath, they’re driven by fear too, but that doesn’t particularly help quell our fear about what they’re capable of.)
And they aren’t just disappearing – they’re still out there, feeling disempowered, but maybe also galvanized. A lot of us are waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something like this to happen again.
And then there’s pandemic fear. “What if I get sick, or even die? What if I become a long-hauler? What if someone I love (or someone else I love) dies? What if I become a long-hauler? Who will take care of my children if I’m incapacitated?” We still live in a world where the virus looms large.
Fear, right now, is something a lot of people are absolutely still feeling.
Trauma
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: The Trump administration has been a collective trauma. We’ve feared for our lives and our safety. We’ve been emotionally abused and gaslit.
When people have a trauma response, they get stuck in time. We may know logically that something happened in the past, but our bodies have an experience of that thing continuing to happen in the present, all the time. That’s what causes trauma to keep us stuck.
Here’s another thing about trauma: You can’t process or heal from it while you’re still in it. Your body and your brain are in survival mode.
So now that we’re coming out the other side, some people may feel like they’re still stuck in it. They might still have flashbacks or nightmares, tense up whenever they read the news, or feel a general sense of dread or panic. This is a typical trauma response.
Continued Numbness
There’s nothing wrong with you if you haven’t started feeling big feelings. It might not have hit you yet. You may still feel like you need to protect yourself. Give yourself grace, and take your time.
Hope
Of all the emotions on this list, this one is the most vulnerable. We are living in hard, dark times, and – to paraphrase the title of one of Obama’s books – hope can feel audacious.
Hope might feel like a lot of things in your body. It might feel like your heart lighting up and growing. It might feel like an increase in energy. It might feel like tears pouring down your face.
If you feel hope, even just a little bit, you might feel tempted to run away from it. It’s still too scary. Hope gives you more to lose, farther to fall.
But instead, if you can, lean into it. Feel it wash over you, and sit with the discomfort and the glory. Because that feeling of hope, however small, is what’s going to help you move forward.