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[0:00] Bobby Steggert: I'm Bobby Steggert, and this is The Quiet Part Out Loud.

[0:15] Bobby Steggert: So mental health professionals, including myself, tend to protect themselves behind this veneer of expertise. Freud himself considered the therapist what he called a blank slate, a pattern which his patients projected their own experience while he enjoyed the comfort of obscurity. Let me say, it can be very comfortable to analyze other people while staying safe from the same inspection from them. So in breaking with that tradition, I am here to share that since the last episode dropped, and in light of all the events that have happened in the past few months, I have felt so far away from the version of myself that you hear as the host of this podcast. I've felt paralyzed, sapped of energy, angry, cynical, and really disconnected from much purpose at all.

Work has often felt like an obligation, and creativity has felt sort of impossible. This was all the work of a part of me that I somewhat lovingly called The Blanket. The Blanket doesn't visit often, but when he does, it feels something like depression and like a heavy blanket over my whole spirit. His job is to just shut it all down. Like many, I've been watching what's happening with the disorienting mix of dread and powerlessness. It just, it feels too big to comprehend. Is the ground shifting under us in a way that we really had the entitlement to think could never happen in a society like ours? And as we continue to split off into different bubbles based on what sources of information we take in, it's beginning to feel impossible to find a common ground that we once called reality.

This feels like a really dangerous place to be. It's both deeply rooted in our tribal natures as humans, and yet it feels entirely unique to this present context. The very concept of truth is no longer one that anyone can trust when half the country has been successfully lied to, while at the same time, obvious truths are ignored and rejected as conspiracies. We are living in a time of maddening contradiction. And so I've come to understand and value that blanket part. Its best solution to contend with overwhelm is to retreat from the anxiety that it banishes with its heaviness. Sometimes I'd much rather feel exhausted than anxious. There's also been this feeling that there's really nothing I can say, nothing worth asking, really nothing to contribute that can make any difference.

Part of that overwhelm for me is that now everyone has something to say, and that something is often provocative, emotional, rarely nuanced, and only adding to the sense of chaos. To shut down is an understandable reaction to a mountain of bad news. When it's too much, our parts come in from all these different angles to remove us from the most acute pain. The dissociative response to trauma is really a miracle of the human body, like an automatic ejector button out of an experience our psyche can't comprehend. And I'm watching others being defended by an army of distancing instincts. So on top of the dissociation of depression, take your pick. There's the gallows humor of nihilism, the hedonism of you-only-live-once pleasure-seeking, the rage in burn-it-all-down revenge fantasy, the denial of, oh, it'll be fine, let it blow over, even the righteousness and sense of superiority of online posting and virtue signaling.

What all these defenses have in common is that they take us away from our vulnerability. This is both protective and damaging. We are being dehumanized, and so we become less human. I think that we are in a collective crisis of hope. If I've learned anything as a therapist, it's that we are inseparable from our environments. In social work, we call it the ecological perspective. And let's be real, our ecosystem is sick. We see it in the news every day, from the hills of California to the White House. We see it on the streets and the subways. I even see it in the disconnection within my own family. This disconnection that I and so many of you have felt within is the very same disconnection that is ailing our world.

I read recently that hope requires three ingredients, a sense of control, values to live by, and a community to share it with. You take one away, and the other two are insufficient to uphold hope. Now, speaking for myself, I can't say that any of my values have shifted, but I can certainly say I have lost any illusion of control. There's the old adage, the only thing you can control is your reaction, and even that feels like complete bullshit to me right now. So absent much hope these days, I'm witnessing a similar blanket, a collective one over all of us, that feels so different from the days of 2016 when many were inspired and energized to stand up and make a difference. I mean, can you imagine marching in Washington wearing a pink knitted pussy hat today?

It feels like that happened in another lifetime. People are being silenced, and it feels like it's starting to work because we are exhausted and bewildered and dejected. The tragedy is that people on all sides of the ideological spectrum feel this in different ways because we have been divided and conquered by those in power who don't care about any of us. And there's this sense that there's just nothing to be done. Now, this is part of the stated and conscious intent of current political powers. There's a wielding of real and performative power, authentic threat and bluster that has had a chilling effect. It produces this very effective atmosphere of fear, distraction, and overwhelm that is leading many of us to protect with the last resort of isolation.

We feel more alone because we are made to believe that we are. And this is where the idea of community comes in, that third but essential ingredient to hope. The number one concern that so many of my clients share is one of isolation. There are so many culprits, the lingering legacy of COVID, the shift to working from our computers, political polarization and the damage it's done to any semblance of common ground, the cruelty of our political discourse, social media and its deceptive imitation of community. We seem to have lost the energy, the will, even the curiosity for a deeper connection. And so these are the thoughts that have begun to percolate in the dark beneath my protective blanket, and they've bubbled up enough to get me here and really to begin the process of sharing a new season of this podcast.

If you yourself feel stuck under your own blanket, I encourage you to honor it. It is protecting you from the onslaught in the only way it knows how. And when you're ready, and only you will know when, it will be time to use that stored up energy of the soul to come back together, to support one another in more tangible, concrete ways. It means prioritizing spontaneity and joy in simple moments, seeing and sharing art, being outside, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, meeting for coffee, striking up conversations. It's acknowledging a neighbor as you pass in the hallway. It's asking a waitress how their day is. We can't muster hope alone, and without hope we can't even begin to address the larger sickness of our society.

But the whole ball of wax is a recipe for overwhelm. So for now, perhaps it's simpler. It is reminding yourself of your inherent humanity and doing the same for those you meet in actual physical life. My tiny little slice of contribution is to continue bringing meaningful conversations about the human condition to this podcast. For me, it's the beginning of a solution to the problem of my own hopelessness. So look out for more episodes next month, and in the meantime, I hope you are taking care of yourself.