How are you holding up?

We ask each other, quietly, with kindness, and uncertainty.  We, who are not feeling that the current administration and Congress, the courts and the political climate care for us.

It feels like one gut punch every 10–20 minutes living through this presidency.

You don’t know when it’s coming. You don’t know what it will be. You just know—something is going to get said or done that makes you stop, blink, and go, what are they doing? 

We’re only about fifteen months in. There’s still a long stretch ahead.

And what finally clicked for me is this:

This is intermittent reinforcement.

Not the fun kind. Not the slot machine, maybe-I’ll-win kind.

This is unpredictable-moral-shock kind.

🍋

You don’t know:

• when it’s coming

• how bad it will be

• what line will get crossed next

  
  

But your nervous system learns anyway.

It learns to stay alert.

It learns to scan.

It learns: Don’t relax. Something’s coming.

And that’s what makes it so exhausting.

Not just the content of what’s happening—but the pattern of it.

🍋

Intermittent patterns are the most conditioning because they never let you settle. There’s no rhythm, no integration, no completion.

It’s the same mechanism behind gambling, doomscrolling, volatile relationships.

Except this time it’s public life.

And that lands differently.

Because the real pain is not just:

“He said something awful.”

The real pain is:

“The position that is supposed to represent the country is operating without a shared moral floor.”

That’s what disorients people.

That’s what keeps the system unsettled.

It’s not one event.

It’s the erosion of expectation.

🍋

So what happens inside the body?

It becomes:

anticipate → brace → absorb → repeat

Over and over.

A hit… a breath… another hit.

No time to metabolize anything before the next thing arrives.

🍎

So here’s what I’m doing.

Not as a strategy to “fix” anything.

Just as a way to stay human inside it.

👀 First:

I choose when to look.

Not every 10–20 minutes.

Once or twice a day. On purpose.

That alone changes everything.

Because now I’m not being pulled.

I’m deciding.

🧭 Second:

When I see something, I name it cleanly.

“That’s wrong.”

“That’s cruel.”

“That crosses a line.”

No spiraling. No dissertations.

Just accurate language.

🏡 Third:

I return to my actual life.

And this part matters more than people think.

Because my real life is:

• a stocked kitchen

• a husband in the next room

• a yoga studio upstairs

• students coming through the door

• food cooking

• music playing

That is not denial.

That is completion.

That is the nervous system finishing the loop instead of staying stuck in it.

🍎

Here’s the deeper truth I’m holding:

Yes, this is a chaotic, morally jarring period.

And also:

I am not inside the chaos.

I am observing it from a grounded life.

Those are two different things.

So when something hits—and it will—

I use one sentence:

“That’s real—and I don’t have to carry it.”

I don’t deny it.

I don’t fix it.

I don’t absorb it into my body like it’s mine to metabolize.

I see it.

And I let it go.

This isn’t about disengaging.

It’s about staying clear.

Because if everything becomes a constant gut punch, eventually you stop feeling anything at all.

And that’s the real danger.

So I’m staying awake.

But I’m also staying here.

In my house. In my life. In my body.

Where things are still intact.

Where things are still real.

Where I can still choose how I show up.

And that, for me, is how I’m getting through this.

🌿. Andrea