Resistance: How can we protect our mental health in times of political crisis?
As a therapist working mostly within the queer and trans community, I know too well how precarious many people's lives have felt even before the most recent attacks on our rights. I have often questioned my role as a therapist: What can therapy offer when what you most urgently need is access to hormones and surgeries, basic support from the people in your life, and the unconditional safety to be able to go out and live your life without being debated, harassed, and attacked? I dream of a time when trans people come to therapy to explore all the different things we might need to process in life that are not 'trying to figure out how to survive in a hostile environment'. But until then, I want to use my skills and knowledge to help us build as much resistance as possible.
Resistance and mental health
Mental health is not just personal - it is political and collective. Oppressive conditions require us to do two things at once. We need to protect our lives and wellbeing from the harm they cause, and simultaneously fight for changing the conditions that harm us. From my experience in the fields of both therapy and activism, I have learned that in this process resistance and mental health are deeply connected: Engaging in resistance can help us bring about political change and at the same time make us feel better. And in a context of attacks on our very livelihoods, to insist on caring for ourselves and each other is an act of resistance as well. The key is to do this together. Our connection with each other is something that can not be taken away from us. It is also perhaps the most important protection of our collective and individual wellbeing that we have right now.
So, if you're feeling overwhelmed, here's some ways of practicing resistance that might feel helpful. Please read these as possibilities and invitations, a resource you can turn to when you need it and make use of in the way that works for you at a given moment.
Resist despair: seek out connection & action
Systems of oppression rely on our despair and hopelessness. Every minute we spend doom scrolling is time and energy that we can reclaim for doing something small for ourselves and each other:
- Reach out to other trans people: attend a social meeting, join a group in person or online, such as the free groups run by Not A Phase.
- Share the news about support and solidarity that you see, and make time to really take these in.
- Call a helpline or look for trans-led support such as gendered intelligence.
- Take action: Attend a protest, join a mutual aid group, write to your MP, sign a petition. You can find some ideas for actions here.
- Take time for rest and play: go for a walk, cook dinner with friends, watch your favourite show, curl up with a book, lie in the sun, dance through the night … remember: everything is better than engaging with the hate.
It can be important to stay informed and we might be in situations where we need to be vigilant about hateful conversations happening around us. But we can create more protection and control by:
- Choosing the media and format we use to access important news, such as the Queer AF newsletter or the What The Trans podcast.
- Asking cis allies to monitor things for us and give us filtered information. They can for example help us by monitoring social media of people we are connected to for hostile comments, monitoring general media coverage for key information, or researching what kinds of spaces are supportive and inclusive and which ones we might need to avoid.
Resist their narrative: lead with your own position
Every time we respond to an oppressive narrative (like the one framing trans women as a threat to cis women) we risk repeating this harmful narrative and giving it validity. If we do want to speak out, be it in our personal life or more publicly, it can be more helpful (and indeed effective) to instead start from our own position and share our expertise, experience, and vision: What is it that we are fighting for? What does safety and inclusion look like for us? How is this connected with safety and inclusion for other and overlapping marginalised groups? What are good examples of how this looks in practice?
Resist urgency burnout: continue your life
When drastic things happen, we understandably feel an urgency to react, and to stop everything else that we are doing. While some immediate actions are important, effective, and empowering, most of what we need to do is strategic and long term. And we can only do this when we take good care of ourselves and each other in the process, continue our lives as much as possible, and deepen our connections and networks.
Remember that you do not need to solve this on your own, it will always be a collective struggle. A lot of groups are already doing great work for trans rights and most of these will need all the help they can get in the next months and beyond. This can include money & fundraising, resources, time, organising, admin, community care, specialist expertise, and much more. If you want to do something, think about what would feel most sustainable, effective, and also bring you joy and connection with others.
Our existence is resistance
And finally, if you are in a place right now where your struggle is to make it through the next day or night, and to find a way to get up again: You are not alone. There is support out there and people who want to help. Be gentle with yourself. There are times when getting a night of sleep is resistance, getting up again in the morning (or afternoon) is resistance, eating a meal is resistance, and telling someone that you need help is resistance.
How can we turn shame into pride?
Yesterday I was working from home on my research. In the early afternoon, I was ready for a break and decided to go for a swim in my local lido to clear my head. I usually start with a long dive through the lane and then swim breaststroke for a while because I love the feeling of my body being fully immersed in the water. When I eventually switched to backstroke, I looked up and noticed the usual backstroke flags at the beginning and end of the lanes had been replaced with cute little pride flags.
For the next half hour, I started and ended every lane swimming underneath these colourful rainbow lines. I noticed they had chosen progress flags. I thought about pride and swimming and the effect of having pride flags literally in the pool, in a space that is so physical, a space that can be so liberating and at the same time so inaccessible to many people with bodies that do not conform to a very narrow set of expectations.
I thought about the work that I would go back to after my swim break. About how much of it revolves around shame: My research on sexual violence and stigma. My therapeutic work with trauma survivors and LGBTQ+ clients. And I remembered the phrase I had written down ten years ago, as a mission, when I just got started with doing survivor activism: To turn shame into pride.
Back then, my idea of turning shame into pride was in part inspired by an intuitive knowledge, a sense of possibility that I knew from my lived experience was there, and in part an attempt to manifest this possibility that I knew we needed in order to live in this world. Swimming underneath the rainbow flags on my work break yesterday, I realised just how much my work is not just about shame but also about pride, and how much I have learned in the last ten years about this process of moving from one to the other.
So, how can we do it, turning shame into pride? I can’t offer a quick fix manual to follow, but I can share some steps and principles that I have seen in my own experience and work with fellow survivors and queer people again and again. I hope you find this helpful, no matter where you are in this process at the moment:
Name the shame
Shame is sneaky. By that I mean it usually sneaks into our minds and bodies unnoticed. This happens because shame is connected to practices of shaming, and a lot of these are so normalised and practised collectively that we might not even notice them. Yes, sometimes shame is dished out openly and directly, but more often it can hide in silences, in what is talked about and what isn’t, in tacit norms, reactions and responses, the way people look at you or don’t look at you.
So, an important first step can be noticing, naming, and acknowledging the presence of shame in our experience. This can be painful, but also liberating: In naming shame, we can step back and separate it from ourselves. We move from ‘I am essentially wrong the way I am’ to ‘there is an aspect of my identity and experience that I feel some shame around’.
Question the shame
Once you notice the shame, I would encourage you to start questioning the hell out of it: What am I ashamed of and why? Where does it come from? Who has told us to hide our bodies and experiences and desires and who benefits from this? What happens when I suspend the feeling of shame even just for a moment? How does that feel? If all the shame was magically taken away, what would I do differently now? What happens when we embrace the parts of ourselves that have had shame attached to them? What happens when we go out into the world and embrace these in others too?
Shame often has a long history, reaching back far into our own lives and beyond. To question is a very powerful tool we can use when we are up against something that can feel so natural and solid. I really like how queer feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes about the experience of being excluded, of not fitting in, as a starting point for noticing systematic oppression. When the world asks us what is wrong with us, she encourages us to shift this to asking what is wrong for us.
Embrace and share
Well, not the shame, although it can be helpful to actually talk about feeling shame with others who might relate and understand. What I am talking about here is embracing and sharing the very thing that you are feeling shame around. And I deliberately say that you are feeling, not have been, because in my experience this step is essential in transforming shame which means we need to do this while we are still very much feeling it.
We don’t have to immediately share it with the world. We can start in small and quiet ways. Let’s take the example of someone embracing their bisexuality: You can do this for yourself by allowing yourself to notice your attraction to people of different genders, by reading books about the topic, or by watching films that feature bi characters (just make sure to tell me if you find any good ones please!). You can share this with others by talking to a friend you trust, or with a therapist who is specialised in supporting bi people. You can attend a social where you can meet others, or a bi pride event. And of course, if you feel like it, you can go all out, announce it to everyone in your life, start flirting with that cutie you have been vibing with for a while now, and cover your body in the bi pride colours to dance in the streets this summer.
Embracing and sharing is a spectrum, just check-in with yourself and see what feels good and safe for you right now. I wish I could tell you that the shame is only in your head and it will be fine. But the shame is very much in the world around us, in the minds of people around us, and it might sadly not be all fine. Fears over discrimination and violence are real and we need to acknowledge this. But in my experience we can usually find some ways to embrace and share our authentic selves that feel both liberating and safe enough.
Celebrate
Every year I see many statements reaffirming that pride is a protest, not (just) a celebration. For me, both are inextricably linked. Rather than a celebration of society’s increasing acceptance, I understand pride as celebrating the insistence of queer life to persist and take up space despite the ongoing stigmatisation. This is how celebration becomes part of resistance: We don’t wait for others to tell us that we are OK, we just get out there and embrace ourselves and each other. We don’t wait for normative systems to grant us access and rights, we organise together to fight for this.
In both my work and personal experience, I have found this step of celebration important in transforming shame. There is an embodied quality that hit me at the first London Pride after the lockdowns, when I suddenly realised how much I had missed and needed this experience of dancing without any holding back surrounded by a sea of queer people. So, if you can, I would encourage you to seek out physical spaces of celebration. It does not have to involve hundreds of people and loud music, it can be an art exhibition, a book launch, a poetry reading, a picnic in the park, a hike, a life drawing session, and so many other creative things our communities come up with to create space for people with diverse access needs. This might include embodied celebration that happens online - through pictures and videos and voice there are lots of ways for us to connect with people who share our experience. And sometimes we can make a start by appreciating in others what we are still struggling to accept about ourselves.
At the core, pride is noticing what we have been told to be ashamed of, turning around and deciding to celebrate it.
What are you celebrating this June? Happy pride month!