Wednesday morning – after waking up in a fog from the (prescribed) clonazepam I took on Tuesday at 10 p.m. – I was asked to write an article that would “help people cope” and “keep the ‘hope “. Maybe it’s my job, because the stories we tell love letters it’s all about feelings, respecting others and finding ways to be okay.

But I don’t feel well today.

I don’t think it’s responsible to say that there is a simple list of ways to feel better.

I understand that the first days will be particularly vague and complicated. Many are celebrate political news. (I saw the total votes.) Some, disillusioned with our country because it offered them two candidates who did not represent the values ​​they wanted to see in the world, Already felt grief over the next four years.

That’s it, right? Grief?

Yes, it’s anxiety, anger, fear and many other emotions. But above all grief, for many.

What can we do today and in the days to come to get well? No one really knows, but some have had advice for the first steps.

Darshan Mehtamedical director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells me that part of this process is about patience. My brain wants to mobilize in some way: to help the community, to find ways to feel productive in a very messy world. But Mehta said we all need to have time to figure out how we really feel.

“We call it ‘stop, breathe, think and choose.’ Stop. Breathe – symbolic of taking a moment to truly take care of yourself. Reflect; the idea here is: “Where am I right now?” What do I control? And then, once you’ve taken that break, SO you can make a choice. When you come from a place of choice, then you are actually in a place of strength, rather than a place where you feel powerless. When you have an agency… it’s a resilient quality. “

He said you would also want to be surrounded by people and activities that inspire you and make you feel love. Inspiration is good. But once again, “it doesn’t happen right away…otherwise it’s not sustainable.”

Mehta is figuring out how to explain this election to his 9-year-old daughter — and how it will all affect him as a doctor — so he practices that patience himself, checking in with his brain before taking action.

Kirk Woodring, clinical social worker and vice president of outpatient and community services at Beth Israel Lahey Health Behavioral Services, said we can be sure that feeling abnormal is a normal response to the past 48 hours.

“Fear of the unknown, or maybe fear of what you think you know, but that’s not really the case,” he said. This fear can be paralyzing and you don’t know what to do. Part of what I talk about with people is: How are you somehow motivated to move forward towards what really matters to you, the things that you value: your friends, your colleagues or your family… which can you support? through this process?

Woodring said we need to be careful when it comes to behaviors that might be temporarily calming, to make sure we’re coping in healthy ways.

“What I mean by that is, you know, people go out, have a drink and feel better. And then they discover that having two or three makes them feel even better, and that potentially becomes problematic,” he said. Even things like exercising and running at first can be really enjoyable, but you can overdo it.

He also offers simple advice for now: drink water.

“…because these cortisol levels build up in your blood, and it’s this hormone that can really be toxic to people. It’s a byproduct of stress. Drinking water helps eliminate this.

Woodring reminds me to say that if someone feels helpless, needs help and is in trouble, they can call 988crisis helpline, and I recommend it to others.

Jonathan LeeBoston University’s associate chaplain for student outreach, said that this morning at Marsh Chapel, students were singing “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers and “I Need You to Survive” by Hezekiah Walker. He admitted he was still understanding the atmosphere on campus.

I asked Lee what he would say to someone feeling existential dread today. Or shame, or isolation, or just heartbreak and misery. How do we feel better?

The goal, Lee said, is not to feel better, but simply to feel.

“This idea of ​​helping someone feel better – I worked as a hospital chaplain for a while, and that’s kind of what they told us. not do,” Lee said.

Instead, prayer – which for some will be a simple ritual.

“There is, I suppose, an explicitly Christian or religious understanding of prayer, like praying to God. But there’s also prayer, more in the sense of finding some sort of grounding ritual, or some sort of act that you can return to that gives you some sort of stability during this term.

For me, it’s a walk. Or music.

Lee said maintaining your basic routine is a good thing. You lament, but you also continue.

“I think it’s completely valid to give a moment to allow people to share how they’re feeling,” he said. “But there’s something just as important about getting back to the things you do all the time. …you will find a certain stability there.

It reminds me of an expert that I try to channel when I feel disconnected from humanity and the world. She’s not my therapist, even though she does her job very well.

The disconnect brings me to Tam Wiley, of Poisonous mushroom walks. They are certified forest guides, trainers, mentors and educators.

I discovered Tam years ago, while researching the practice of forest bathing for a book I was working on. Bathing in the forest is above all about being in nature and connecting with it; like meditation in the elements.

I admit that at first I didn’t understand. Lay down in a park and be one with nature? I can’t even meditate for five minutes in my own house. But when I joined one of Wiley’s sessions for research, I was surprised at how much better I felt. That I felt at all.

Wiley guided attendees through a session that made me hear and see things I’d never noticed, all at the Arnold Arboretum, a place I’d been a million times. I was in touch with the trees and the air around me, but I also felt at one with the people nearby.

I don’t mean to be sensitive, but I was able to feel grief, fear, and discomfort in a safe place, which helped me feel better.

Wiley said it was the best way to cope. And that’s the hardest thing to do: sitting there feeling horrible. Maybe there is a part of us that wants to get angry and volunteer somewhere, call our representatives and protest. Which is very good. But that doesn’t get us through the emotions.

“It’s really hard to do that – to just feel pain, you know? And I won’t go to ‘Everything will be fine.‘ Or, ‘Oh, we’ll roll up our sleeves, and we’ll get busy that way.‘”

This election showed people that many voters see themselves as a “me” and not a “we,” Wiley added. Meanwhile, nature therapy is a very “We” And “We» thing to try.

“We’ve evolved in the sense that, ‘Actually, I don’t need to talk to my neighbor. » I don’t need to be in relationship with the earth. I can order all my food through an app. And I don’t even need to know where the vegetables come from, that they were grown by human hands. In a way, natural therapy is a direct response to this separation,” Wiley said.

“Plants, animals and humans, we do not exist in isolation. We cannot be alone. Psychologically, forest therapy supports me, because it reminds me that we are all connected, whether we recognize it or not.

Wiley is leading private sessions and has been mulling over some sort of post-election agenda.

In the meantime, maybe this is what we all need in the days ahead, regardless of how we voted or not. To be outside, not to read this story again, to hear a breeze, to look at the autumn – and to see how things can change so quickly.

At some point this week I plan to look for a tree I stood under during the session with Wiley years ago.

I think it was spring. I remember it being very shady and serene.

Maybe we’ll all find ourselves there.

Meredith Goldstein writes the Love Letters column. You can ask her about your relationship and your mental health life at [email protected].