I called my talk Self-Care is An Act of Resistance: Shifting the Fight-or-Flight Response to Empathy-or-Action Response and here’s why. The main idea is that neither “fighting” nor “fleeing” are sustainable. More than that, they are responses we can move away from, we can evolve beyond. We often hear that our brains are hard-wired for fight-or-flight, that “we evolved this way,” but we know now that we continue to evolve. Our brains can be rewired. How can we evolve beyond fight-or-flight? By choosing to move towards two new responses: empathy and action. And I believe this starts with self-care.
The Power of Empathy and Action
I woke up the morning after the election to find over 100 messages in my inbox and via text with such a tone of despair. We had all worked hard, but so much more work remains. I started to respond, one by one, to the messages reminding everyone that they have PERMISSION to feel this way. It is okay to cry. To be sad. Disappointed. Tired. And in order to not add a secondary layer of emotion to everything we’re feeling— namely, guilt—we all have permission to pause, to reset, to breathe. It may feel inappropriate to take time to rest, or to seek out pleasure, or even indulge in some positivity in the midst of our heated social, political, and environmental climate. But I want you all to know that it’s crucial for us to acknowledge the importance of our own self-care and to act upon it. Self-care is not frivolous; self-care is a radical act of love. Yes, there is still work to be done. A lot of work to be done. But we don’t need to do it today. Today we can rest. Tomorrow we can rest. And then the next day and the next. We can pre-game for the holidays and think about all that we have to be grateful for, personally, and collectively. And then, those who are ready can rise up, dust off, unravel and lift up the rest of us. Self-care is a movement in and of itself. It’s a movement of love amidst defeat, of kindness in the face of loss as well as victory. It’s declaring yourself as self-deserving of emotional agency. Self-care is an act of resistance.
