Despair Is Not an Action Plan by Noa Heiman
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Image credit: Audrey Martin
The attack on every possible aspect of Americans’ lives since Trump and Co. came to power seems overwhelming, despairing and out of control. It used to be that the Republican party took pride in taking a “hands off government” approach, yet since the recent administration came to power, I cannot remember a government that meddled so much with every aspect of its citizens’ lives in the U.S. since McCarthyism. Our wombs, our gender identity, our access to science, our jobs, our personal safety, and our national security, are all up for grabs.
As a therapist, I see many patients retriggered with childhood traumas, feeling they are again in the grip of an abusive, self-absorbed, unpredictable parent. As a therapist working specifically at a student mental health clinic, I see PhD students fearing for their future as scientists, and for their present, not knowing if they will receive funding to finish their PhD’s. Many of them fear that even if they do graduate, there will be so many applicants for each position in the private sector, due to so many budget cuts and layoffs, that they are not sure whether it even makes sense to try to graduate. As a human I observe with fear and disgust the normalization of dehumanizing, othering, polarizing one-dimensional rhetoric, where truth seems to no longer matter. As a climate activist I am horrified by the lack of care, the hubris in dismissing science, and the destruction of checks and balances, not just of democracy, but of whatever meager climate regulations were already in place. These are possibly the most critical years in history for climate change, before we reach tipping points. Yet, it seems that the Trump administration cannot understand anything that involves complexity, non-linear or interwoven phenomenon, and believe they are smarter than nature and science. Despite what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk think, there is no planet B, and we are not smarter or better than nature, we ARE nature.
Yet despite this bleak introduction I still have hope. I grew up in Israel and left many years ago as I lost hope there. For every left wing liberal like myself that has 1.25 kids, the right wing, so tied to religion, so tied to government, has exponentially more. It was becoming palpable that progressive liberals are becoming a minority. Religious accoutrements and discourse became more and more embedded in the landscape and culture, along with an increasing sense of Jewish supremacy.
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Image credit: Audrey Martin
In the U.S. there are major differences that I believe will not allow this country to be completely taken over by a leader who is a non-democratic wolf in sheep’s clothing, even though the similarities between Trump and Netanyahu are striking. They use the same playbook of polarizing, dehumanizing, paranoid rhetoric. They are both drowning in conflict of interest between their legal battles and their civil duty to their country. They are both colonizers, bullies, and lack integrity and basic empathy. But I do think we still stand a chance to fight back in the U.S. Demographically the U.S seems much more split in the middle between left and right. And certain states like Colorado, NY and California for example, are so predominantly blue that certain federal laws will not “fly”. Additionally, I believe that Trumpism won not just because the right is getting stronger, but because the left has failed its voters. It’s hard to understand the paradox of how a bunch of white privileged billionaire men are now the so-called voice of the working class. Or how a pathological liar is the so-called voice of authenticity. The Democratic party has possibly morphed to being perceived as elitist and perhaps out of touch. It was quite shocking to learn after these elections that no small number of people who voted for Obama historically, now voted for Trump (the silver lining of this fact is that some Americans don’t always vote by rigid party alignment).
I believe the pendulum can swing back for America. But only if Democrats learn from their mistakes. Only if the people who are appalled by Trump and say they want to move to a different country, stay, and fight back. Only if PhD students graduate. And only if scientists, doctors, artists, deep thinkers, conscientious objectors, climate activists, human rights activists, abortion providers, LGBTQ+ people etc. etc. stay, so that we don’t lose demographically. They/We are needed more than ever, and I implore us not to pack our bags yet.
As for us mental health providers specifically, our job is to hold the space to keep thinking, to be able to converse and connect, to maintain our reality testing, in a world of post truth, for our clients and beyond. The Trump administration wants to attack our ability to think, it is creating chaos as part of its playbook. We need to resist the urge to be complicit.
As the first steps of the judicial coup in Israel began to take shape, with its current elected government, a saying started circulating on group texts among Israelis, stating that “despair is not an action plan”. As mental health professionals and climate activists, this should be our slogan. We need to speak up, write, go out to the streets, educate, object, and mostly talk to one another, if we want to save our country, our humanity, our planet.
Author's Bio
Noa Heiman is an Associate Professor at the department of psychiatry, University of Colorado. She is the co-director of the psychotherapy scholar track – a track offered to psychiatry residents who want to specialize in psychotherapy. Dr. Heiman also works as a clinical psychologist at the student and resident mental health clinic at the University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus.
Dr. Heiman is a member of CPA-NA. Her latest publication “Climate change in and out of the therapy room” appeared in Nature Climate Change.
Image Credit
Audrey Martin, MFT
Climate Psychology Alliance of North America
Executive Committee member
Group Hub Coordinator
audreymartin@climatepsychology.us
