Self-Help Practices

For when you forget how to be present with yourself

I’ve been settling into my new schedule which is way more jam-packed than usual, and also contains a lot of newness, which can balloon an hour into multiple hours, just with managing all the fear that I must be somehow doing it all wrong. Sometimes you have to pull back and see what you’re doing more accurately instead of plowing ahead. But, seeing means acknowledging, and knowing what we want to do with that acknowledgement isn’t always easy. I realized a few things lately, maybe it will be helpful for you and where you’re at.

I am in a Trauma Studies MFT program. That means every semester I have a class that directly discusses forms of trauma, every week. This semester it’s Complex Trauma, which is potentially something everyone experiences along a spectrum, because it refers to ongoing trauma. Damage is done by the traumatic act(s), but the real destruction is done by the fact that it keeps going. So, one could say that bearing witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the West Bank, and now Lebanon, is a form of complex trauma. Bearing witness to or being directly affected by ICE raids/LGTBQ oppression/the loss of hard-fought rights such as abortion care and voting access is complex trauma. On top of whatever personal struggles we walk with everyday.

And yes, I am learning how to treat and address and support complex trauma when it shows up in clients, but I realized that I’m not actively counteracting the bummer feeling that thinking about and talking about trauma constantly is creating in me.

So I’ve been working hard at not working so hard and making space for recovery.

Play is one thing that we lose access to when we are struggling. Acknowledging that life is currently highly stressful on multiple fronts means that we can look at what we are missing with all of these stressors. We’re probably missing play. And I’m thinking about how to turn off anxiety without shutting off completely and surrendering to brain rot, which can feel like a nice and easy shortcut, but it’s junk food for your mind and nervous system, and won’t do the trick. And, to be honest, nothing is going to do the trick and make insecurity and fear and anxiety go away completely. But we can manage ourselves a lot better than switching between being activated in a heightened way and shutting off and doomscrolling.

I was playing with clay with some friends, started with one idea, and then a chance turn of the hand took me in a whole different direction.

I plan to glaze these in a metallic silver and use them as napkin rings. False ironwork made from ceramic, because I love trompe l’oeil ceramics (see: my dagger incense holders and dice coasters).

Before this clay play date last Sunday, I cleared my whole day by finishing all my homework early so that I wouldn’t be preoccupied by work lingering in the back of my mind. And it felt great to feel free to go along with wherever the day was gonna take us. I was able to play without feeling guilty, and that guilt-free experience is what was actually helpful. When I look at these future napkin rings, I see the outcome of true release into the play space, with confidence that allowed for relaxed focus and without any time anxiety or feelings of “should”.

Over the past week I’ve also been putting aside time every day to 1. pull a tarot card and write some notes about what it’s saying to me, and 2. write about something that just wants to come out, like an exploration on flies (included below in case you’re interested but no pressure to read!) — just letting it come out and playing (again!) with words and ideas and imagery and feelings. Feeling the pleasure of putting words together, especially in a non-clinical way, since all my papers for school have to use clinical language. I’ve been reading before bed instead of watching TV, even though my TV has been mostly “educational”, meaning I’m binging the show Couples Therapy. I’ve been listening to music instead of podcasts, and of course, as always, limiting my social media usage.

It is, to be honest, a little lonely. For all the good that has come from my mind because of the emptiness, the emptiness is uncomfortable. It’s not a social loneliness, I’ve been social, but it’s the contrast of being alone with your mind after you’ve been cramming it full of other people’s ideas and opinions and productions. I know that the emptiness is fertile and is necessary to connect with my own creativity. But the huge amount of content out there is seductive for a reason. When we work hard, we want to play hard. And play has become its own type of work, its own production. Leisure has become something to accomplish, to consume, to have. Not to do. We can actually do anything we want, with just our own little minds, but it feels so blah in comparison to the flashiness of what’s happening externally. It feels like there is inspiration everywhere, but it’s a different type of inspiration than what comes from inside. When I first moved to LA, when I felt uninspired I would go on hikes, and pretty soon I’d be stopping to write notes down, as a spigot inside opened just from the movement of my body and the influence of the natural elements. Now, I find myself looking, looking, looking at all this stuff that’s on the internet. And it all looks cool and I wanna buy it all and own it all and I find myself just curating instead of inventing. So, it’s very inspiring for interior designing my imaginary mansion with all my imaginary money, but it doesn’t really work to get my own ideas out of my mind, nervous system, emotional field, energy, and into the world in some way.

We all know comparison is the thief of joy, but what creates joy, what is the opposite of comparison? Acceptance, perhaps? Being in the middle of a moment, feeling free to make connections, going to a deeper level every time a connection lights up in the brain, becoming more and more alive though the building blocks of your own thoughts and ideas, accepting the unlimited variation inside each us.

6/6/26 — Flies

When it’s warm out I leave the door open so my dog can sunbathe outside and come inside on his own when he gets too hot. Naturally, flies come in and make their home inside my home. My boyfriend hates them and got a bug zapper so he can destroy them when they buzz around his office while he’s working. The other day there were like 6 flies circling around and I got the zapper but I couldn’t bring myself to kill any of them. They die in like a day anyway, I see their corpses laying on the window sills, close to escape but not quite there. Why should I hasten their demise because the noise they make is annoying? They follow me around and buzz loudly like they’re trying to tell me something. So what it is that they’re trying to say? Are they reminding me that connection between living things is something vital, as they follow me into the bedroom when I’m trying to sleep. I notice that they sleep too, or at least stop circling around and sit still for a while. But why shouldn’t a fly get to sleep too? It makes me think about all the other insects— do the spindly daddy long legs in the corners of my ceilings sleep? Does a caterpillar sleep? Do cockroaches sleep, waking up to their own personal Kafkan horror every morning?

Flies have associations with death and disease, decay and rot. But what makes them annoying is their hyperactivity. I don’t find them gross, in fact I love to draw flies, with their stained glass wings and dark compact bodies. But why do they have to loudly announce their presence, constantly and consistently? The hum of a mosquito is worse, because you know they’re out to get you. A fly doesn’t want to get you, but they’re always hanging around. It’s like they really wanna hang out with me when I’m trying to have alone time. Chattering endlessly, not getting the hint that I’m not feeling social right now.