On Wednesday morning – after waking up in a fog from the Clonazepam (prescribed) I took at 10pm on Tuesday – I was asked to write a paper to ‘help people cope’ and to ‘ keep hope”. That could be my thing – because the stories we tell Love letters it’s all about feelings, respecting others, and finding ways to be good.

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 early days of this will be particularly unclear and complicated. There are many celebration political news. (I saw the vote totals.) Some, disappointed in our country for giving them two candidates who did not represent the values ​​they want to see in the world, already felt pain for the next four years.

That’s it, right? Pain?

Yes, it is anxiety, anger, fear and many other emotions. But mostly pain, for many.

What can we do today and in the coming days to be good? No one really knows, but some had advice for getting started.

Darshan Mehtamedical director of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, it 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 there needs to be time for all of us to figure out how we really feel.

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

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

Mehta is figuring out how to explain these choices to his 9-year-old daughter—and how it will affect him as a doctor—so he exercises that patience himself, checking his brain before taking action.

Kirk Woodring, clinical social worker and vice president of outpatient and community services for Beth Israel Lahey Health Behavioral Services, said we can trust that feeling abnormal is a normal response in the last 48 hours.

“Fear of the unknown, or maybe fear of what you Think you know, but you don’t really know,” he said. That fear can be paralyzing and you don’t know what to do. Part of what I talk to people about is: How do you get motivated to move toward the thing that really matters to you, the things you value—friends, colleagues, or family… who can support you through that process?”

Woodring said we need to be careful when it comes to behaviors that might be temporarily soothing to make sure we’re dealing with them in healthy ways.

“What I mean by that is people will go out and have a drink and feel better. And then they find that having two or three makes them feel even better, and that potentially becomes a problematic pattern,” he said. Even things like exercise and running can feel great initially, but you can overdo it.”

He also offers simple advice for now: drink water.

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

Woodring reminds me to say that if someone feels helpless, needs assistance and is struggling, they can call 988crisis hotline and recommend it to others.

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

We asked Lee what he would say to a person feeling existential dread today. Or shame, or isolation, or just plain pain and misery. How does one feel better?

The point, Lee said, is not to feel better, just to feel.

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

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

“There is, I think, an explicit kind of Christian or religious understanding of prayer, right, as God’s prayer. But there’s also prayer, more in the sense of finding some kind of grounding ritual, or some kind of act that you can go back to and that gives you some kind of stability in this term.”

For me it’s a walk. Or the music.

Lee said it’s good to stick to your basic routine. You complain, but you also move on.

“I think it’s definitely valid to take a moment to let people share how they’re feeling,” he said. “But there’s something equally important about going back to the things you do all the time. … you will find some stability there.”

This makes me think of an expert I try to channel when I feel disconnected from humanity and the world. Not my therapist, although she is very good at her job.

Logging out brings me to Tam Wiley, of Toadstool Walks. I am a certified forest guide, trainer, mentor and educator.

I found Tam years ago when I was researching the practice bathed by the forest for a book I was working on. Forest bathing means being in nature and connecting with it; like meditation in the elements.

I admit that at first, I didn’t understand. Lying in a park and being one with nature? I can’t even meditate for five minutes in my own home. But when I joined one of Wiley’s sessions for research, I was surprised at how good I felt. That I felt not at all

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

Not to be sensitive at all, but I was able to feel pain, fear, and discomfort in a safe place, which helped me feel better.

Wiley said that’s the best way to deal with it. And it is the most difficult thing to achieve – to sit still with a horrible feeling. Maybe there’s a part of us that wants to get angry and volunteer somewhere and call our representatives and protest. Which is good. But that doesn’t make us go through emotions.

“It’s really hard to do that — to just feel pain, you know? And don’t go to ‘It will be OK.‘Or,’Oh, we’re rolling up our sleeves and getting active this way.‘”

This election showed people that so many voters think of themselves as an “I,” not a “we,” Wiley added. Meanwhile, nature therapy is a very “us” and “US” thing to try.

“I’ve evolved in a way where it’s, ‘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 came from, that they were cultivated by man. There is a way that nature therapy is a direct response to this separation,” Wiley said.

“Plants, animals and humans, we do not exist in a vacuum. We can’t just be on our own. Psychologically, forest therapy feels supportive because it reminds me that we are all connected, whether we recognize it or not.”

Wiley conducts private sessions and has thought of some sort of post-election program.

In the meantime, this might be what we all need in the coming days, regardless of how we voted or not. To be outside, to stop reading this story, to hear a breeze, to watch the fall—and to see how can things change so quickly.

Sometime this week, I plan to look for a tree that I sat under during the session with Wiley years ago.

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

Maybe we’ll all meet there.

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