On Falling
“What I'm inviting is for us to take our psyches and our power back from derangement and doom.”
The month leading up to the 2024 election echoed so strongly the conversations I had as a therapist starting late in 2016 and extending into the next year. That was a time when the political climate threw a lot of folks into an urgent need to see a therapist. As a "politicized healer," I was one of many who invited these conversations.
The right wing coined the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" to make fun of liberals and lefties who they saw as overreacting to the presidency. There are days I feel that “diagnosis” is as good a name as any for how much he got under our skin, how much we became inflamed by his words and actions, the intensity with which we followed every word and every event. There was so much drama! And so much lying! And a relentless barrage of things happening and being said that broke our social and democratic norms, stirring many of us in a constant state of stress and outrage.
That said, insofar as Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, it was a product of a chaotic presidency and a media culture that profited from the dysregulation of our nervous system. When we’re stressed, afraid, or angry, it is incredibly hard to take our focus from the threat until we feel it’s settled. When the threat is pervasive or chronic, that consumes so much of our focus. Advertisers, social media algorithms, and media companies also make so much money by capturing this focus and feeding us more content that stirs stress.
Before the election, I saw TDS beginning to take hold again. My colleagues — who must have started some time after COVID — were posting with urgent requests for coaching on how to sit with political distress. There was a collective bracing for impact.
After eight years of sitting with this stress, I don't think we win when this kind of upset takes hold. To paraphrase Bruce Lee, in crisis we do not rise to our heroic imaginations, but sink to our familiar coping and survival strategies. The temptation to surrender to despair and cynicism is real, but I invite us to take a breath.
One morning, prior to the 2024 election, my aikido sensei kept calling attention to my tendency to flinch in the face of an attack. In one moment that kept lingering with me, he said, "Tony, don't fall before you're thrown." Studying martial arts is a kind of oracular experience in which the teacher offers a correction of my technique that ends up hitting far too close to home. I was thoroughly called out, and the comment lingered with me as I sat later with anxieties about the future.
Not falling before you’re thrown, on a practical level, is important because it’s annoying for your partner to collapse before you’ve actually finished the technique. You don’t get to practice the full movement, so you need your partner to stay connected as long as they can. Martially, it’s important to practice staying connected and engaged because the person throwing you might have bad technique. They might leave an opening you can exploit to gain control of the relationship. You’d miss it if you gave up and collapsed before they won.
Sensei’s correction lingered with me during the conversations I’ve had as a therapist about making plans in an uncertain future. Some clients were contemplating big, meaningful changes in life, but they weren't sure what to do if their worst fears came true in the country. But giving up on your goals and surrendering the person you want to be from fear it will be taken from you is falling before you're thrown.
Making yourself small and starting to hide for fear of future targeting is falling before you're thrown. It's tempting, and it makes sense for wanting to survive, but whom does it serve?
I don't know what will happen in the next four years, and I do not dismiss or belittle the fears many of us are bringing to this upcoming presidency. If your fears need attention and need you to take some reasonable precautions, that is a sound practice.
What I'm inviting is for us to take our psyches and our power back from derangement and doom. If you're afraid of being bullied, don't do the bully's work on their behalf. If you're afraid of losing your joy, don't throw your joy away. Don't take in the dark voices that fill you with dread and powerlessness, unless somehow that gives you liberty. Stay engaged as long as you can.
But if you do get thrown, get soft. Bracing for impact only increases the risk of harm when the impact occurs. Making your body relaxed and fluid allows more energy to move through it with less injury. Focus on going with the fall and lengthening your body to make as much contact with the ground as you can, to distribute the force of the blow so no one part of you is taking the hit. Fall safely so you can get back up and try again.
Sometimes we lose. It is normal to feel grief, shock, anger, horror, and numbness when we lose. All of those feelings deserve attention. There is also strength in accepting the loss without surrendering one’s position and values. When we lose, it’s a time to look at whether our strategies are actually working for us and whether our stories about the world are accurate.
We might want to grow more rigid and attached to our stories for fear of betraying and abandoning what is dear to us. That rigidity gets us more hurt. If you can let yourself go with the flow of energy, you are safer and more present to find opportunities to use that energy for your goals and values. If you focus on resisting the flow of energy with all your might, you’re going to take a beating, and I’m not certain it’s worth it.
What I remember from the first era of Trump, which has already begun in the second, is that too much happens all at once. Many horrible things happen, everything is a crisis, and it is impossible to track or respond to everything that is occurring. It’s time to get soft.
Surrendering to the fall is adapting to the conditions of loss. The battle you fight on the other side of loss may be nothing like the battle you hoped to win. Losing the battle does not mean your values were wrong or unworthy. It means it’s time to get soft. To adapt. To center around what matters and seek the strategy that serves it in these conditions, in this moment.
Do not fall before you’re thrown. But if you are thrown: receive the fall. Accept the loss. Return to power.
Anthony Rella
is a therapist, a writer, and a spiritual teacher in Seattle, bringing light to dark places and honoring the shadows in bright spaces. He is the author of Circling The Star (and instructor of the course of the same name), and In The Midnight Hour, both from Gods&Radicals Press. He is also the author of the upcoming Slow Magic (Llewellyn).
His website, where this essay first appeared, is here.