Quick Take
Santa Cruz therapist Lisa Herendeen believes we can all learn from the humorous social media jabs Gov. Gavin Newsom is hurling at President Donald J. Trump as a lesson in reclaiming power from a bully. She connects the current political dynamic to her work helping clients and students recognize and use their own power in difficult situations. Drawing from psychology and trauma theory, she argues that managing one’s emotional “activation” and staying grounded in the body allows for clearer, more creative responses to conflict. Humor, compassion and embodied awareness are key to standing up to bullies, she writes, in politics and everyday life.
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When Gov. Gavin Newsom and his staff started posting funny images, memes and tweets poking at President Donald J. Trump (using lots of capital letters), I started feeling like there was more oxygen in the world. I was so impressed that I set myself on a journey to understand why.
I definitely liked it because it suddenly felt like the fight was more fair. The Obama-era mantra of “when they go low, we go high” has not been working with this president, and the alternate humor/mocking tactic is hitting a chord. I think it’s because Newsom has stepped outside the politician decorum box and met Trump in the world of absurdity and punched back.
Or maybe it’s because he took his power back. California is a powerful state, after all.
One friend commented that Newsom and his staff had found a way to get power back without capitulating or reacting with anger.
Everyone seems to have bully stories these days. At work, at home, in daily interactions.
In my profession as a therapist, I help people with family members, work colleagues, bosses, friends and neighbors who are difficult, so Newsom’s win was especially interesting to me. It often takes real soul-searching to figure out what power you actually have in a situation and then embody that power, like Newsom has been doing.
I once supervised an intern at an agency with a very difficult director who was upset that the university the intern attended required face-to-face client work rather than online computer design work and data collection for the internship. The director also had a personal vendetta against the intern for reasons that are murky.
One day, the director came in very late to a meeting, where the university representative, the intern and I were waiting. The director was wearing an arm brace. She snapped at the intern immediately and accused her of not caring about her health.
The intern skillfully said to the director, “So you are not feeling well this morning, and wished that I had noticed? Is that right?”
And she kept up with gentle inquiry throughout the tense meeting.
I was proud because a week earlier, my therapist friends and I had spent a morning at my house coaching the intern on active listening. Afterward, the intern told me that although she was unnerved, she began to feel more grounded when she used the active listening or sympathetic inquiry.
Standing up to bullies is hard and how you do it depends on who you are and who they (the bullies) are and how much power you each have. Each bully situation is different, but the key factor is you. If you give yourself support and skills, then you can come up with creative solutions, as Newsom has done.
The bullies will run you, if you don’t learn to manage the trauma you bring. Just look at our Congress – the members are so afraid of losing their jobs and favor with Trump that they have forgotten that they have power. They are not thinking clearly. I wish they would all go to therapy.
LISA HERENDEEN
The problem I find is that sometimes clients have trauma that makes it hard for them to see situations clearly.
The bullies will run you, if you don’t learn to manage the trauma you bring. Just look at our Congress – the members are so afraid of losing their jobs and favor with Trump that they have forgotten that they have power. They are not thinking clearly. I wish they would all go to therapy.
Humor, light-heartedness and compassionate listening is good advice for dealing with bullies. Using your own strengths is also important. If I flow with my natural kindness and curiosity, I can often calm a situation.
My son, a devoted local surfer, uses a combination of humor and respect to navigate tense situations in the water. One day, a notoriously grumpy, Santa Cruz surfer went off on him for “stealing a wave.” My son softened the situation with humor and the laughter diffused the tension. The two eventually became friends.
Of course, this is very hard to do if you are activated.
Maybe you have noticed that you have no sense of humor when you are triggered? This is because we retreat into our more primitive brains when activated. You need to be in your neocortex in order to have a good sense of humor and to be creative and present.
So how do we do that and stop the patterns of capitulation or reactive anger in today’s mean world? As you can see from the example with the intern, you may need support internally or externally.
In the 1970s, Peter Levine, a zoologist who went on to study humans as a psychologist, noticed that animals get attacked and have traumas all the time, just like people, but they don’t seem to get dragged down from the incidents like we do. He set out to figure out how they do it and why we humans get stuck playing the same traumas over and over in our heads, many years later.
Head is the key word here. We are stuck in our heads and worship our thinking. Animals use their body wisdom to move through upsetting events. Levine’s 1997 book, “Waking the Tiger,” was a bestseller and has had a huge influence on psychology. I – and almost all the therapists I know – now incorporate techniques that focus on a felt sense of trauma in the body.
When my life was at a particularly troubling point about 15 years ago, I went to a 5Rhythms dance class and attempted to “outdance” my worrying thoughts. That dance practice was heavily influenced by people like Levine and the wisdom of accessing the body. Back then, all I knew was that it made me more open and creative, which helped me get through that dark period. In Santa Cruz, dances like this happen on Monday, Tuesday nights and Sunday morning at the Tannery.
Recently, at Insight Santa Cruz meditation center, Dawn Neal, the lead teacher, has been talking about the body and achieving flow states. Buddhism has always followed this body-based wisdom. My fellow students all have their favorite ways of achieving flow, such as farming, writing, singing, chanting, connecting with other humans or animals, playing music, running and swimming in the ocean.
I guess my point is, whatever pulls you out of the tense, non-flowing, left-brain, worrying, anxious mind is going to help you stand up to bullies. And it is going to help you know what your power is and exercise it.
And that is important because bullies are everywhere, not just Washington, D.C.
Lisa Herendeen, LCSW, M.Ed., is a private practice psychotherapist working with couples, families and individuals in Santa Cruz. Before she became a therapist, she was a writer for various political organizations in Washington, D.C.