The Orienting and Resourcing Technique for Political Exhaustion: How I Find Calm Amidst Calamity Using Somatics
When living in fear is our baseline… Most of us feel the competing impulses to both look at AND look away from news headlines, and either choice leaves many of us with a sense of dread churned up by political stress. Some of us can quite literally feel the weight of dis-ease in our bodies. Do you worry that you are just so overwhelmed that your only choice is to become numbed out? Do your loved ones think that you talk about national and global politics way too much? Are you concerned that you are not living a full life because your attention is split between everyday tasks and all of the fears of the unknown?
I am a seasoned trauma therapist with well over 20 years in the field and I personally use the skills I am outlining here in my own daily work to reduce the impact of a bombardment of current events and news cycle headlines. I am also a busy woman with a lot on my plate! I am a mom to an awesome kiddo, I am engaged and about to start planning a wedding, and I run this fabulous group psychotherapy practice with my beloved co-founder. On top of all of that, I want to–and need to–have a life that is filled with delight and hope. During the peak months of virtual only teletherapy work in the summer of 2020, I developed a simple protocol for myself and my clients on how to work with overwhelm in the most impossible situations. In this Obsidian Journal blog post you will learn about my concrete 3-step Orienting and Resourcing Technique that you can start implementing today.
How Using Somatics Can Help You Now
The Orienting and Resourcing technique described here is an approach that I developed and is informed by the Somatic Experiencing® model of trauma recovery. Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-based trauma therapy developed by Dr. Peter Levine that helps people release and resolve the physical tension and energy that trauma can trap in the body. Instead of focusing primarily on retelling the traumatic story, SE invites gentle awareness of bodily sensations—like tightness, trembling, or warmth—as cues from the nervous system. By tracking and working with these sensations in small, manageable doses, a person gradually renegotiates their responses to stress and restores a sense of safety, regulation, and embodied presence. It’s less about “talking it out” and more about letting the body complete what it couldn’t finish when the trauma happened.
Step 1: Orient to the threat
Many of us do require a modest level of access to the facts. What is happening nationally and globally with regards to your access to healthcare, for example, truly is impacting our lives in a material way.
Being informed is important because our threat responses are giving us correct information. For many people, Supreme Court rulings and new legislative measures can create actual danger for our physical and emotional safety.
Choose your news sources wisely: find reputable outlets that provide pertinent facts but are not overtly designed to incite fear and outrage.
Track the sensations in your body when you are scrolling or listening to podcasts. We can feel a rising pressure inside when we are past our point of saturation.
Pay attention to how much media you are consuming. STOP consuming information when you are distressed or overwhelmed.
Better yet, play with finding the sweet spot where we get the correct amount of information but before we stray outside of our windows of tolerance.
Step 2: Orient to the helpers
Mr. Rogers said it best: "Always look for the helpers. There will always be people who are helping".
Even in the most isolated of times, learning about and hearing from people who are coming together to share time and resources with each other can help us think about our own agency and offer us hope.
Get to know who helps who and how in your community. You may want to join in the fun, and you may need that help yourself one day.
Watching documentaries or listening to podcasts that feature stories of community change and resilience can be inspiring.
Become a helper. I promise that helping others–in the right dose–will help you too.
Step 3: Get in community
Getting outside of our own fears and seeing people support each other is good medicine.
Social Engagement is the antidote to isolation. Seeing people’s eyes and smiles and hearing the tones of their voices helps our nervous system attune and co-regulate.
Look for opportunities that have people both very similar to you and very different from you. Similar others help us see how people in our situations cope. Spending time with people from different generations or cultures helps broaden our horizons and spark new and exciting ideas and experiences.
Support groups, churches, bio and chosen family events, team sports, music and arts performances, non-profit and grassroots organizations are all good starting places.
If you are immunocompromised, look for events that require masking or are occurring virtually.
If you are a single parent, find events that include kids where the parents can talk with each other while the kids play or find zoom opportunities after your kiddos go to bed.
Coming Back Home to a Resilient Body
Somatic Experiencing helps those of us with anxiety and traumatic stress by teaching our nervous systems how to settle after being stuck in survival mode for far too long. Instead of focusing only on thoughts or memories, we welcome small but powerful doses of attention to our body sensations—such as churning, charge, or shallow breathing—as signals of underlying activation. And that activation is really just information. Through guided awareness, befriending, and engaging in a slow release of that stored energy, we will build capacity for distress tolerance, complete unfinished stress responses, and come home to our bodies with a restored sense of safety and regulation. Over time, this can reduce hypervigilance, panic, and emotional overwhelm, helping our bodies feel like a steadier, safer place to inhabit once again.
Rapid Access to Relief through Somatic Experiencing
Your providers at Obsidian Care Collective, PLLC are veteran Somatic therapists and we are cross trained in a number of modalities to support your nervous system in accessing resolution when your body’s alarm system is blaring. We are poised and ready to be of service as you learn how to come home to your body.
Schedule your free 30 minute consultation today
We provide SE to our therapy clients and we provide support to SE, DARe, and SSHP students seeking personal sessions and consultations towards certification. To read more about Somatic Experiencing offerings at Obsidian Care Collective, follow THIS LINK
Somatic Experiencing International (SEI) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, the educational and humanitarian home for Somatic Experiencing. To learn more about the training program or find a practitioner in the SEI directory follow THIS LINK
