"How was your week?"

Simple greetings and check-ins have become such loaded questions.

I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard that EMTs have stopped asking people who regain consciousness who the president is. It’s too much of a loaded question now. What if someone groans and rolls their eyes and the EMTs can’t tell if that’s the pain of knowledge or the pain of, just physical pain I guess? Perhaps between 2020 and now if someone answered “Trump” they couldn’t tell if that person was missing time or just a conspiracy theorist, I don’t know. I guess what I’m saying is a lot of questions are really loaded now. Look me taking a long time to say the one thing. A lot of questions are really loaded now.

I’ve experienced a mini version of this. For example, I’d ask a client “How was your week?” After I had to reschedule them due to LA fires and they just went through a storm. I can’t always tell if I’m doing the right thing. If a client wants to vent, I’m here, but if they’d prefer not to think about certain things, am I reminding them? I don’t know. I’ve been asking. I’ve been figuring out what each person needs in order to be in the moment with me.

In order to recharge in certain ways, we HAVE to be in the moment, especially when in conversation with others. We HAVE to force the news cycle out of our minds somehow and really connect with one another, or with the activities we use to relax and recharge. We have to be sensitive to others’ verbal and nonverbal communications and use them as a guide for how this person prefers to navigate heavy times and loaded questions. These preferences may change depending on someone’s mood. It’s complicated. We’re gonna fuck up. But we MUST accept that and do what it takes to stay connected right now. We must stay in the moment if possible.

If intrusive thoughts come when you’re in conversation with a loved one, try a small physical action you can do in public to remind yourself to get back into your body, back into the now, back into listening. Something like curling your toes or feeling the insides of your pockets. You can also try Dissolving Thought when these things bother you at home. Remind yourself that no matter how scary the future seems, you cannot predict it. All you have is now. And your current relationships will ground you in that fact. Now, more than ever, it’s important to strengthen those connections and find out how loved ones are handling things in order to help them, and ourselves.

This may be more rambly than most of my posts, because it was a spur of the moment thing (and yes that’s my excuse for publishing a rough draft, but it’s also true.)