We’re All Mad Here

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries hat-makers would routinely use mercury nitrate during production, and exposure to this metal over time caused these tradesmen to go slightly insane. Hence the phrase “mad as a hatter.” In its original meaning, mad meant “troubled in mind” or demented. The meaning was later morphed to include anger.

Anxiety disorders have shot through the roof in the past two years. And so has anger. I feel like everyone is just walking around ready to unleash their rage on whoever is there. It’s so unhealthy. We live in a society that is overwrought with fear, and people don’t know what to do with that energy. Our masculine society tells us to ‘suck it up’ or to ‘get over it.’ That isn’t actually how emotions work at all. You can’t think you way through an emotion. Emotions are felt in the body. And if we don’t learn how to sit with our ugly feelings, they will eventually drive us all mad.

Crazy Town

We can already see this happening. The name ‘Karen’ has become a visual example of anger gone horribly wrong. White women are particularly fragile, and it’s directly correlated to white supremacy. They feel attacked because they have never faced this type of oppression before, not like the other minorities in this world. What do you do when you get attacked? You go on the defensive. I know that’s what I do. I lash out from the place of hurt and fear, when I should be investigating why I am feeling triggered in the first place.

Emotions tell us things. We aren’t supposed to act out of them. I wish I had known this years ago. It probably would have saved me a lot of embarrassing moments, moments where I hurt others out of my own ignorance. I dissociated from most of my emotions for years out of pure survival.

When certain emotions don’t feel safe to express, we hide them. Men tend to hide from the ‘effeminate emotions,’ like sadness, which is so absolutely dumb. Crying releases a neurochemical into your body that acts as a natural pain reliever. You are literally depriving yourself of the body’s version of oxy. I wonder if that’s why they say women can handle pain better? Men are struggling to bear to pain and not show “weakness” at the same time. Women are “allowed” to cry through the pain. Huh? Makes you wonder.

Rage Against

Women on the other hand are taught not to respond in forms of anger. Repressed rage never ends well. It’s like shaking up a bottle of soda and trying to put the cap back on before it volcanos all over the place. I know people are angry, and quite frankly they should be. But reacting to a situation is not the same thing as responding to a situation. I have personally fucked this up more times than I care to admit.

Anger is a message saying that an important rule or standard has been violated. It shows us what our boundaries are. However they are supposed to be acted upon, not acted out. This is where Karen is fucking it up. If you pay attention, she is actually acting out of fear and hurt. Underneath anger is typically a hurt that people either haven’t yet realized, or they are actively trying to avoid. This leads to projecting emotions onto undeserving people.

I have done it. We all have. The difference lies in the people who are willing to sit with that and work through it, versus the people who want to play the victim card. I was the latter, and I am actively working on unfucking my programming. And boy is this a bumpy road!

Caught up in Your Tea

We get so wrapped up in our own pain that we sometimes forget that other people are also hurting and suffering too. Humans are not made to deal with this much tragedy being thrust at us from all angles. Our nervous systems are so ramped up that we have essentially gone into survival mode, tunnel vision. My problems are the only problems, and everyone is out to get me. The irony is that we are all thinking that. So if we are all thinking that, than we aren’t actually thinking about each other. Nobody is out to get anybody, except the greedy assholes at the top.

Here’s the thing: this shit has always been going on. We just didn’t know about it. Now we do know, and we can’t turn it off. What we can do though, is to turn it down a notch. Trust me when I say that there are days when I wish I could crawl back into the matrix and pretend that I don’t know about what is going on in the world. But I can’t do that.

My morning routine has become a spiritual practice for me. Tarot and runes have created a safe space for me to contemplate my feelings and the experiences that surround them. Daily yoga and meditation help get me back into my body, and out of my head. Running grounds me in nature, and gives me the opportunity to pound through my anger or anxiety. I do all of these things before I meet the world. It’s that whole filling up your cup before giving your energy to anyone else.

Mad love, Jenna