As the world tilts toward disaster…staying sane against all odds

        In the last few days, I’ve been listening to conservative and freedom-oriented political analysts, some I deeply respect, warning us that disaster will rain down on our nation in the next weeks before or immediately after the election.  If Donald Trump wins, the progressives and globalists will cause chaos, blame it on us, and prevent Trump from taking office. If Trump loses, the same progressives and globalists will crush the nation we love. 

            My closest relationships are with my family, then my therapy clients, and then with colleagues in the freedom movement.  Many are expressing or showing signs of feeling overwhelmed about the coming election, mostly around “What if they steal the election again from Trump?” 

            I share these fears. But I have some redemptive suggestions about how to face whatever lies ahead.

The First Step in Handling “Emergencies” of Any Size 

            What is most important to keep in mind when initially facing any kind of potential or actual catastrophe?  It can be the election being stolen again, the end of our constitutional republic, the invasion of illegal aliens, World War III, and/or economic collapse. It also includes very personal challenges, such as conflicts with loved ones or friends, crises in trusting one another, parenting issues, financial problems, and the seeming impossibility of getting family members to see the dangers as we see them.  The first step in handling emergencies applies to every kind and degree of crisis that threatens us.  

            Perhaps even more surprising, it even applies to split second threats, when your car starts skidding on ice or you’re about to fall to the ground.

            So what is this “miraculous” Step 1 in facing all “emergencies?”

         Whenever you are faced with an emergency, don’t have one of your own.

             However threatening an event seems, from the breakup of a treasured relationship to the coming election, never react like there is an emergency.  Instead, become alert to evaluating what you need to do.

            Here’s a simple example of this way of being.  My wife Ginger was driving us home one night during a snowstorm in the country. We reached the top of a hill and as we started down a herd of deer appeared in our headlights crossing at the bottom of the slope. Although I was in the passenger seat, I reflexly slammed my foot to the floor where the brake would have been if I were the driver.

            But Ginger, without a hint of panic, began to slowly exert increasing pressure on the brakes as we barreled down the hill, timing it so well that when we finally came to a stop at the bottom, a straggler from the herd, a yearling, was standing still, inches in front of our bumper. Perhaps because there were no screeching brakes to frighten it, the young deer turned its head and put its chin on the hood of the car, looking at us with curiosity through the windshield.

            Then, when it was safe, Ginger started shaking, in a sense letting herself have a reaction to the emergency after it was over.  

            The message, again: When an emergency looms, never have an emergency. Don’t panic! Don’t let your emotions get out of control. Don’t get angry.  Don’t go numb.  Don’t get confused.  Don’t threaten to hurt yourself or anyone else. Clearly put, don’t lapse into helplessness. Instead, be as ‘normal’ as you can, and beyond that, determine to be your best and most effective self—Period!

            And remember, this is true whether you or a loved one are feeling overwhelmed by today’s world events or whether your child is in a panic because he or she cannot find a toy.

            If you begin, right now, reminding yourself, and repeating to yourself whenever you feel uneasy or threatened, in your own words, something like, “I won’t panic, I won’t become helpless, I won’t feel overwhelmed by anything I face.” You will quickly see it works miracles and then with hard work, it becomes a new way of life—an approach we are sorely in need of when faced with what is going on today in America. It will allow you to bring out your best and most effective self under most or all circumstances.

            Easier said than done? Of course it is. But it can be done by working to develop the discipline. Most very successful people who contribute positively to the world have developed this capacity to avoiding having a personal emergency when a seeming emergency is looming and the best have also learned Step II to which we now turn.

Avoiding Conventional Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

            I’m a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist, and one of the greatest threats I face in professional situations is a patient who is a “threat to himself or to others.” When a patient seems on the verge of suicide or violence, most modern psychiatrists literally “have an emergency.” They go into a kind of panic mode where all they can think of is giving the patient more drugs, certifying the patient into a hospital against their will, and even inflicting electroshock (ECT) on them. 

            When a psychiatrist, family doctor or therapist, pushes psychiatric drugs on you during an emergency, whether it’s caused by the death of a loved one or for no reason you can yet ascertain, don’t start taking the drugs. They do more harm than good. When faced with a crisis or difficult times, you need your brain and mind working drug-free to be alert, rational, and loving. Psychiatric drugs, like all psychoactive substances, blunt your mind and interfere with alertness, reason and love. But it can be very dangerous to stop psychiatric drugs too quickly or without knowledge and other people to support the process.  To meet these needs, I have written Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families.

            And don’t believe it if your therapists says about “first you have to love yourself” or “first you have to take care of yourself.” That’s a dead end. Instead, in times of crisis, open your heart to becoming a more rational and loving human being than ever before in your life—and then wonderful things will begin to happen for you and everyone you touch.   And if your therapist doesn’t help you focus on personal responsibility, they are missing a major point.  And furthermore, if you have a belief in God and your therapist is not encouraging and even guiding you in turning to God, you are missing one of your great opportunities for taking charge of your mind and the conduct of  your life. 

The Second Step in Facing “Emergencies”

            Since I try to never do any of the harmful things other psychiatrists and mental health practitioners regularly do, I need better steps to take in emergencies or challenging circumstances. Here is Step 2 in handling threatening events:

       In seeming emergencies, remain rational and loving at all times.

            Embed this principle into your very self—that in emergencies involving people, whether it is very personal or political on a large scale where the world seems ready to implode, don’t have an emergency. Instead become alert and act on reason and love.

            When you know you will never have your own emergency, no matter how frightening that threat seems, you will be able to express your reasonableness or rationality, and your caring or love, in routine ways without fanfare. You will be able to do it, even under pressure, without overdoing it, if you are not having an emergency.  You will be so aware of the fears and needs of other persons that there will have no time to have an emergency of your own. Because you will be focused on how they feel, you won’t overstep their boundaries or offend them. Your very presence will communicate, “We can handle this together.”  You will have what I call a “healing presence” in my book, The Heart of Being Helpful. 

            Your adrenaline may still flow but it won’t overflow.  Your body won’t feel out of control and neither will you.

            In some, these are the most basic steps or principles for facing whatever the future holds for us:  When a “emergency” looms, don’t have an emergency yourself, simple become alert and respond with reason and love.

            Some of us have been taught to focus on saving ourselves first in an emergency. Almost  everyone has been heard what to do as a passenger during an emergency in an airplane: “Put on your own oxygen mask before you put on your child’s.” Sounds reasonable. After all, if you don’t save yourself first, you can’t save others. But in reality, that’s not how highly functioning, rational and loving parents usually react in emergencies. They take care of their children first.

Moral and Spiritual Lessons from the First Trump Assassination Attempt

            Rational and loving people routinely set priorities beyond self-preservation during severe emergencies. For example, we are aware that at the first assassination attempt aimed at Donald Trump, how a father, Corey Comperatore, threw himself over his wife and daughter to save their lives and was killed by a shot aimed at the President. We deeply admire Corey for that.  As a fireman, saving other people was part of his identity. And while that may have prepared him to act swiftly, I suspect that by his very nature as a father, he would have done the same thing, regardless of his training.    

            And at the same rally in which the shots were fired, secret service agents ignored their own safety and threw themselves on top of President Trump, risking their lives for him, some out of duty and some out of devotion, or both. 

            And what about President Trump?  He pulled himself free of the secret service to stand up and shake his fist in the air to show he was alive, undaunted, and continuing to fight.

             So none of these people were thinking of themselves first, if at all, and we admire them for thinking of others first in an emergency.

            When survival is among the least of our values, especially compared to our highest ideals, we human beings tend to thrive. The kind of people who risk their lives for others are rarely if ever feeling suicidal. Instead, they tend to be people who love people, and therefore they tend to feel relatively good about their lives.  Even if they die, they have lived better than most.

            But what about ordinary people who aren’t trained as emergency responders or secret service, or who don’t feel especially heroic? Ordinary folks were there. Tens of thousands of them! The group was more conservative, patriotic, freedom-loving and religious than many other  Americans, but you probably hold many similar ideals that do indeed make us more rational and loving at times of grave threats.  So how did they, those people like us, conduct themselves?

            Now this is very important. Crowds fired upon are expected to panic and to scatter as fast as they can, running from the gunshots. At the least, they are supposed to get down flat on the ground or behind a barrier until the danger passes. 

            But what did they actually do?  It was incredible. There was no noticeable panic. No reaction like you expect in a theater or stadium when someone shouts fire, let alone starts shooting.  In fact, even while the gunfire was taking place, many were standing and pointing in the direction of the shooter. Remarkably, the whole crowd, nearly as one, stood up and continued to stand to see if their beloved Donald Trump had survived! And when President Trump pulled himself above the strong arms and shoulders of the secret service to gesture to the rally, he was not only letting us know he was safe, but he was also demonstrating we were still on his mind and he was continuing to fight for our freedom.

            People are embarrassed to think or talk about it that way, and I was too. But then I realized, Trump wasn’t shaking his fist just to remind us he was alive and that we should keep on fighting. He was also showing us that we were on his mind, even as his life was in danger.  He was not stuck inside himself in terror and or even in self-protection—he was reaching out to us!  And as we soon learned, he was doing this after being grazed by a bullet and hearing other bullets whistling by his head. 

            In the most dire kind of “emergency, Trump wasn’t having a personal emergency!  And he would not let the secret service behave as if he were in an emergency!  He continued to pull himself up to gesture toward us as they hustled him into the car to escape!

            At this moment of crisis, Donald Trump never lost sight of the people he loves, the American people.  And why wouldn’t he love the American People? We, the people with a strong American identity—those of us who believe in our nation’s Founding values, in liberty, and in God—deeply care about him both as an individual and in his courageous role of standing up for us and our shared values. We are the people who risked their lives to stand erect amid gunfire to point out the shooter and we are the people who stood amid the danger in the hope of seeing that President Trump was still alive. 

The Biggest Life Lesson: Taking Care of Each Other

            So when the world around us seems on the verge of falling completely apart and collapsing on our heads—when the worst political catastrophe of all time seems about to befall our nation—what do we do?  And what if our loved ones start to feel the pressure of the coming election day and the potential anti-American violence surrounding it, and they are lapsing into uncertainty and even despair?

            We should act like we did when they tried to assassinate Trump the first time. We do not feel sorry and frightened for ourselves. Instead, speaking metaphorically, we look out for those we love to see if they are in the line of fire and if we need to fall on them to protect them.

            In short, we do not have an emergency and we remain rational and loving. 

            Instead of feeling helpless, we spend time with those we love and care about. We show them with our  rational and loving presence, a reassurance that we can handle whatever the world throws at us. Many times, when the threats are brought to light and honestly identified, our shared reason and love can transform these seemingly overwhelming events into something manageable.  We can even transform them into important challenges that create greater bonding among us. In this case, despite the tragic injuries and deaths, this crowd experienced an enormous celebration of the President’s survival and their mutual bonding, inspiring the freedom movement. 

            Do not deny the looming possibilities of tragedy for  us and America. Yes, these are dangerous times. Despite that, do not withdraw within yourself or have your own emergency and panic.  We are all tempted at times to feel helpless and perhaps even sorry for ourselves.

            Remember that here in America we have been relatively protected from dangerous times, like the collapse of our society or a war on our own soil.  But large scale conquest, conflict and mayhem have been bane of humanity since we began living in civilization. There have always been brutal struggles for power between nations and empires, and within them as well. Our own nation went through a revolution to win our independence from the British Empire, then endured a second attack from the British when they burned Washington DC in the War of 1812, and finally a tragic Civil War that tore us apart.

The Third Step in Overcoming “Emergencies”

            Most emergencies involve other people, whether it’s a person hit by a car or a looming political catastrophe, such as we are now facing. This brings us to Step 3:

As you become alert, rational and loving, look around you, and find others than yourself to care about, help, or share life with.

            Reaching out to others in an emergency, when you are acting out of reason and love, is likely to lead you to groups of people trying to help each other and to deal with the threatening circumstances, whether it involves personal issues or political ones. This is how America works best, when people with shared values based on the Founding Principles of the nation get together to solve their mutual concerns and circumstances.   It’s a simple truth that when you have become more alert, rational, and loving, and start to reach out to others, you will begin noticing people you want to share these values with and they will begin noticing you. 

The Fourth Step in Dealing with Any and All Emergencies

            In the natural of process of taking these three steps, you will meet likeminded people as friends and colleagues. But Step 4 goes even further.  If you do Step 4, you will never have to be so alone again:

       Dare to believe in a rational and loving God.

            We never have to be alone in a crisis. I believe God is with us especially when we need Him most. I believe He wants us to take care of each other, especially when we feel overwhelmed by each other and by life itself.

            If you have a firm belief in a good God, you will know how to use your belief in a loving God. If it’s new to you, at quiet moments consider asking God to help you with these ideas by giving you the strength to live by them. I believe they are very consistent with the spirit of Judaism and Christianity.

            I further believe that empathy and love keeps us sane at critical times. It’s impossible to love and care for others and, at the same time, to lapse into a state of helpless overwhelm.  Focusing on others with genuine love will always bring us back to reality—to making rational assessments and to making good decisions.

            Always remember, there is a difference between who you are and what is happening around you. We have very limited power to improve the wider world around us, although many of us are dedicated to trying.  But we have considerable capacity to improve the lives of the people closest to us by sharing our reason and love.  Beyond that, we possess almost unlimited power to improve our own moral, psychological, and spiritual inner life, which inevitably will make us most able to help and inspire others.   

            I’ve tried sum of these ideas in my Primary Principles:

  Dare to trust in a loving God.

  Express gratitude for your gifts and opportunities.

  Take responsibility at all times.

  Stand firmly for freedom.

  Become a source of love.

            Yes, a disaster may overtake us.  Yes, some of us may lose our lives to the evil that is being unleashed upon Earth. Life is finite, but our spirit is not. Make the most out of life, not by hiding from the fight or withdrawing from your loved ones, but instead by remaining alert, rational, and loving.  Bring reason and love to those nearest to you and to your assessment the wider world as well. 

            As for choosing whether to focus on protecting your loved ones or protecting freedom, or both, and how to go about it during a crisis—that must be your own personal choice. But I have found it incredibly helpful to seek to know what my loving God would want me to do—and that does help me make choices, sometimes with remarkable rapidity and conviction.

            And praying can help settle your mind and find the truth. So I close,  “Dear God, our loving God, help us to remain rational in these difficult times, help us to love those closest to us, and help us to do what’s right in the world as You would have us do.”

            Amen.

Primary Author: Peter R. Breggin M.D.

Also available—Dr. Peter Breggin’s most relevant books:

Heart of Being Helpful: Empathy and the Creation of a Healing Presence

Guilt, Shame and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families

Find us at X— formerly known as Twitter: @GingerBreggin @AmericanMD 

Find us at our website: www.Breggin.com

Find us at www.AmericaOutLoud.news

Find us on Substack at: Breggin Alerts! Exposing Global Predators