Managing Our Collective Anxiety

"Peace is not a situational energy."

I will be interviewing my dear friend Richard Christiansen about his new book, The Guide to Becoming Alive at Diesel in the Brentwood Country Mart on November 21st at 6:30pm—free admittance but if you want a seat, you can pre-order a signed copy of his book. (I’ll also be signing copies of On Our Best Behavior if you want some holiday gifts!)

I’m also doing a second New Year’s workshop on December 29th at 10amPT for paid Substack subscribers with

Satya Doyle Byock

—we’ll be diving into the I Ching again, journaling, setting intentions for 2025, and communing. You’ll find the link to register at the bottom of the newsletter, behind the paywall, as well as the video from last year where Satya took us all through the I Ching. This is worth watching in advance if you decide to join us.

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Hey friends. Hanging in there?

I went to Philadelphia for a few days last week (with my new best friend Diana Nyad) to speak at a big women’s conference. When I walked into the hall on Wednesday, I was struck by a few things. First, it’s always really wonderful to be with women. Second, I was touched by the energy. While it was a non-partisan conference and politics wasn’t the order of the day, we were in Philly, which is devoutly blue: The women present seemed resolved, clear-eyed, contained—and still capable of laughter and joy. I felt my own nervous system re-calibrate in response. I’m taking this as a good sign as I exhausted myself with anxiety in 2016 and early 2017, conflating my concern with action and using it as a type of self-defense, i.e. a signal of my virtue. This wasn’t a good use of energy and I’m doing it differently this time. We need to take each day as it comes and deal with facts as they emerge, not “what if” stories—the next four years will most certainly require a lot of energy from all of us, regardless of our political beliefs, and we need to stay resourced.

Hilma af Klimt, “The Swan, No. 1

I am holding space for dismay, and I’m certainly ready to respond to trespasses on peoples’ rights. I will show up. But I’m also holding hope that Trump’s narcissism possibly could be ameliorated by his victory and he’ll opt out of cruelty and malevolence. People elected him for a reason, and that reason primarily seems to be economic anxiety, so I’m hoping he accepts that as his mandate rather than inflaming the fringes of his party who are powering hate and fear. None of us can predict what will happen, even if we feel convinced in this moment that it will 100% be terrible—what I can tell you for certain is that we won’t be able to attend to what’s present if we’re too tired from fighting bogeymen and “what-if” scenarios in our heads.

As the election results rolled in last Tuesday, I was trading texts with psychic medium Carissa Schumacher hoping she would predict a different reality. Nope. “As of now, he’s going to win. Peace is not a situational energy. Remember to be powered by acceptance and allowing.” Carissa was referring to a journey from two years ago which was about the energetic switchboard of the planet, which we’re all plugged into. “What you power is what powers you,” she explained. “Fear powers fear; hatred powers hatred; rage powers rage. Choose to power peace, love, spaciousness instead.” This is a simple idea and a powerful image for me—particularly when I imagine the energy of the collective on the other side. (In some ways, it evokes the post-Nazism Milgram experiments, where the participants were instructed by the “Teacher” to shock the “Learner” with electric volts.) This feels particularly important for those of you who are like me—as a Jewish woman of some privilege, I’m psychologically and physically safe from many of Trump’s darker election promises: This makes it even more essential that I manage my fear instead of sending it into the collective. This doesn’t mean I don’t care, or that I’m not paying attention; it allows me to care more, so may I use my resources well.

I hope as many of you as possible can help bring the temperature down on our fear. I recognize this might sound both insane and impossible when threats feel so real. But the “other side” is driven by fear too. We are Cold War-ing each other. Let’s stop. Remember, we don’t need to be scared to take action: I know we’re convinced that we need to be hunted with a cattle prod to move our butts, but we know that those tactics actually fail miserably in the long-run. When it comes to climate change, for example, using fear only drives hopelessness and apathy not action. Fear takes us “below-the-line,” where we feel dis-empowered and at the effect of the world—it turns us into victims. When we are “above-the-line,” we see the world as happening through us and by us—we are at the switchboard, hopefully choosing to create peace, love, stillness and spaciousness instead. (For a refresher on Above-the-Line vs. Below-the-Line, there’s this newsletter “Are You Victim, Villain, or Hero?” and this podcast with Courtney Smith, “Understanding the Drama Triangle.”)

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I’m sure many of you are wondering what else Carissa said (FWIW, my other psychic medium friends have largely said the same thing). She’s offering the below, which I’m paraphrasing from our conversation and quoting from her in parts. In short, we are at the very, very end of the Old Era. Pluto leaves Capricorn for the final time on November 19th and heads into Aquarius. This election was the last election of the Old Era, and this election is also happening in a collective void, which ends on December 18th.

Here’s Carissa: “The dynamics and tactics of the Old Era include shaming, blaming, forcing, and horizontal power (power as control, bribery, coercion). These tactics will no longer work in the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius, the New Era is about masculine and feminine balance, transparency, efficiency, co-creation, community, and technological balance (balance between natural/organic technologies and our physical technologies). This era is also about personal accountability and responsibility (including taking accountability for one’s blind spots, biases, and judgments—on both ends of the spectrum, especially in political arenas), humility, integrity, originality, and service through joy versus servitude through suffering. This new era will be governed by essence (not just acquired personality and ego). While the last era was about metabolizing horizontal progress, the new era is about vertical evolution.

“This Void's purpose, as the first of the collective and systems/institutions voids, is to reveal more deeply how collective needs and wants are changing and evolving. The collective's needs and wants are evolving more rapidly than ever before. People are sick of more radicalization right now. Our current systems and institutions from media to government will not change unless we start expressing and demanding different needs. Prior to 2020, the needs folks expressed most commonly in sessions with me—people from all races and socio-economic classes—were: the need for more opportunities, the needs for people to understand my situation as a woman or Latino or Black American, the need for stimulus, the need to protect my structure of living, etc. 

“After 2020, this changed radically. It floored me. In sessions with basically everyone, in a wide range of groups from all sides of the aisle, post-pandemic, the needs expressed became: ‘I need space. I just have no space or room to breathe, to heal, to be.’ And then, ‘I just need simplicity. Simpler, quieter, more calming messages.’ And then, ‘I just need the media and those representing me to listen to me, to see me as opposed to thrusting their agendas down my throat. I am too overwhelmed for this.’ And then, ‘I need greater stability. The news is telling me the economy is stable but I am paying $16 for a carton of eggs. I am losing trust. I just had a break-in in my neighborhood and I don't feel safe.’ And then, ‘I am tired of being called an evil person.’ 

“Space. Simplicity. Stability. That is what people are expressing they need. To just be. To just heal. Feeling like their leadership will bring more stability, simplicity, and breathing room. To comfort them, to see them, to hear them. That is where Democrats missed the mark. They don't like Trump but until someone hears them... they will vote for him. So we need to hear them. 

“All to say, this void is important with regards to the reflection of how collective needs and wants have changed. Our current systems and institutions are serving an outdated set of collective needs. And it's time to upgrade. So I hope that is the focus as opposed to blame. Yeshua's words on Faith over Fear, Forgiveness over Blame, Freedom over Suppression have never rung more true. 

“This void—the one that ends on December 18th—is about the lifting of the veil of polarity. We have to saturate in extremes to come to clarity. This void is opening our eyes to pathways of internal and collective balance through the dissolving of illusions and beautiful lies and confronting the ugly truth in the deepest recesses of our assumptions. Within this Void there is deeper revelation of light and shadow. Without witnessing our shadow and blind spots we cannot integrate the shadow, and, without that, we cannot see the image. When we just see the shadow or just the Light, we cannot see the vision of the need or path.” 

(The lifting of the veil of complacency is going to come at the end of 2025 and the lifting of the veil of separation is coming at the end of 2027.)

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Elise again. Here are some podcast episodes that might be helpful in this present moment and in the months to come:

I had Thomas Hübl back on the podcast to discuss contending with darkness and our collective shadow last Thursday—as he explains, we are “all shareholders in the shadow government.” Here’s that episode, “How Do We Work with Our Darkest Energy?” (This is part three but you don’t need to listen to the first two to understand this one.)

I think Spiral Dynamics is one of the most helpful systems for understanding the underlying dynamics of what’s happening politically—particularly for those of us who are willing to take responsibility for where we’ve gone “regressive green.” Here’s the newsletter I wrote about it: “Finding Ourselves on the Spiral.” Ken Wilber is the guy for this and I had him on the podcast a few months ago: “To Transcend and Include.” (His book, A Post-Truth World is a short and fast primer if you don’t have the energy for his newest book, Finding Radical Wholeness.) I went deep on Spiral Dynamics with Nicole Churchill earlier this year on the podcast in an episode called “The Basics of Spiral Dynamics.” She’s a bit more accessible than Wilber.

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about boys and men and “aggrieved entitlement” this past year and I will have more to share in upcoming newsletters about understanding the underlying message here—I’m also working on a piece about where feminism and the men’s rights movement diverged, and really didn’t need to. If you missed my conversation with professor Niobe Way, author of Rebels With a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture, I highly recommend listening to this episode: “The Critical Need for Deep Connection.”

Until next week, friends. Let’s do our best to stay above-the-line. (But remember that most of us spend most of our time below-the-line, so give yourself some grace.)