Grieving for America
Healing Trumps Chaos
In 2016 and 2017, I wrote posts about Trump on my blog. Amazing how they are still relevant. Here is a update:
Appalled and afraid.
These words describe my current state. I keep trying to come to terms with the abhorrent behavior of our 45th (and 47th) president. Violence is escalating at an alarming rate as polarization fueled by toxic hate continues to widen the abyss between our hearts and minds. Though I work daily to find a place of personal peace and serenity, the fear still creeps in. I know it’s all part of “divine order,” but I am struggling to discern any order at all. What could be the silver lining here? What is the gift in this, as great spiritual teachers might ask?
I think it’s about all of us. My core question is this: Why can’t we step up and raise concerns about the president’s mental fitness for the office he holds? Why can’t we question a disturbing, unhealthy pattern of adolescent behavior and hair-trigger anger that he could endanger so many lives as the leader of the free world?
Admittedly, this is not easy terrain to navigate, but mental illness is not an insult or affectation. It’s a disease of the brain. If you have a stroke, like President Eisenhower suffered in 1957, someone hopefully will say, “Hey, something is not right with you. Are you OK? Let’s get some medical attention now.” But with mental health issues, it’s much murkier. There is so much stigma involved, so we don’t speak up. Our elected officials don’t get involved. The condition may not be as immediately life-threatening as a stroke, but it can certainly result in tragic consequences, especially if you are president of the United States.
The narcissist bond
I have been entangled with a series of narcissists in my complicated life, in love and work. So, I have the T-shirt, but it’s a toxic dance of intertwined wounds. My unmet emotional needs were fertile fodder for many a manipulative NARC. Healing is a process, indeed.
Narcissists seduce, ingratiate, self-aggrandize, manipulate, project, denigrate, and exploit because they are desperate to neutralize their own profound inner shame. They have a limited capacity to access their authentic selves. Individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are perpetually looking for external affirmation of an idealized, flamboyant, yet fragile, sense of self. Et tu, Mr. President?
The stigma of “crazy”
We are so uncomfortable discussing diseases of the brain. Feeling uneasy or conflicted, our default is “crazy,” “nuts,” or now―“cra-cra.” This language minimizes the severity of a potentially dangerous condition—dangerous to the patient and to all those they encounter. Such verbiage leaves no room for medically necessary intervention, much less recovery (if insurance will even cover it, that is). In a world where “the overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics . . . and the suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the same period,” we cannot continue to trivialize, mock, or ignore signs of mental illness.
It’s an inside job.
If we elected a man suffering from a malignant personality disorder or an untreated mental illness, we must face the music. He is our mirror. It is time to take responsibility for ourselves and heal our wounds, as individuals and as a country with a complex and challenging past. It’s time to choose authenticity, conscious communication, interconnection, mindfulness, and well-being.
And Trump’s coterie of codependent enablers (flying monkeys) only exacerbates the problem—the Republican party, tech bros with agendas, Project 2025, and the shadowy cabal of ultra-wealthy oligarchs.
The 25th Amendment offers some remedies, but the act of defining “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” instantly becomes political and complicated in the realm of behavior. In addition, the psychiatric profession is still hamstrung by the 1973 Goldwater Rule―enacted after Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee in the 1964 election, was declared psychologically unfit for the presidency by psychiatrists surveyed in Fact magazine.
Goldwater won a defamation suit against Fact, and the resulting rule still prevents psychiatrists from voicing a caveat publicly without conducting an examination. Unfortunately, this further perpetuates stigma, as well, muffling open discussion of mental illness concerns under a cloak of disgrace. There is probably a middle ground we can explore somehow.
So, from a big-picture, quantum perspective, Trump is here to open our eyes (that have been “wide shut”). Narcissism expert Melanie Tonia Evans counsels that at first, narcissists appear to be the savior of our wounds, but they are the deliverer of them. Maybe it’s time to end the silence, as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is doing in our schools nationwide―empowering our voices to tackle cultural taboos that keep mental illness under the radar and under-treated. We are only as sick as our secrets, as they say, and questioning the mental health of the president in a constructive, supportive way might help lift the veil.
“It’s like trying to wrestle an ape,” says Evans. “Impossible.” And the real reason we do it is because we are trying to soothe our own unhealed trauma by somehow fixing and placating the narcissist. We are assuaging our own concealed feelings of inadequacy, pain, and unworthiness. His grandiose promises attract us like the circus coming to town―filling the darkness of our hearts momentarily with sparkles of validation, cotton candy, and cheesy spectacle—but when the circus leaves town, it leaves us desolate, depleted, and feeling a little sick.
He tells us just what we want to hear―and then, he turns on a dime and crushes us to the mat. In Trump’s case, he calls someone “an idiot,” the world “a mess,” or mocks a disabled reporter. This pumps up his ego and self-esteem. It becomes a seductive, unending cycle―until we decide the healing must happen inside ourselves. That’s just what we must do as a nation.
I am not sure of the answer, but at least we can start asking the questions about the very real behavioral concerns of this unconsciously virulent and externally triggered man leading America. It’s about his health ― and ours.
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From NAMI: If there is NOT AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER but someone is acting irrationally due to his/her mental state, contact your local mobile crisis team. In the Dallas area, individuals may contact ADAPT Mobile Crisis at 1 (866) 260-8000. If someone is acting irrationally due to their mental state and there IS AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF DANGER to themselves or someone else, call 911 or 988, the suicide hotline.
Thank you for your thoughtful and generous comment. You shine a light on our fraying democracy and confounding tangle of disturbing realities. The other challenge is that we don't have all the data -- all the forces at work we don't see. But we must keep asking the questions.
This is an excellent and balanced analysis of the state of our current administration and the person who sits in the seat of power. What you wrote about narcissism resonates deeply with me, and I am also still working to untangle and heal from damages done from narcissistic person that were and still are in my life. I think it is too easy to say, just cut them off. To some extent, yes, and to another - there are limits to what we can shut the door to. For example, people say that #47 is not their president, and I understand what is being said - that we do not want him to be our president. The sad, unfortunate fact its that he is our president, and we are being impacted, we and so many others are being hurt by his actions.
That being said, even when dangerous people hold positions of power (whether we agree or not), we still need to ask questions, push the envelope, and use our agency where we can - especially those of us with privilege that others do not have. To (loosely) paraphrase Margaret Mead, the only thing that can change the world is a small group of people committed to the change. This is what I go back to and hold on to. Sorry this comment is so long!