Returning to connection in times of upheaval: somatic psychology and acupuncture

There really isn’t a rule book for how to do self-care as one’s country descends into fascism. There are great resources for how to think and fight back (On Tyranny for example), but what about the care of one’s own nervous system? It’s tempting to dissociate into television or video games, neither of which is bad per se, but these strategies alone are temporary at best. Feeling fear, anger, sorrow, terror are all appropriate responses and no one can sustain a constant experience of these feelings without being unable to function in the world. We still have to accomplish all of our daily tasks, despite everything happening around us.

One maxim of somatic psychology is that we know if a person is experiencing transformation if they are able to react to the same old stressors in a new way, with new choices (2). In some ways the stressors of this moment are new, but in others they are just a super-charged version of things we have seen in this country many times before. Racialized violence, police state kidnappings, and a president who seems hell-bent on injuring or killing as many people as possibly are things we saw during the first Trump presidency, and this is how local political leaders in many states have behaved since the founding of the country, especially (though certainly not exclusively) in the south.

On a micro scale, many of us have experienced interpersonal violence and intimidation before. Part of how authoritarian leaders come to power is by playing on people’s unresolved issues with parent figures and promising that they will be the stern but wise all-powerful figure that will free their followers from danger and from the need to think for themselves (3). This is maddening to watch from afar, as people are effectively body-snatched by the cult of mass-violence. Our own history, whatever it may be, is also triggered by living through authoritarianism. We don’t get to chose what happens in the world, or how our nervous system runs its initial programmed response. We do have the opportunity, however, to care for our response and try to shift it over time.

Fascism wants specific things from us, on a nervous system level. As Pat Duggan writes, “Fascism relies on fear to regulate the collective. The body under fascism becomes hypervigilant, armored, dissociated, or collapsed. People begin to regulate themselves before power even has to intervene. This is how power becomes internalized” (1).

In order for us to act usefully, to organize, to resist, we need to move from our 4-F response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) back into a safe-enough-feeling state to form a plan (4). In order to respond to this kind of extreme stress usefully, we have to keep our heads above the water. We can watch our own behavior and ask “Am I isolating? Am I spending all of my time in dissociation? Am I raging? Am I people-pleasing to my detriment?” We can reach out to our close people and ask for help coming back into ourselves, and offer that same help in return. We can stay connected to others, and thus to ourselves.

And, you will not be surprised to hear me say this, we can get acupuncture. Acupuncture helps people move back into regulation, and helps teach the brain how much better it feels to be in a state of openness and connection. This is how we treat PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. Openness and connection might seem like things that would be liabilities if we are trying to survive a period of mass threat and violence, but it’s actually the thing that will allow us to respond usefully. If we fall off a cliff, in terms of our nervous system, we will disappear into addiction of one kind or another and be unable to make helpful choices. Once we are paralyzed, we are lost. Acupuncture can undo the paralysis, and allow us to decided how we are going to respond to this nightmare, with each other. It won’t solve all of our problems, but it can be one tool in our collective tool kit for getting through this thing together. If your level of distress is starting to feel unmanageable, or you would like it not to get to that point, come on in and let’s tackle this thing together.

In solidarity,

-Rowan

1. Duggan, Pat. @Pat.Radical.Therapist on Instagram. April 3rd, 2025.

2. Haines, Staci. The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice. North Atlantic books, 2019.

3. Miller, Alice. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

4. Walker, Pete. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.