77 | Navigating Election Season: Self-Care for Practitioners

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Well, hello there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.

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I am a clinical herbalist and nutritionist. And in this podcast,

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I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful to other practitioners.

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So today I want to talk to you about creating a plan to care for yourself,

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protect yourself, navigate the months ahead between now and the election that's

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happening in the US in early November.

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If you're like me, there's quite a bit of stress leading up to this event.

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I get wrapped up in elections in general, but this one in particular,

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and it's easy to get swept away in the drama that goes along.

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There are lots of moment by moment, you know, updates on what's happening and

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the polls and who's doing what

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and who said what about whom and all the different things that happen.

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And I think that as we get closer and closer to the the date of the election,

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we're just going to have more and more of this taking over our newsfeeds,

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our consciousness, our awareness. It's going to be everywhere.

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In fact, it already feels like it is everywhere in some places and in some cases.

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I'm not advocating in this podcast or anywhere, just pretending like it's not

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happening or not understanding, staying out of it, that sort of thing.

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I certainly hope that if you are eligible, that you will register and vote.

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I think there's a lot at stake here, but I do think that we need to draw lines

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and boundaries around how much of ourselves we can give to being informed.

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There's a line between knowing what's happening, understanding,

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having enough information to make good choices, not only for the presidential

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part of the ticket, but for all the races that you're eligible to vote in on

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down the ballot, but not getting overwhelmed with the information.

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It doesn't necessarily help us to know every single thing that's happening every minute of the day.

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So what I'm encouraging you to do is to think about how can you navigate the,

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how do we want to call this,

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the news environment over the next few months, such that you are preserving

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not only your own kind of mental and physical and emotional health,

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but also your ability to do the work that you are meant to do.

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This is all inspired by a class that I took last month with Beth Pickens.

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If you don't know about Beth, she is a, she does fantastic work supporting artists

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and she works with visual artists and authors and so forth.

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But anyway, she really works to help people kind of do the work that they're

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meant to do and to bring their art into the world and out of themselves.

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And I, anyway, I'm in one of her programs and last month she had a whole section,

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a whole section about how to, think about this upcoming election season.

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How do we protect our time and our work and our health and our attention as

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we lead up to the election?

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And I had never really thought about it in that terms before.

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There might need to be a special type of care plan leading up to these few months

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so that I personally don't get swept down the rabbit hole of information overload.

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Again, I want to have enough information to make good decisions and participate

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in debate and conversation, but I don't want to spend extra brainpower and extra

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space in the drama of it all and the worry of it all.

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So one of the things I really appreciated about the conversation Beth brought

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to her group was really talking about how do we protect our capacity and how do

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we show up and be of service to the world during this stressful time?

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So I really, you know, I think that Beth's work is for artists,

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and you may or may not identify with the word artist, with the idea of being an artist.

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But I do think that most of us as practitioners, we are creatives in a lot of

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ways, even if the word artist doesn't work for you, it doesn't resonate for you.

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The work we do when we are creating healing is inherently creative.

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We are meeting with another other person, the two of us together,

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are creating a healing path forward.

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Maybe if you're an herbalist with the herbs as well, the three of you together,

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or however many plants are involved as well.

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But we create relationships. We create things that we write and we show up in

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spaces, whether it's virtual spaces or.

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Real life spaces. I shouldn't say virtual isn't real life, but whether you show

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up in person or in virtual spaces, those are all acts of creation.

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So when we think about the work that we do as healing work, it's not just on

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an individual level, but on a community level.

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And our communities are swept up in the drama leading to this election.

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There's a lot at stake. It's reasonable for our communities,

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ecosystems, et cetera. There's a lot on the line coming up here.

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And when we stay grounded in the work we're meant to do, we can show up as the

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healing presence that we are.

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We can use the tools available to us to not only keep ourselves safe and grounded

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and to navigate this whole thing as smoothly as possible,

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then we can show up for other people and help them do the same,

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which maybe does give people the capacity to make really good choices over the

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next few months to be healthy enough to make our voices heard in this and in other ways.

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So we think about being of service to our community starts with ourselves staying

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grounded and calm, being informed, but not being overwhelmed.

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And then how do we support our communities to do that as well?

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So with all of that, one of the things that Beth encouraged us to do is to really

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think about and to come up with an explicit care plan for ourselves over the

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next few months to think about what kind of media we choose to consume,

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when and how much, and how to make sure that we are carving out time to do our

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creative work or our healing work in our cases.

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How are we making sure that we have that time really protected so that we're

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not, you know, draining our brains in other ways and unable to do the healing

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work that actually could really make a difference for people.

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So this is just a little bug in your ear to encourage you to think about what

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you might want to do differently just until November, early November, let's say.

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Please let it all be over by then or at least on to the next thing.

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But what do you want to do?

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What parameters or boundaries do you want to create over these next few months

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if you're listening to this in September, which is when I'm recording it?

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What do you want to create for yourself to navigate this as smoothly as possible

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so that you can show up for yourself and others.

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In case it's helpful, I thought maybe I'd share with you some of the ideas I

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came up with for myself, which include really making the time to do my mindfulness

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practice in the mornings.

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I find that even if I spend five or 10 minutes every single morning,

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first thing, doing some deep breathing, doing a mindfulness exercise,

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something like that, the whole rest of my day goes more smoothly and I'm more

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present. So I'm really prioritizing that just over the next few months.

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I kind of, my schedule over the summer was so...

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Erratic, that I didn't have a good rhythm with that, but I'm really making it

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a priority, at least through the election.

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I have also decided to join a daily journaling, I don't know if it's class,

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it's through Firefly Creative Writing every morning at nine.

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Weekday mornings at nine.

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They have a program where you just show up and there's a little writing prompt

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and you write with a bunch of people and then they end with a poem.

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It's like 20 to 30 minutes.

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And there you go. So I have decided to do that because I feel better when I,

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create and when I make time to sit down and just write something.

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So I'm doing that. I have decided to check the news in the mornings and not

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in the afternoons and the evenings.

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I have a tendency to listen to podcasts a lot and I have a subscription to the

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newspaper and that sort of thing.

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And I I find that if I look at it in the evenings before I'm going to bed or

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after dinner or whatever, that it just, it makes it harder to fall asleep.

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It doesn't help to know right before I go to bed versus first thing in the morning.

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So I'm going to be limiting the time that I'm consuming news,

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and I'm going to be doing that in the mornings via podcasts and reading online,

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whatever else I want to do.

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So those are some of the things that I'm planning to do.

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And then to just be really, really intentional about getting in as much movement

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as I can, because that helps me to dissipate tension and stress that builds

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up over the day. So that's my plan.

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Again, this is just a nudge to see if you might want to have a plan as well.

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Not a forever plan, but just a couple months worth of a plan to see how this

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lead up to an election season could potentially be better than it has been the last few years.

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Okay, so there you go. It's a friendly nudge to register to vote if you haven't

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already or check your registration.

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And I hope this was helpful. I'll be back soon with another podcast.

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And I hope you have a really wonderful day. All right, take care.