Is Nervous System Prepping a Thing?

On preparing to survive this apocalypse, together

First of all, hello to all the new folks here! I wrote this little note and I guess it went viral on places like Facebook. Which is kind of hilarious to me, as I just finally (after almost 15 years!!!) got off of the big four social media platforms. So writers and artists I admire greatly — like Rebecca Solnit and Kimya Dawson — shared something I wrote and I couldn’t even see it! That made me laugh a lot. But if you are here because of that little post, welcome! I am an autistic non-binary writer who was born and raised in white evangelicalism and who has been trying to figure out how to be a better human as the world crumbles around me.

I have been running this newsletter (all about my special interest of healing from high control religion and being a late-diagnosed autistic) for 4 years and for the past year I have been pouring most of my energy into a book I co-wrote with my partner that we are publishing on Substack. It is called STRONGWILLED and it is about helping survivors of religious authoritarian parenting methods (think Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family) develop autonomy and find solidarity. It is through my work at STRONGWILLED that I have become immersed not only in identifying the patterns authoritarians use (including their parenting methods) but also in how to resist them.

Even if you weren’t raised in something like white evangelicalism, unfortunately our work is still relevant to you -- because white evangelicals are in charge of the United States government and are making it the entire world’s problem. If this seems at all interesting or relevant to you, I encourage you to check out our chapters, discussion posts, and our podcast (also called STRONGWILLED, which you can find anywhere you normally get your podcasts). Thanks so much for being here, and for your support!

Now, on to the post:

---

Is nervous system prepping a thing?

Maybe it should be a thing.

---

I was raised by an apocalypse doomsday prepper parent, and guess what?

It was a really shitty way to grow up. My mother was always glued to her “prophetic” news and talking about political issues (the one world government, anyone?) and tying it to the book of Revelation and weaving together patterns and telling me not to be afraid but that the future was indeed full of terrible suffering and pain and persecution. I used to think my mother was just trying to prepare me and was therefore loving me in her own way, but now I understand she most likely wasn’t thinking about me at all. She was trapped in her own trauma and the apocalyptic fantasies that so many survivors of abuse experience. If you have CPTSD from your childhood, this is a common impact that can happen (and, relevant to my work at STRONGWILLED, apocalypticism is also one of the psychological impacts of corporal punishment).

Now, as an adult, I can see how my mother’s attempts to prepare for the end of the world didn’t help me in any tangible way. Instead, it made me really good at catastrophizing about the future while still not being able to live and fully accept the reality I was in. I discovered that you can store up thousands of dollars of food and it will still rot while the rich gleefully count your money. You can buy up all the generators you need and still feel terrified of your neighbors and a future where you must learn to live with them. You can play out fantasies of suffering and death and destruction instead of feeling the pain of being a human during a really chaotic and stressful time. You can do so much to prepare for a Big Bad Event — and then when it happens, find yourself frozen and unable to respond in the moment in a way that aligns with your deeply held values.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

These days it is becoming increasingly clear to me that despite all the doomscrolling so many of us have done over the past decade or so, we are not actually prepared at all for a moment of societal collapse / a huge collective mind shift. I can’t help you decide how you can prepare for the future, but I have a few (very hard-earned) tips on surviving today by prioritizing taking care of your body / nervous system and building up a capacity to resist in a way that aligns with your values. Because that is the task at hand, is it not? We don’t have control over much, but we do have our own selves to connect with.

Before I get into my listicle of ways we can quickly and easily care for our nervous systems, my brain would like to point out that things are SHIT. Like as shitty as I have ever seen them. I am non-binary myself and people under my care are directly impacted by these dangerous and violent people in power in the United States. Myself and many other people have spent years — if not decades — warning people of Christian authoritarians wanting to control and terrorize the lives of everyone in the US, and now we have to suffer through it along with everyone else. It doesn’t feel fair, because it isn’t! But it IS our reality.

Thanks to my childhood, when the times are tough, my first impulse is to go into panic mode. But when the times are tough for years and years on end? Well, it becomes increasingly clear that experiencing terror 24/7 is not sustainable — and it is actually one of the goals of a totalitarian state. Authoritarianism LOVES a dysregulated population because they are easier to control. And I myself have been in a state of hypervigilance since 2015 when Trump glided down those gold escalators and announced his presidency¹. So I have had some time to assess what perpetual terror has done to me — both in childhood and in adulthood. And I have discovered that I simply cannot function like this anymore — and that my nervous system won’t allow me to.

Now I am not a doctor or a therapist so take everything I say and test it against your own intuition. I am just somebody who has had to fight tooth and nail to get to a place where I can sometimes be slightly OK, create safety for my own kids in my own home, and want to fight for a more hopeful future. But maybe most importantly I have been passively suicidal for many years and have worked incredibly hard on my mental health as a result. Shit keeps getting worse and I keep getting ever more determined to survive — and experience pleasure and joy in the midst of all the pain. So those are my credentials, and I am alive today because random people on the internet gave me some tips on nervous system care. So let’s pass on the wisdom that (perhaps) was kept from us on purpose to make us more easy to control!

So here we go: how to prep your nervous system to survive a shit storm of bad things:

1) Remember you are a human full of contradictory and uncontrollable emotions, and learn to embrace this!

You are not going to be able to sustain being terrified 24/7. You will not be able to be calm 24/7. Or angry, or hopeful, or pessimistic, or motivated, or catatonic . . . You will ride the waves of emotions today and the next day, and the next. Because that is what humans do. You cannot fight fascism 24/7 nor can you escape the impacts of it by burying your head in the sand. Everything is leaking into everything, which means it is more important than ever to focus on our one and only precious body and mind. Don’t shame yourself for your emotions. Get curious about them, identify them, sit with them, and then . . .

2) Feel those Feelings!

If you are anything like me, then this is a really hard one. Perhaps you found out in childhood that dissociating or numbing out or engaging in spiritual bypassing was SO MUCH BETTER than being in your body and feeling your feelings. If you were raised anything like me, then this was a solid option for survival! But guess what, you aren’t a powerless little kid anymore. You are an adult who can create conditions that are safe enough to honor your body and your emotions. For some folks, you can’t get to the feel-your-feelings part until you have calmed your nervous system down. So, do that first! If you don’t even know what your body needs, it is probably in the freeze state and you can help it in really gentle ways like using an ice pack on the chest², drinking ice water, taking a bath or shower, rocking or swinging, singing or humming, stimming, or co-regulating with a safe person. Once you are out of the freeze response, you can start to check in with your body and see if it is carrying any emotions and figure out how to process those feelings in ways that work for you.

If I am carrying anger, I like to stomp along to a song or press really hard on a door frame or scream into a pillow. If it’s grief, I put on a Sufjan Stevens record and cry my eyes out. If it’s terror then I comfort myself and sway and shiver and flap my arms. It will probably look different for you, and this is both maddening and really encouraging. Nobody gets to tell you what you are feeling and how to process it. You get to figure that out by connecting to yourself and your needs, and by making note of what actually makes you feel better. If you are a parent, you probably already do this kind of work with your kids. Now it’s time to do it for yourself!

3) Try to connect to nature

It’s the easiest one on the list, honestly, but it can still be really hard to access when you are in the depths of despair or live in a capitalistic hellscape that has intentionally severed our relationship to the land. But there are ways to connect to nature for all of us! For me, I have two pets that really help calm my nervous system down and I also volunteer weekly at a cat rescue organization (so many snuggles!!!). I go on walks almost everyday where I am constantly on the lookout for how nature is changing with the seasons. In the past year I got obsessed with mushrooms and I cannot explain how much it helps my nervous system to go on a mushroom spotting walk!!!!

Birdsong has been scientifically proven to help your nervous system regulate, so taking a moment to listen for birds (or even listening to a recording of them) can help your body calm down. Sometimes I think it is so funny that certain social media apps even allude to this nature connection -- think twitter or bluesky -- which perhaps can help us remember that if we are consuming intense and terrible news on our little phones, then we need to make sure we are grounding ourselves in nature in some way. For me this has helped so much, even on an existential level. The more cruelty I am exposed to, the more I need to find safety and calm in connecting to something that is much bigger than myself, American society, and human beings.

4) Spend time connecting to your true self

Alice Miller, who studied the abusive parenting methods of 1700-1800s Germany that led to the rise of Hitler, found that the best indicator of whether or not a person resisted the Nazi party was their level of connection to their true self. It wasn’t education or intellect or gender -- it was that ability to be connected to their sense of self, values, morality, and preferences³. I think this is astonishing! As someone who in the past 5 years was diagnosed autistic AND came out as non-binary, I can see how taking the time to slow down and honor my body, brain, and self has been essential in helping me be able to resist fascism and the politics of terror and despair. Understanding my brain as autistic has helped me feel less shame and be able to ask for (and give myself) accommodations instead of pushing through and burning out. Understanding myself as non-binary has allowed me to tap into deep resources of queer joy and resistance, and to connect with the younger parts of me that were always at odds with the intense patriarchal gender role pressure I was raised under.

Anyone, no matter who they are, can start to reconnect to their true selves at any time⁴. And sometimes it’s really fun! Think about what food you like to eat, what books you loved as a child, what colors make your body feel cozy, what people make your nervous system feel better. Not only are you investing in and supporting your relationship to yourself, you are creating the pathways for self-sustaining resistance that is coming from a place of love and joy, and not just terror. The more we do this type of work of connecting to our true selves, the more we have the capacity to operate out of our core values and less out of a triggered state. It is not selfish to do this kind of work in tumultuous times. It is necessary and vital to a long-term and sustained resistance movement.

5) Find ways to connect with other humans

This one can be hard, but it is really important to build up the capacity where you can at least try to reach out and form connections with others. As someone who used to run complex volunteer programs and who burned out spectacularly I feel shame sometimes at how much of a hermit I have become in the past few years. I’m also grieving the loss of my entire community — I lost my parents, my friends, job opportunities, social safety nets, sense of self, and my worldview, all in one go when I came out as an ex-Christian (and kept pushing back on Christian fascism). That is . . . some tough stuff to go through, and it makes sense why it is hard for me to want to try again.

So I start small, and I keep going. I volunteer with cats and chat with the other folks there. I started inviting some witchy-minded friends to come over every Tuesday night just to gather and connect and hex the patriarchy. I’ve started carrying around anti-Musk fliers in my tote bag so I can hand them out to cashiers and baristas and I’ve had a few good moments of connection. I am putting on a weird and interactive religious trauma art show at my favorite local coffee shop⁵. I am investing in online communities like Substack where I can slow down and really engage with folks who are being honest and insightful about their inner worlds and how it connects to this moment in history.

If you have trauma around this (and who doesn’t? Look how humans are treating each other!) it makes so much sense. If you are not able to connect with humans right now that’s OK. Go back to the nervous system basics and be in your body and create safety there. Slowly, slowly, build up the capacity where you can venture a toe into being around messy, complicated, and beautiful humans. There are so many people out there like you and me, who understand that the survival of the planet and of our species depends on us learning to connect to ourselves, each other, and to the land. I hope we continue to find each other.

6) Honor your body/nervous system

Our precious bodies have gotten us this far, and deep down they want to survive. Honor your body today in whatever way it wants to be honored. More sleep? Fresh sheets on the bed? A ramble through the woods? An hour alone in a dark room with a fan on where you can dissociate in peace without a child barging in to ask for help making slime? A fancy cupcake for no good reason? A bird-watching hike with a friend? Five minutes with a candle and a pack of tarot cards and a plea for Elon Musk to get everything he deserves and more from the universe? A smutty book and a vibrator? Flinging open the windows of your room during a winter storm? Wearing your favorite comfy sweatshirt three days in a row? Putting your hand on your heart and thank yourself for all that it has done? WHO KNOWS but it’s fun to figure this one out.

Right now I think there is so much pressure for us to SAVE DEMOCRACY AND FIGHT FASCISM and . . . a lot of us have been doing what we can for a really, really long time. And the truth is -- we will have to keep doing this work the rest of our lives, and there is no real end point of standing up to the white supremacist patriarchal bullies. So instead of hating and shaming ourselves into burning out (and falling into terror and despair) we build up the capacity to continue to resist in the ways we uniquely can. With lives filled with creativity, connection, and joy right alongside the pain of trying survive in a society that is actively against our existence.

So there you have it, my list for how to do some nervous system prepping.

I basically write out these lists because I need the reminders constantly these days.

I am sending so much love to everyone in the trenches of learning how to care for your nervous systems while one world ends and a new one is being birthed. As always, I am so grateful I am not alone in these times, and that we can connect with each other in spaces like this little newsletter.

Let me know in the comments how you are taking care of your nervous system and the small ways you are reaching out to connect and build capacity for long-term resistance.

1. I had a flashback in 2015 that I now know was just a CPTSD thing, but my nervous system truly believed Trump was the antichrist and was going to usher in the end of the world. I have spent many years trying to talk myself out of those beliefs, but now I just focus on taking care of my body (because in many ways, my brain was correct!). But remember, the actual meaning of apocalypse means revealing. And boy howdy, are things being revealed left and right.

2. This is seriously the tip that saved my life and so I always, always include it. When your thoughts won’t stop racing about a terrible future, grab an ice pack from the freezer and put it on your chest. Wait 20 minutes and see if you don’t feel a teensy bit better and out of the fog of panic.

3. You can read more about Alice Miller (and the connections between German parenting experts that led to Hitler and American parenting experts that led to Trump) here:

Chapter 11: Focus on the Fascist Family

4. Just in case you need to hear this: it is never too late to explore your gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence. And if you were raised in a high control environment that forced you to conform, you deserve the chance to explore these spectrums in the safety of your own mind/body! I know it might seem like the worst time to be doing this kind of inner work, but it is vital to your connection to yourself. And that connection to your true self is your most prized possession (which is why authoritarians do all that they can to terrorize people into being repressed).

5. More on this art show later, but for now you can see the details here.