- What's Helping Today
- Posts
- Advice for Shitty AF Times
Advice for Shitty AF Times
All obvious stuff perhaps, all worth repeating

Welcome to What’s Helping Today, a newsletter about the everyday work of staying alive on earth, written by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen.
Hi everyone,
These are shitty AF times. I thought I’d therefore offer some thoughts on what to do during shitty AF times. Most of this is extremely basic advice probably and yet the sort of stuff I find I often have to repeat to myself anyway — even as a person who’s long been fixated on mental health a.k.a. psycho-social-spiritual wellbeing, both for my work and as a human.
Much of this advice is also stuff I often have repeated to me by the wisest people I’m closely connected to, including those friends who are therapists, and / or my own mental health-care-type professionals.
Try to Get Present
Many ways to do this. Some ideas: Take a few long slow deep breaths. Set aside even just a few minutes to meditate (with an app or just on your own). Take a drink of water. Get up and stretch your legs. Go outside, breathe actual air. Even go for a walk.
It definitely never hurts to turn one’s attention to nature. Sure, you can literally touch grass. Or bark or a rock or a stream. Notice the sunshine a moment, a view, the breeze. Engage with art you like, music, anything else that brings you into the present, and that can even turn you towards joy or awe. Eat something you find delicious.
Our enemies want us distracted; work instead to stay focused on what’s actually real around you and what’s actually true, like your own values. This likely means taking breaks from the news, social media, certain people, so on.
Part of why I emphasize presence: It’s unknown what will come, and we can’t change what has been. The only little sliver we can maybe affect here is what we do now, with this moment.
Do Interior Work Before Turning Outward
Before we can be of much use to others, it’s important we’re focused on our own insides and how we’re actually doing. It’s crucial that we tend to ourselves, if we are activated. My assumption is we’re all baseline quite activated right now (unless one really is so privileged as to still remain oblivious).
Tools like daily meditation and JournalSpeak can be immensely helpful in giving myself a forum to just like, totally rage or cry, etc. I try to really take the time to do these practices before I take other actions — especially when I’m waking up already upset in the morning, as is certainly true these days.
Schedule with your own therapist-type person, or find one. Go to a support group, even remotely (for example many exist for queer people).
Have a deep exchange with a trusted friend (who has sufficient emotional bandwidth). Being with people IRL is great but deep connection can also happen at a distance and / or slowly, for example using voice messages or even handwritten letters (both real ways I stay connected to some).
In general I try to adhere to Brené Brown’s advice about not ‘talking, typing or texting’ when I am in an activated state — when I’m in fight/flight/freeze/fawn, heart beating, palms sweating, breath shallow. (In my case, when I’m really emotionally overloaded, maybe my back will threaten me, or I’ll feel myself start drifting towards panic attacks, those choppy seas.)
I meditate in the morning, as soon after I get up as I can manage. I try to notice how I actually am as I go about my day. I try to pay attention to whether I’m approaching myself and everybody/thing else with kindness/patience or with anger/impatience. If I feel myself becoming intensely activated as I engage with somebody or some topic, I try to listen to that signal from my body. I try to back off. Maybe log out. Then I try to take some amount of time to consider how I really feel, my initial reaction notwithstanding — whether that’s an afternoon or a day or a week or much longer.
Be Relentlessly Kind To Yourself
This can be super challenging for some of us, but it’s really worth trying to keep in mind. Self-compassion is especially crucial during times like this, when the onslaught of sorrow and horror seems endless and unstoppable. As I’m often suggesting here, during harder times, it’s all the more important to lean even harder on the practices that do soothe you, whatever those may be. If you haven’t before, consider what practices do soothe you; you can even write out a list if it’s helpful. Maybe this will help you identify ones you want to try more or more regularly.
As ever, try to be directed by your actual preferences. If you love yoga and baths like I do, practice yoga and take baths. If you hate yoga and baths, don’t force yourself those or anything else. Find what brings you joy and / or relaxation and do that, as much as you can.
During harder times, I try to slightly cheat in the direction of giving myself more of whatever I know really does help me. So lately I might seek out more connection with friends. Or I might meditate for 17 minutes instead of 12. Or I might take time to prepare myself some nostalgic dish I deeply love.
Be Active, If You Can
Again, so basic but, yeah, quite true: There’s a strong body of evidence correlating physical activity and mental wellbeing. It doesn’t matter what sort of physical activity you do, just that you do something, daily if you can.
I’d add, again, it’s probably better to do something you love than something you hate. This also has to shift based on what you have time and capacity for, on a given day. For example lately, recovering from surgery, I can’t do a lot physically that I normally would, but I’m still trying to take a walk when I’m up for it.
(Caveat being: Sometimes what’s called for isn’t activity but instead rest. During such times, I try to be okay with that, too, as has also happened to me lately.)
Help Others
Altruism is science backed; doing nice stuff for people is good for them and it helps you too. It doesn’t have to be glamorous. In fact the least glamorous sorts of help can sometimes feel the best. Sure it feels good to give $20 to some big charity or even some small fundraising effort. But it can feel even better to go out of your way to do something kind for someone else — even if that’s just reaching out to someone you haven’t in a while, sending a text. Or, to name a few other examples friends have mentioned they’ve done lately: Volunteer at the food local pantry. Join a mentoring program, spending time with a young person in your community. Cook a bunch of (easily frozen) food to bring to others recovering from illness/surgery/home with a newborn.
Deliberately offering others compassion can feel uncomfortable if you’re not used to doing so perhaps, but it’s also something we can get more used to with practice. As some of you no doubt already know, “lovingkindness” is a form of meditation (it’s actually the specific meditation form recommended by Nicole Sachs to follow 20 minutes of JournalSpeak [explainer]). During a lovingkindness meditation you typically offer kind thoughts in some structure, towards yourself and / or others, maybe people you don’t have any strong feelings towards and even people you find difficult. This can be immensely challenging work, but profound.
Caring for others is good for us, including caring for kids, elders, animals. Even tending a garden or just watering some houseplants — such a small but significant act — this sort of activity matters. As I often recall, years ago I watched as a friend in her bathroom watered some houseplants and commented to the effect of, when we keep other things alive, we remind ourselves to stay alive. For years as a journalist I studied real-world examples and research that supports exactly that idea — the benefit of caring for others, especially plants or pets, for our own wellbeing.
Refocus on Gratitude
It’s again very basic but extremely true: By really forcing yourself to notice what you are grateful for, this can break loops of grievance or despair. Instead, take time to reflect on what you do have that you are grateful for, however big or small. (Like your pet or kid. Your body. The air in your lungs.)
When COVID began, sensing our era was becoming extremely grim and would remain so for a long time, one of the pieces of my own advice I tried to really follow was the implementation of a gratitude practice. This has looked various ways at various points — whether sharing gratitude nightly around the dinner table, or writing gratitude in a journal, or having a gratitude friend as I’ve described for this newsletter before. (I still exchange grateful thoughts all the time with my gratitude friend.)
Sometimes, if I feel my thinking steering into some really dark territory, I try to override and really force myself to think about what I’m grateful for instead; I’ll just start making a list in my mind. You can even shift a negative thought into a grateful one. So for example rather than “I fear xyz beloved person/pet will die” reframe as “I am grateful they are alive now.”
Fuck Perfectionism
This one’s hard for me, a sometime total perfectionist. I’m absolutely somebody who can slip into a strong desire to control everything first and foremost by holding myself to some impossible standard. Though I came to be this way for understandable reasons given my history, I nowadays know such a habit isn’t helpful to me. It only sets me up to fail and bully myself inside.
So, I attempt to instead afford myself self-compassion especially when I do make an actual error or blunder or mistake or something else unfortunate happens that I’d traditionally want to self-immolate over. Holding oneself to a high standard isn’t the same thing as being internally cruel.
I try to watch my own habituation towards beating myself up about everything. I particularly try to watch beating up myself in the past — myself in the past being too easy a target, defenseless, voiceless. It’s an unfair fight.
My check on internalized bullying, this is especially crucial during a time such as this when, as a trans person, I’m already being attacked by my country.
Not all heroes wear capes:

Some recommended stuff to watch/read/listen to:
This conversation about faith with Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran Pastor and someone I’ve admired many years — even long before I would have openly identified as a spiritual person (as I do now to an extent I’ll eventually publicly discuss in this book I’m slowly writing on the future of mental health care). I had become interested in her work long ago when I was just, I dunno, a sad closeted drunk who was searching for answers and I noticed how differently she seemed to speak about everything.
Lucy Sante’s Nineteen Reservoirs is a marvel — a beautifully wrought and argued book, and so concise. Though it’s about the relationship between the Catskills where I live and New York City — specifically regarding our water — it’s a text that I think speaks to the matter of what the fuck is going on in our society more generally right now.
The Serviceberry by botanist and poet Robin Wall Kimmerer, another short-but-powerful book, a follow up to Braiding Sweetgrass (which I’ll never stop recommending). I enjoyed her reading the audiobook.
This episode of the Culture Study podcast about ‘self-care’. I especially dug the part about perfectionism, speaking of perfectionism. (I sometimes say this newsletter is about ‘self-care’ but in truth I have never much liked that phrase. This episode really echoed many of my complicated feelings about such topics. I nodded along to much of what the guest had to say; that said I haven’t yet read her book or otherwise engaged with her work.)
I appreciated this post by novelist Thalia Williamson about the jarring difference between how cis and trans people are acting right now. Recommended to all. It included this, which I can’t stop thinking about:
She writes: “Trans people make up maybe little more than 1% of the population. Our first priority is to ensure we stay alive. If our allies don’t support us, we won’t survive. Start small. Attempt simple conversations. Ask productive questions. Take pride in having the courage to support us.”
If you’re cis, call your senators and reps and tell them to care about trans people — please.
Tell them you know a trans person (if nobody else, you do kinda know me).
Have uncomfortable conversations with your transphobic family, friends and colleagues.
If you have some $$ to spare, consider donating to organizations like the Gender Liberation Movement or the Trans Justice Funding Project.
Many people are discussing the conundrum of both wanting to stay informed but finding the news traumatizing. (I feel it too.) A close cis friend this week asked what news sources to even follow to stay aware of what’s happening to trans people, a totally fair question.
I really want to emphasize: The mainstream media, in particular the NYTimes, is for the most part totally failing to cover the size and scope of this story — which is no surprise to folks like me who’ve long paid too much attention to their devoted anti-trans bias.
So, who to trust instead? I have recommended many of these resources before, but I subscribe to newsletters like Assigned Media and my former colleague Chris Geidner’s Law Dork and Erin the Morning. If you have money to support any of the aforementioned, please consider actually paying them. Teen Vogue and The 19th and Them and Rolling Stone are examples of larger outlets covering what’s going on.
Not for news per se but to hear trans perspectives, I often recommend subscribing to podcasts like Gender Reveal (which you can presently catch on tour), TransLash with Imara Jones, and Cancel Me Daddy (which is cohosted by Katelyn Burns, another journalist you should consider directly supporting).

What’s Helping Today: ALOK on The Daily Show!!!
If you’re trans especially, always feel free to say hi, perhaps tell me what’s helping you, today.
Sending you all love and strength.
p.s. I wanted to re-share this Esquire essay of mine about what we steal from trans kids when we don’t let them exist as their true selves. And from trans adults too. I hope you’ll take a moment to read it, if you haven’t already. If you like it, I hope you’ll consider sharing, wherever you share things.
Thanks for reading What’s Helping Today! If you were forwarded this message, you can subscribe here for free.