“Bouncing Back” and Why It’s Damaging

Crazy idea—let’s stop talking about bouncing back (like a basketball?) and instead let’s talk about taking our sweet ass time to rest and process.

In fact, I’d like to ditch this whole idea of “back.”

We talk so much about getting something back—the fitness levels we used to have; that morning routine we liked; a time when we were sleeping well.

The idea that we’re trying to recapture something, that *we had it*—we HAD it!!—but somehow fucked up and let “it” slip through our fingers, is so incredibly damaging to the human psyche, not to mention a colossal waste of energy. It’s just a really insidious, elaborate way to beat ourselves up.

There’s an overriding implication that stasis & regularity are “normal;” the ideal state, and that interruptions like travel, or pandemics, or moving, or your mom coming to town, are anomalies.

Which is ALSO incredibly damaging to the human psyche, because life IS change, princess.

So now we’re beating ourselves for losing something precious, even though we were never meant to keep it in the first place, but *also* gaslighting ourselves into believing that “normalcy” exists somewhere outside our lived experience, and that we alone are struggling to find our way “back” to it.

This results in humans feeling alienated and wrong, instead of connected & empathetic. And who benefits from THAT, you ask? (You didn’t ask.) Ding ding ding! The patriarchy and its good buddy, late-stage capitalism, the two old Muppets heckling us from the VIP seats.

So that’s the zoomed out context we’re dealing with. And yet, these things are also true—

⭐Establishing and maintaining a regular rhythm serves us.
⭐(Re)establishing that rhythm in the face of change is incredibly challenging.
⭐We need time and space to rest, process, and decompress when our rhythm is disrupted.

As usual, I am meandering through many tangents and feminist rants before arriving at The Point, and that is because I honestly don’t know what to tell you about “bouncing back.”

Only this: as I attempt to survive January 2022, I’m increasingly less interested in getting “back” to business as usual, or “back to normal.”

I’m interested in moving forward.