I've Been Stuck in Freeze Mode All Week
Brrr, it's cold in here. Somebody get me a blanket.
Every headline this week has felt like a very deliberate middle finger to those of us with half a functioning brain cell dedicated to empathy and rational thought. Not even cute dog videos have helped thaw the freeze I’m experiencing.
But I know that the overwhelm, the paralysis, the dread…that’s the point.
This administration is banking on their ability to keep us all in our trauma responses, and this mishmash of topics I’m about to unleash is proof.
I couldn’t decide which of the three stories that hit me so hard this week I wanted to write about, so I’m attempting to write about all of them in order to, hopefully, kick myself out of this funk.
The Spiral Begins…
First up, we had RFK Jr. continuing his greatest hits tour with an NIH proposal for a national autism registry. He’s just out here casually suggesting the government should be able to use private data to catalog neurodivergent people like we’re library books.
(We all know it doesn’t end with an autism registry, right? Eventually it’s ADHD, anxiety, depression, whether you’re queer, infertile, non-white…Nothing says “we only want what’s best for you” like repackaged eugenics, you know?)
But now they’ve walked that back saying, no, no…not a registry. A “real time data platform” and $50 million toward research to determine the cause of autism. And not that I’m scoffing at medical research funding, but the NIH has spent approximately $3.8 billion on autism research since 2011, so that additional 1.3% to find a cause is really going to move the needle.
(Ugh. That sounds so dismissive. I am not dismissing autism research. I promise. It’s just throwing money at something doesn’t mean that what you said wasn’t inflammatory and out of line, and calling autism an “epidemic” and a “preventable tragedy” is inflammatory and out of line, and the promise of an additional $50M for research came after they set the internet on fire for two days with their registry garbage.)
Speaking of garbage, in a move straight from The Handmaid’s Tale, the federal government floated the idea of a $5,000 bonus to incentivize more (white, married, Christian) people to have babies.
What better way to address a declining birthrate than with a one-time payout that won’t even cover the cost of daycare for a few months?
No mention of improving our abysmal maternal mortality rate, providing paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, free breakfast and lunch for kids, ensuring a living wage. Or even looking at the fact that the birthrate is declining in part because teen pregnancy is declining.
And really, that needs to be its own post because WOW WOW WOW, do I have stories to tell about being in high school in the 90s when the neighboring town had so many pregnant teenagers they put in a really for-real daycare as part of their Family and Consumer Science curriculum just to lower the dropout rate and my counselor ran pregnant teen support groups out of Student Services.
(And again, because it probably sounds like I’m making fun of these initiatives, I’m not. I’m saying we addressed the problems that actually existed and provided support to the people who needed support, and through greater education nationwide, we lowered the teen pregnancy rate.)
Then, finally, the story that won’t stop kicking my cerebrum, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, where parents want to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum. On the surface, it’s about “religious freedom.”
Underneath, it’s a fight over who gets to exist comfortably in public, and the court has the power here to rule in a way that could threaten and undermine the very ability of public schools to function. And my former-teacher-brain just cannot fathom what this would mean for education.
(See why I’ve been frozen all week?)
Somebody Unfreeze Us
None of these stories are related. At least not on the surface. They all have to do with families and children (to some extent) and that’s what makes the freeze so hard to overcome—the volume of these stories, and their tangential relationship to one another, means having to pick and choose which one gets my attention.
But I want to give them all my attention, and I can’t. So, freeze.
Rationally, I know that the sense of “I should say something, but I don’t know where to start” isn’t a weakness—it’s my natural response to emotional whiplash. But being unable to say anything because I don’t know what to say and I’m worried I’ll say the wrong thing definitely feels like a weakness.
And that’s the point.
It’s the point for all of us.
Especially when we’re neurodivergent. Or parenting in this mess. Or flabbergasted at the way the administration keeps trying to shove theology into legislation.
Wear us down. Make us feel weak and broken. Crush our spirits. Shut us up.
Regulators, Mount up
Here’s me saying the thing I need to hear.
All of this is meant to exhaust us. To make the unreasonable feel inevitable. To lull us into silence by convincing us that speaking up won’t matter.
But regulating our nervous systems matters. And recognizing the patterns matters. (And woo boy do the ADHDers out there see all the patterns…)
Saying, “Hey, I see what’s happening here—and it’s bullshit” is a start. Not a fix, not a finish line, but a small act of refusal. And maybe the small acts of refusal can help keep us a little more regulated.
Because the louder the chaos gets, the more emotionally stable we have to be.
So, hey, I see what’s happening and it’s bullshit.
(I feel warmer already.)