Catastrophic events can trigger fight-or-flight responses, so steading ourselves and staying connected to grounding routines, such as meditation, therapy, and recovery, is essential, if possible, when responding to emergencies. Here is a list of Resources compiled by a Group of Los Angeles Therapists:
As I write, the fires in Los Angeles continue to rage. I’ve canceled a trip home to New York City, even as I worry about my 94-year-old mother’s health. Over 100,000 residents are under evacuation orders, and this crisis is affecting everyone. Friends, patients, and neighbors are displaced, some with bags packed and emergency plans in place. At a 12-step meeting on Tuesday night I attended with a friend, several attendees—gathered in a virtual windstorm in Culver City—had just lost their homes and came seeking support to avoid relapse. It was a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. In a world where political leaders often deflect responsibility, these individuals—who faced struggles they could not overcome alone—embody Freud and Jung’s insights: the ego is not the center of our being but a part of something far greater, shaped by instincts, judgment, society, and, yes, even climate change. In psychology, we often call this "Higher Power" the psyche.
Red flag warnings remain in effect for L.A. and Ventura counties, and new fires continue to threaten neighborhoods. This is no distant tragedy—over 10,000 structures have been destroyed, families have lost their homes and histories, and artists have seen their life’s work reduced to ashes. With rents already sky-high and recovery efforts hindered by an unsupportive administration, the road ahead will be long and challenging. Where will everyone go? How will they rebuild? The impact of this devastation will be felt for years to come.
There are moments of calm—we had Obama, we have Biden. But I also remember the turbulence: the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and Harvey Milk, and the shadow of Vietnam. At 22, fresh out of Columbia College with a BA in English (and a thesis on Middlemarch—what was I going to do with that?), I faced a different storm. Close friends, not much older than me, began falling gravely ill. It was the dawn of the AIDS crisis, and we were already frightened by Reagan. His inaction on HIV led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. I cared for Michael Callen, the falsetto-voiced AIDS Diva and creator of Safer Sex Guidelines—a story you might find in Martin Duberman’s history books.
I share this not just to claim my place in history not because I’ve endured hardship, but because I’ve witnessed it. Not sure what is worse, suffering or watching someone you love suffer. Whether what’s coming will be worse, I don’t know. The other night, I dreamed Adolf Hitler entered an elevator I was in—a relic from my Bronx childhood. He wore a tan uniform and could read my thoughts. I interpreted this terrifying dream (I woke in fright) as a confrontation with my inner split: the pull of my id (to be a child, to love, to hate, to be fully gay) and the condemning judgment of my superego. Even perhaps my capacity to do harm? But if one sees each aspect of the dream as reflecting an inner complex, could this be about my wholeness or ours?
I’m reminded of a patient who recently said of his INNER child he had discovered in a DREAM, “I hate him.” After the initial shock for his brutal honesty, I congratulated him for uncovering and even illuminating the inner split that had drained him for much of his life. He responded, “I feel as if I have arrived in my life for the first time.”
Perhaps our collective split from our inner nature explains why we’ve kept kicking Mother Nature’s warnings about the symptoms of a heating planet down the road. Maybe the right wing’s divisiveness will eventually turn inward towards the eating of its own—we’re already seeing cracks between the pro-deportation MAGA crowd and the Tesla guy’s faction. But whatever grim entertainment that spectacle abetted by the likes of Laura Loomer may provide, the deeper issue of splitting won’t be resolved unless we face it personally. For better or worse, this philosophy led me from street activism to clinical practice.
Wholeness. Maybe that’s another way to say: “Psychology for the People.” We might be reminded of the story of the Round People, told by the playwright Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium. In the next few days, I will roll out a Podcast of Payton Young reading from his memoir, “Live for Today or Tomorrow,” which details what it’s like to be a 25-year-old Black man surviving a racist world and also a podcast with Krys Harrison, a comedian who gave a great interview about being a Black woman surviving therapy and two failed marriages.
I will also share sneak previews and readings from my new book, “Gay Sex and Love: One Group Learns How to Heal Itself” (which includes a ribald reading of Plato’s Symposium), and my memoir, “Education of the Heart. " I will discuss how I am freeing myself from mainstream publishing this time to publish the book myself. I will create Stack Sections on “Health and Parenting,” “Gay Stuff,” “Self-Publishing,” and “Podcasts with Important People.”
For those of you generous enough to support this work for a monthly subscription of $5 per month, I will Read to You, Talk to You about Your Writing, Answer your Psychological Questions on Relationships and Parenting, Offer Gay Guidance, and hold a monthly Zoom Session on and ALSO: provide these E-books:
