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    Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World
    Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World
    Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World
    Ebook46 pages37 minutes

    Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World

    By Erik Marcus

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    About this ebook

    A lengthy essay by lifelong animal advocate Erik Marcus on how to overcome the various personal challenges that confront activists.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherErik Marcus
    Release dateDec 3, 2015
    Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World

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      Book preview

      Self-Care for Activists - Erik Marcus

      Self-Care for Activists:

      A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World

      By Erik Marcus

      Self-Care for Activists: A Guide to Clearing Yourself of Trauma While Working for a Better World

      Thanks to Rob Branch-Dasch, Cody Carlson, and a couple other anonymous friends for commenting on a draft of this essay. Thanks also to Robin Means for her editorial comments and corrections.

      Cover design by the author. Cover illustration by Ricky Castillo.

      ©2015 Erik Marcus, All Rights Reserved.

      Sacrifices Made for the Cause

      In my mid-twenties, I committed my life to animal protection, and not in some squishy abstract way. I was intent on making a substantial difference, and sparing millions of animals from getting their throats cut. And while I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve so far accomplished, I now recognize that I had no idea what I was getting myself into—that the personal sacrifices I’d end up making for animals would cut far deeper than I could have possibly imagined.

      After 25 years of doing this work, I now believe that practically everyone who takes animal advocacy seriously runs the risk of becoming traumatized and emotionally damaged. And the more you care about animals, and the more years you spend advocating for their interests, the more damage can accumulate. The good news is that you can heal yourself from this emotional trauma while simultaneously taking your advocacy to the next level.

      Heal yourself from emotional trauma is exactly the sort of New Agey term that makes me want to run for the hills, since I identify with being a no-bullshit East Coast guy who lacks tolerance for the flaky thinking that often accompanies talk of emotions. Just seven years ago I had no interest in thinking about my mental health since I viewed the entire topic as a vulnerability. I figured the less emotional I was, the tougher I was, the more effective I would be.

      My disinterest in mental health combined with my commitment to animal advocacy took me to a horrible place; one where I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep, where I drank way too much coffee and booze. My days were full of unpleasant thoughts, and my nights were full of frightening dreams. All of this led up to a point in the late winter of 2009 when, alone in my kitchen, I felt a bee-sting sensation in my heart. Over the course of the next week, I had about a dozen or so of these venomous attacks. So there I was, a deeply unhappy 43-year-old who lacked health insurance and who realized he was circling the drain, and who couldn’t even afford to visit a hospital to find out what on earth was the matter.

      When you find yourself in that sort of situation, you’re forced to take radical action. Bad choices had obviously led to my predicament, and it was time to pull out of that nosedive. Before I get into my efforts to put my

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