On Friday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on Maria Hinojosa's podcast Latino USA, on which she spoke about her experience after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and how she has taken care of
herself since then. She said it was her good friend and fellow “squad” member Rep. Ayana Pressley (D-MA), who got her to focus on self care following the event.
“After the 6th, I took some time and it was really [Rep.] Ayanna Pressley when I explained to her what happened to me, like the day of, because I ran to her office,” AOC said. “And she was like, ‘You need to recognize trauma. And this is something that you went through, but we’re all going through. And it’s really important to pause after that, because that's how you process it.’”
She added that the Jan. 6 insurrection brought up similar feelings she had after her father died when she was in college at Boston University.
“That happened at a young age, and I locked it away,” she said. “I had to live with that for years, and so, I learned my lesson then. And now, I feel like I’ve had to take a beat.” She added that she's been in therapy but also said she has made it a priority to slow down in her life.
“I think the Trump administration had a lot of us, especially Latino communities, in a very reactive mode,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez has previously spoken about how she was affected by the events of the insurrection, a day where she has said she feared for her life. During her Instagram Live in early February, she revealed that she is a sexual assault survivor and explained how trauma “compounds,” no matter its size.
.@AOC is on live talking about the trauma of the capitol insurrection and relates it to her trauma of being a sexual assault survivor pic.twitter.com/et0SafP3ej
— Ryan Khosravi ✨ (@ryepastrami) February 2, 2021
“The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize, these are the same tactics of abusers," she said. "I’m a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven't told many people that in my life. When we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other, and so whether you had a neglectful parent or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experienced any sort of trauma in your life, small to large, these episodes can compound on one another.”