Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals she’s attending therapy and learning to ‘slow down’ after Capitol riot

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she decided to go to therapy after the January 6 Capitol riot.
• She told Latino USA on Friday that members of Congress effectively “served in war” during the event.
• The lawmaker also said the Trump administration had many people “in a very reactive mode.”
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed Friday she’s attending therapy after the “extraordinarily traumatizing” January 6 Capitol insurrection.

The New York Congresswoman told the public radio show Latino USA that she’s learning how to “slow down” after the attack, which resulted in the deaths of five people including a police officer.

“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 and she was like, ‘you need to recognize trauma’,” Ocasio-Cortez said, according to The Independent.

Read more: How Marjorie Taylor Greene became the Voldemort of Congress. Few lawmakers even want to say her name.

“And I feel like I learned this the hard way after my father had passed away when I was a teenager … That happened at a young age and I locked it away. You have to live with it for years,” she added.

She said, according to the Independent: “Oh yeah, I’m doing therapy but also I’ve just slowed down. I think the Trump administration had a lot of us, especially Latino communities, in a very reactive mode.”

Ocasio-Cortez previously revealed that she hid in the bathroom with a staffer while a mob of angry Trump supporters broke into the Capitol building, many of them chanting her name.

“I thought I was going to die,” she recalled in an emotional Instagram live in February. “I have never been quieter in my entire life.”

In her interview with Latino USA, Ocasio-Cortex said that the insurrection was deeply traumatizing for many members of Congress, who effectively “served in war.” She said the event also “impacted the actual legislative process” in Congress, according to NBC News.

More than 490 people have so far been charged in connection to the Capitol riot so far.