Finding Hope when you feel despair
People are experiencing a lot of stress, anxiety and depression. Some events are reasonably characterized as “awful” and it doesn’t help to say it’s not so bad when the answer back is a resounding YES! What you need is a place to share it (misery Loves Company). To begin to solve a problem you need validation either from yourself or someone else.
Most of us are not built to process extreme distress, shock, or suffering with pure reason. What I mean by process it is you need to first let the feeling happen. Denying it doesn’t help and doing it in isolation can make it worse or exaggerate it. And sometimes you need to cry or get angry. It is not unhealthy to feel sad, angry frustrated or lonely. It is unhealthy to squash it down or deal with it in isolation Ask for help. Give yourself the opportunity to feel whatever it is you need to feel. But that is not the end of it, it’s not just about feeling I never recommend wallowing!
The next step is to look at how awful is it? Are the things you are telling yourself really true? Can you really not stand it? Does it actually ruin everything? Is there nothing you can do about it? What you are doing is testing it. You may conclude that it is still pretty bad but it doesn’t rock your world.
The next question is what can I control about this situation and what can’t I control? And this part can be very hard for some people But here’s the thing when you make that distinction you know what you can change and what you need to let go of. If you cannot change a situation you can walk away or let it go and accept it. In the meantime you can look at what you can affect and make choices around that. If it feels all around hopeless talk with someone and generate options and choices. Allow yourself some thoughts that may not seem possible at the time. Give yourself the chance to be creative. Everyone always likes to say think out of the box. Well do it and hold the judgement part we will get to that later.
I’m going to give you a prescription – take care of yourself. And yes I am going to sound like your mother because she did get some of it right.
You need to eat.
You need to sleep
You need to rest (no sleep is not rest)
You need to have fun with real live people
You need to meditate
Take a break from your phone!
If you are washed out and fatigued you aren’t equipped to do any of what I suggested. You don’t jump into a car with an empty gas tank and expect it to go anywhere so why treat yourself that way. You have a relationship with your body and it is time you treated yourself right instead of pushing your way to stress.
Let’s get back to that get off the phone concept. How much time are you spending on it? As opposed to the real live stuff human to human. It is beginning to come out that a too much time on the phone is creating heightened anxiety. It is time to reach out to the real live types. Besides reaching out to friends and family there is also therapy to help guide you through this. If it is affecting your life come offline and if you think therapy on an app is reaching out it isn’t.
So after the dark night of the soul it’s time to choose an action plan knowing that you may have to rethink some parts of it. Being responsible enough to make a commitment not to withdraw if you don’t get exactly what you want. Being resilient means you do get knocked down but you get back up again. And if you would like to talk to someone that doesn’t come from an app I am here.