Don't stare at the sun: Indirect ways to know you're not ok
There is not a single person in this world who is standing on the same ground today as they were a few months ago. All over the world the ground that appears solid still risks flexing under our feet. We are in change. Change requires reorienting. Change that keeps coming adds a towering load to our nervous systems.
If there are days that you are frustrated about not being 100% fine, remember that adaptation to change requires much of us. In times of high stress we actually need more renewal to counter the increased load we carry. That means we need to spend more time on activities that renew and restore than we would normally need when stress is low. Don’t be surprised if you’re exhausted (if you’re even sleeping through the night) or if you’re not as productive as you expect to be. Energy is exerted to just exist during change. Life is not the same, even if much of your day-to-day still appears to be. There are plenty of opportunities to be feeling grief right now. We don’t just grieve when someone dies, we grieve when we lose a cherished identity or a view of the world that we had previously counted on.
Right now, it’s necessary to put in place the basic conditions for health and to ruthlessly protect them: sleep, food, water, naps (yes, the theme for me is lots of extra sleep); plus the individual things that keep you well: sunlight, a virtual guitar class, rotating through calling friends, or whatever it might be. If there was ever a time for learning how to treat yourself with care, this is it.
Beyond those basics, an additional critical step is surveying the landscape. Following any change, we need to assess how we’re doing and what our resources are. The challenge with the pandemic is that change keeps coming, so we have to go through the step of checking-in over and over again.
It’s important to find ways to acknowledge when we’re not ok. If we miss this crucial stage of turning toward and staying in the muck when it’s here, then we might shortchange the entire process of adaptation and our innate mechanisms for healing. Each of us has curated incredible strategies to avoid feeling discomfort: ignoring through food, alcohol, Instagram, relationships, planning for the future; jumping too quick to fixing and making this go away; creating opportunity to feel a different pain through neglecting our needs, etc. In moments of overwhelming change, avoiding may be the thing that gets us through. Yet if we consistently choose avoidance, the body doesn’t get a chance to even tell us what we need.
So how to go about acceptance in the hardest moments of our lives? I would suggest gradually and with some structure mapped out from those who have gone before. Paying attention to your experience can be a tall order when your experience is the last thing that you want to feel -- that deserves respect, it’s a mechanism to keep you well. These are indirect ways to notice how you’re doing:
A framework or map, such as that developed by Kristen Neff, helps to acknowledge challenging moments with some scaffolding. Using the Mindful Self-Compassion framework invites us to remember three phrases when encountering something painful: one that acknowledges that this is a moment of suffering (referred to in the framework as bringing mindfulness), one that reminds you that you’re not alone (common humanity), and one that offers self-kindness or self-soothing. These are mine that I repeat silently in my head: 1. “F--k this sucks” or at the very least “This is not what I wanted” (what the framework calls: mindfulness, what I call: acknowledging reality… with a little flair). 2. “I am not the only one who has ever felt this way” (common humanity). 3. For this last one (self-kindness or self-soothing), there are no words here for me. Just placing a hand on my heart, sneaking a first pump to my chest, dancing to three songs in a row, or some other kind of treat reminds me that I deserve love and care when things are tough.
Storytelling is another way to provide structure and sense-making. Stories help to mirror back aspects of our own experience when it’s too sharp to look directly at our own. Legends or myths with archetypes can help to overlay meaning onto an experience, as in stories of difficult journeys or initiations. A biographical account or accumulated wisdom of someone who has walked a path of hardship before you is another possibility, such as “Man’s Search for Meaning” by concentration camp survivor, Victor Frankl. In hearing from others’ accounts, we can catch glimpses of ourselves.
To widen our understanding of our reality, we may need to widen our vocabulary. Other languages may have ways to say something that is not possible in your native tongue. Try familiarizing yourself with emotion concepts from other languages and building an ever-expanding list. This can allow you to notice even subtle emotions and reaffirm the way you're feeling when no word exists in English.
Viewing difficult emotions as similar to the weather (in that they just roll in and color your day), and collecting reminders to follow seasonal rhythms from farmers and others who live connected to the land is another way to acknowledge with acceptance. We would never plant seeds in the dead of winter as we are reminded in “Thriving Through Tough Times” by Deidre Combs, and we can start to give ourselves that same grace and space to respond or rest when things are out of our control.
No one said that “being ok with not being ok” has to be stated verbally. Music is able to hold tensions and express pain and beauty at the same time. Listening to certain songs might help to articulate what wasn’t coming through the intellect. Piano and repetitive beats, strings, sounds from the natural world are some of my favorites. Movement can be a way in as well, letting the body express its own wisdom through dance. These online classes from Dancer’s Workshop in Jackson Hole, WY have been a playful way for me to move with the full range of emotions. I wasn’t a dancer when I first joined these classes and you don’t have to be either in order to express with movement.
These are invitations to find manageable opportunities to acknowledge when things are hard. Keep checking against overwhelm and allow yourself to stay within your “Window of Tolerance”. Remember the myth of Inanna’s Descent in which she instructs Ninshubur to wait for her at the first gate and call for assistance if she does not return in three days. Have someone waiting at the gate in times of big change and adaptation, and let them know when to come to your aid. Don’t forget that acceptance is only step one. It’s a prerequisite, but you also have the rest of the journey to complete -- don’t stop there forever. Keep referring to your maps and don’t forget that the aim is to finish the entire expedition to transform hard times. There are more stages up ahead and you will have to keep going -- keep taking each one at a time.