Holy shit a lot has changed in just a few short weeks.
Today I write about change, and how to cope with it. I've noticed that change that you choose is often much easier to assimilate than change that's forced on you (like being asked to stay home).
Last week my husband and I decided to take our daughter out of daycare, for the health of our family and our mental well-being, to stay home with us all week long.
Spending every day with my 2-year old daughter last week was really uncomfortable. Yes, we chose to make the change, but that didn't make it easy! All of our schedules were disrupted (read: controlled chaos) and my emotions felt like they were zinging up to the intense level far too often for comfort.
I coped by using distraction behaviors like eating cookies, drinking wine, and going to bed too late to get a good night's sleep, thus further entrenching myself in the cycle.
I'm not going to write about how I took myself in hand and got it together. It was a crazy week and I felt frazzled, confused, anxious, panicky, and very, very tired. It was tough, but it also made me really listen to my emotions. Now is the time to get grounded, define my boundary, and use all my emotional knowledge to self-soothe, down-regulate, and really listen to what my emotions are telling me, and that's what I'm trying to do.
My mentor and teacher, Karla McLaren, wrote a timely piece about how your panic, anxiety and fear are showing up to support you and how yes! You should be feeling all of these emotions right now.
One of the most powerful things you can do right now is name what you're feeling, and her article explains that acceptance of your emotions rather than denial, or repression, or spiritual bypassing (all of which I'm seeing on social media), is how you begin to work with them. My colleague, Jennifer Asdorian, DEI Trainer and Consultant, created a simple chart to help her work with her emotions in a visual way, to quickly name the emotion.
The emotions behind change are fear, which is about orienting to change, anxiety, which is about planning for the future, anger, which is about what you value, and sadness, which is about letting go. There are other emotions involved with change depending on your situation: panic, which is about your survival, grief, which is about recognizing and honoring irrevocable loss, confusion, which is about clarifying your intention, and apathy, which is about protecting yourself by becoming emotionally distant until you feel like you have more power available to you.
Going through a change that you choose is one of those things that can feel joyful and empowering. Being forced to change can feel like a boundary violation: unjust and unfair, unwarranted, unnecessary, irritating, and it can create resentment and resistance. In the interest of public health and safety, we've all been asked to make uncomfortable changes over the last two weeks. How are you handling these changes? What are the emotions you feel surrounding our current situation of being in a pandemic?
These are strong emotions that require careful handling. They are there for a reason, but because we don't deal with these emotions all that often, and because we're shamed for having emotions like depression and the suicidal urge, often we ignore or repress what they're trying to tell us.
Listening to your emotions means accepting what you're feeling, and not trying to fit your emotions into a box marked "positive." Using this chart, or this Emotional Vocabulary list can help you identify what you're feeling. It's OK if what you're feeling is intense, or if it feels inappropriate, or if it doesn't feel intense enough given the situation. We all experience emotions differently.
If you give yourself a chance, your emotions will tell/show/whisper/sing/guide you to what you need to do.
For example, last week my anxiety left me vibrating with nervous energy all week, until I pulled out 5 sheets of blank paper and made lists to channel that energy: a schedule for my daughter, a household to-do, a garden to-do, a list of people to connect with, and something else I needed to get out but can't remember right now. In any case, I wrote down all the stuff that was swirling in my head, and it helped me set some boundaries around what I really needed to get done (a schedule), and what I didn't have any control over at all (the news).
This showed me that I needed to severely limit the news I consumed, since reading the news on Facebook just increased my anxiety without giving me something I could do. Now I go to a few trusted news sources either in the morning or at night to get updates on what I need to know.
My anxiety helped me direct my excess energy by planning for the future and getting organized. My anger helped me define what was really important for me to be doing or not doing, and my shame helped me change my behavior to reflect those priorities.
One suggestion for you is to make a list of the things that help you wind down. Giving yourself the space to listen to your emotions means taking the time and making the space for that to happen. It may mean facing up to some difficult realities, especially now that so many people are out of work. It may mean feeling some intense emotions, like grief or panic. Let them flow.
When you work with your emotions, when you trust your emotions and really listen to them, they will guide you to take the right action (or inaction) for you. If your panic is saying "save yourself!," it has a point, and you're right to listen. If your anxiety is a whirlwind, you can ask the questions: what brought this feeling forward? What really needs to get done? Each of the emotions has information for you, when you can tune in to your own frequency.
Your emotions are working hard during this time of change, and so are you. I hope that you are able to take some time to check in with yourself, nourish yourself, honor your emotions, and rest.
Thank you for listening to your emotions. What they have to tell you is vital and potentially life-saving information.