I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve been going through a hard season of life right now. I’m facing some challenges I don’t know how to solve (yet). It makes me feel like a small child who is so overwhelmed she wants to burrow under the covers and not come out. Maybe not ever.
In times like this, I just want to escape. I’m not given to drinking or taking drugs, but I numb in other ways. I listen to audio books and podcasts for hours, so I don’t have to think. I will watch sixteen seasons of a show I’ve already seen. I will sleep. I will do whatever I can to not feel the uncomfortable feelings.
That’s where I’ve been lately: trying to escape.
But over the past few years, I have developed better coping strategies for whittling away at the fear and the urge to flee. I had to find my own solutions, because popular culture tells us to suck it up, to push through, to focus on the outcome—and that never worked for me.
These are very male/macho strategies; I needed something softer, more nourishing.
Because really, how would you treat a small and overwhelmed child? Would you tell him to suck it up and power through? It doesn’t sound very effective, it doesn’t even sound kind.
What I needed to do, I finally figured out, was take good care of myself.
To take exquisitely good care of myself.
I don’t just mean to sleep enough and hydrate and move my body and eat food that makes me feel good in the long run, though all that is important.
I mean I needed to fill my time with the sort of things I would do for a small overwhelmed child—to soothe and delight them, to bring some pleasure into their days and make them smile. Because the trick for getting over terror is not to suck it up and power through, it is to counterbalance it with pleasure, with calm, with care.
The past few weeks I’ve written a list on my weekly calendar of things that soothe me, that bring me pleasure, that bring me solace. It’s a visual reminder that I have a smorgasbord to choose from. Every day I try to do one of them. Some days, I do even more.
Your list will be different than mine, of course, but this is what works for me:
Trip to the beach
Reading
Artwork
Writing cards to friends
Hot baths
Hikes
Dancing
Listening to music
And a catch-all category I call Body Love (putting on lotion, doing my nails, etc.).
Whenever I do one of those things, I put a check next to it. Some weeks I manage to check them all off. Other weeks, not so much. But each check mark is a step toward calm, a step toward care, a step toward balancing out whatever it is that is making me want to run away.
It’s really the only way I’ve found to walk through hard times: by taking very good care.
There’s a whole different essay I could write about how these strategies—exercise, connecting to nature, doing artwork—are considered good ways to reset a disregulated nervous system, but I that’s not how I picked them. I picked them because they make me feel better, more grounded, calmer, more capable.
It’s why, this weekend, while I had plenty of things to do, I spent a good hour or two on a blanket on the grass, in the sun, reading, writing a card to a friend, taking care of myself.
I still don’t have all the answers for my current dillemma, but I know my best chance of getting through it with grace, of not disappearing entirely into my problems, is to take very good care for as long as I need.
And I hope you are taking good care as well ❤️
I read 3 novels this past weekend in an effort to avoid approaching a series of overwhelming tasks. Unfortunately, my avoidance tactics didn’t make the overwhelming tasks go away, but at least I enjoyed reading!
Wishing you moments of peace and measures of ease as you move through this difficult season in your life ❤️
I feel you! This was a much needed compassionate explanation for why I sometimes - mindfully and purposefully - turn away from the noise, stress, and deadlines… and take space to read, nap, or daydream (even better if outside!). Now I have words to articulate why. Thank you.