Dear Jessica Brennan,
All of us at many points in our lives will think, “Something’s gotta give”. It’s just too hard, too stressful, too overwhelming, too much.
I know this as well as anyone, having suffered with chronic pain brought on largely by stress, and working through anxiety issues for many years. Some people, like me require a prescription to assist with this, and thankfully there are some good meds on the market.
We all have these times, and sometimes we feel ashamed that we can’t cope. I don’t know about you but when I get super-stressed, I ache from the inside out and a kind of blindness takes over my world. I find it hard to see anything clearly, and my focus gets fused to the very things that are going wrong. I know that worry is pointless, but quite frankly, knowing this seldom helps. I know that if I focus on what is wrong, more will go wrong, but again, the intellectual knowledge of this fact doesn’t make it any easier to let go of the distress I am in. I struggle with the act of how to release a situation as opposed to simply giving up, which is a topic all of its own, and one for another day.
Over the years as I have learned to navigate stress, I have found when I get to a certain threshold, I am filled with a fever to solve whatever is going on, or at least take some kind of action to release the pressure it is causing me, because I know from past experience, if I don’t, my body will start to intensely demonstrate my emotional pain with actual fever and inflammation. Avoiding, equals spiraling for me.
Having said all of this, I am so glad my life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. No, your Mum isn’t off her meds, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to attract more than my share of these emotionally charged situations. Drama is an unwelcome companion.
But, if you never have anything go wrong, then you don’t know what it feels like when things are going well. If you don’t have insurmountable challenges, you won’t ever know how amazing it feels to overcome the impossible. If you don’t have anyone treat you poorly, you won’t know how empowering it is to leave a bad situation, and then not walk into another one. If you never have an argument, then you never know you can disagree with someone and still be friends. All the things that build character and tell you who you are, come from the hard things.
The trick is to not accept these inevitable difficulties as a condition of just the way life goes, and not to let them pile one on top of the other until you just collapse entirely. To truly live and learn, you have to feel that fever that says, “This isn’t good enough. I can fix this.” Of course, everyone gets to have their pity-party for twenty-four hours, (pass the Moose Tracks Ice Cream and Prosecco) but then you have to at least try to make a move toward where you want to be next.
Dad once took his headphones off long enough to tell me that in his view, as soon as something goes wrong, whether it is someone dying, (and Dad’s had his share of that), a significant failure, or a personal violation that grips your heart, turns over your stomach and makes you wonder if you can ever recover, you must decide you’re going to be okay. It might not be today, or next week, or even next month, but you have to decide that you are on the way up, not down. You have to choose to walk toward the light at the end of the tunnel, not away from it. If you can make this one decision when you’re in the eye of the storm, you are charting the course for the future, even if you are so defeated that you don’t have the courage or energy, or support to put one foot ahead of the other in that particular moment.
Dad can be pretty smart for a genius.
Love Mum xo
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