Working with our emotional health is a daily practise
Hello beautiful people,
For a long, long, long time my life was one long story of overwhelm. And it was reflected in the choices I made – the short term fixes, the holding my breath, the ‘it’ll be ok soon’, the urgent pushing/doing, the sensations of just ‘hold on until it gets better’.
I am not sure that I had a sense of how it really would get better, but I had to hold on, I had to hope that the things I did would help.
And then it became patently obvious that nothing I was doing was truly helping. I had a too strong sense of things really falling apart, the ground beneath my feet being too shaky and I sought help. After I was way, way, way beyond my capacity to hold what I was carrying.
This morning as I was walking along the river here in London, talking to my husband who is in Spain, we talked again about how important it is to work with things before they reach the point where we feel like we are being driven off the edge of the cliff.
To soothe the sensation of overwhelm, to work with the punishing and shame-inducing anger, to support and guide the intense fear and anxiety, to give regular empathy and light to shame.
Emotions and overwhelm are things that love to be worked on proactively. Before the world feels like it’s tipping you over the edge.
That’s not to say it’s comfortable doing this work proactively. Our brains will often direct us towards the more easy, comfortable thing that feels safe because it’s familiar – not because it will help us move out of the struggles we really want to get through.
And that’s because when emotions feel too much, our brains will be pushed into SURVIVAL. They will see the activation of emotions that we don’t like, and respond with – oh my gosh, that’s a big threat! Let’s go into emergency mode!
Survival brain is where we can feel really stuck, doomed, overwhelmed, panicky, full of uncontrollable rage.
What we want to work out, what we want to move forward on and navigate through, then feels impossible.
In our survival brain we don’t know how to work out how to deal with the situation with our partner/children/job stress/overwhelming grief/anger.
When we are ‘just about holding it together’ our brain will often say – good enough! Keep going!
But if we were able to access our Executive brain in these times, it would say – put down that heavy load and get some help now, before you are beyond your capacity.
Look after yourself now
Do the things that reduce the emotional load now
Support yourself now
But when we are close to the edge, close to our full capacity, we struggle to see that what we need is to work with our emotions before they take us over the edge.
I am still familiar with the sensations of overwhelm, it hasn’t totally gone from my life, but every day I work with my nervous system, I work to deal with the emotions that lead to the sense that things are too much.
Like getting fit or staying fit, like learning a language, improving a skill, or having a healthy diet – working with our emotional health is a daily practice.
It’s something that we have to prioritize like everything else that feels significant and important.
Our mental and emotional health dictates everything we do, choose, say and feel.
Sometimes it feels easy to do this work, sometimes it feels uncomfortable. Sometimes I am dredging up things from the past that I haven’t worked with yet and I think – oh my my! This is dreadful. Wish I could just ignore this, thank you very much!
Sometimes things happen in my daily life that activate feelings that I really dislike – an email that activates anger and shame, a disagreement from my husband activating despair, a withering comment from a family member activating shame.
But I know that if I don’t work with all that I am carrying, if I don’t provide myself the support that I need then I won’t get to those beautiful times in my life of ease, confidence, pure effortless joy, love, contentment and excitement.
Life is meant to be a flowing, undulating experience full of all of the things – all of the emotions, all of the experiences, the joys and the sorrows.
Emotions are meant to feel like a normal part of life, but where we get stuck is when we don’t know how to deal with them so we suppress, avoid, distract – and that then stops our ability to feel all of the good stuff too.
The more I give myself support, the more I work with my emotions, the easier and more natural it becomes. The more I know what to do when things show up.
When we only wait for things to fall apart, for things to become emergencies, then we are creating more work for ourselves in the long term.
One of those ironies of life is that what we need to in those circumstances is to drain the emotions that are leading to the sensations of overwhelm – but that is often the last thing we actually want to do.
And like getting fit, learning a language, training for a new job – it’s lots of small practices that are done regularly that create new neural pathways, create new habits so that you ‘naturally’ start to react and deal with the challenges in your life more naturally.
I would love to know what you do to support yourself on a regular basis. What support do you give to your nervous system and emotions that help you? What could you do more of?
Let me know if you have questions and I’ll share some ideas with you in the days to come.
Sending you much love,
Diana