Resources:
Sliding Scale Counseling: https://openpathcollective.org
At the start of the pandemic, I found myself in multiple settings in which someone was asking me what to do to manage the emotional upheaval people are experiencing. In my head, I kept thinking, "Put on your shoes." Unfortunately, that means very little to most people.
In undergrad, I found I couldn't focus on school work while trying to navigate my own mental health struggles. One morning, I specifically put on workout clothes to go to the library. This was before athleisure wear was cool. The bounce to my tennis shoes kept me moving. I got a hot coffee drink, found a chair next to a window, and started my first research paper in college for honors psychology on memory and trauma. It was the first of three thirty-page papers, and for each one, I used the same method: the right sneakers, the right chair, the right drink, and the right pen... and pizza or Chinese food later. I took a horrible situation to a methodical place, and it started with shoes.
When my son was born, I struggled in the days that followed his birth. I'd tried to do everything right, but it didn't matter. Life shut down in my house, and while the balloons were deflating and the flowers were dying, waiting for him to be healthy enough to leave the NICU, I found myself in a familiar place. I had this failure to get into action and would find myself frequently staring at a wall, sometimes in the dark, not realizing I never turned on the lights. One day, I threw out the dead plants and deflated balloons, and once again, I put on stretchy pants and sneakers. From then on, I looked at PubMed rather than the wall most days. It wasn't perfect, and I even mismatched my shoes one day. What I came to find is that that part of our stress response involves, in no small part, the vagus nerve. Polyvagal theory is an approach that allows you to navigate the physical aspects of stress mentally and the mental aspects of stress with physical strategies. I was capitalizing on physical inputs to unstick my brain.
As we move through another year of a pandemic, societal turmoil, and mass shootings and yet another Mental Health Awareness Month with no end to these things in sight, I've been revisiting this journey. So many content creators devoted to creating positive content are taking breathers, breathers from positivity. I once wrote that, "One gift in life is nothing lasts forever. If you don't die, things will improve at some point. Most people don't find 'at some point' helpful." They probably still find it unhelpful, and frankly, that "some point" feels further and further away some days. Seven years ago, if I were being forthcoming when people asked how to manage stress, I'd probably would have said good old fashioned repression was the way to go. 😂
Repression really isn't ideal, so instead, to anyone struggling to launch, I say, first, find your shoes. Find those physical inputs that will help you find your flow. It might be taking a few minutes in the sun, putting on those shoes that give you some bounce, or even just holding an icepack to your chest for a few minutes.
Second, feed your joy.
In one of multiple speech therapy manuals I bought to work with Logan beyond his normal sessions, it says "It is a happy talent to know how to play."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you learn in those manuals is that the first way to teach a nonverbal child how to play is deconstruction. You show them how fun it is to knock over a stack of blocks to get them excited about rebuilding. There's a lesson there, too. Let go of what you can. Knock it down. And feed your joy. Taking time for joy is a skill. It takes time and dedication to put down the phone.
Third, if all else fails, rest. Our lives are turned upside down right now, for some more than others. In Chinese medicine, grief dissolves qi. Fear descends qi. Neither are helpful when you need to get up and go about your day. But, maybe we can take a note from our favorite positive content creators here and allow ourselves some grace and rest however we can. It's okay to be sad, to be scared.
Those are my thoughts from my I'm-not-a-therapist book. Until next time, you are not alone, and I'm thinking of you! ❤️ 🙏
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