Sending Out an SOS

For several days last week I felt starkly unlike myself. I felt numb to most everything. It was as if I was no longer inside my body. The only time I felt like I was living my life was when I walked around the neighborhood with my dog–beyond that I felt like my life was living me. I was essentially a bystander instead of an active participant.

I felt some amount of accomplishment for not beating myself up further for feeling down, which is a behavior pattern I’m working to reset. Yet after a few days of experiencing these feelings and not quite knowing what to do about my funk, I text a good friend to ask if she had ever felt this way. She had, of course, and freely admitted it. Then she asked me a question of her own. “What is bringing you joy these days?”

I quickly wrote back, indicating that I didn’t have the time or resources for finding joy at the moment. I was on week three of an incredibly restrictive diet designed to identify food sensitivities, which basically left me hungry 24/7 and annihilated my social life. My schedule was also in shambles because my dog had moved back in with me after a year of living with my ex, and I’d been working a lot of extra hours to facilitate a move that my company was making to a new location. I rattled off these reasons to her without even thinking about them, because they were on my mind daily.

She replied, “It all sounds rather intense, Kate.”

I read her tiny text bubble twice. Then I reread my giant balloon. She was right. It did sound rather intense. When I actually paused to think about it, my routine and sense of normal had changed significantly in a short time. I was clearly in a period of transition. As I thought about how stressful change of any kind can be, two more recent examples popped into my mind.

My friend’s simple response gave me a fresh perspective on what I was going through–and it also gave me an idea. When I woke up the next morning, I made a list in my journal of all the changes I was experiencing. Then, for good measure, I added any major decisions I needed to make within the next two months. My final list had twelve items on it, from small things (failure to get to the gym) to significant things (did I mention the elimination diet?) to things that I thought were small but actually turned out to be significant (like a drastic new hairstyle that may or may not have been a mistake). Regardless of size or importance, I captured everything that was creating change in my life.

When I put down my pen and read through the list, I felt an immediate sense of relief. Now that the sources of upheaval were all on paper, I didn’t have to actively carry them in my mind every moment of the day. And now that it was all on paper, I could clearly see how my daily life had been disrupted and how that naturally created the disconnect I was feeling.

This exercise allowed me to look at myself with more kindness and compassion. I wanted to give myself some words of encouragement or a good hug, because that’s what I would do for any friend who recounted that list. By discovering and understanding the root of my feelings, I felt a glimmer of aliveness again. I made a small shift from bystander to participant. I even started to see the opportunities that could be found in this time of transition, if I could remain open to them.

So when you are having one of those days or weeks or months when you are feeling off, try not to be critical of yourself. The first step of the practice is to acknowledge our feelings and accept them as human and natural, whatever they may be. Then slowly, as we honestly dig deeper than our feelings, we can start to address the underlying issues that are the heart of the matter.