Stress and its Side Effects

What do you do when it feels like your life is falling apart? How do you handle emotional pain?

Crises happen. When life gets messy, and it most reliably does, it is at times harder than hard to keep ourselves upright and unified in the middle of the craziness. Our bodies do weird things. Our brains do even weirder things in response. We get swallowed up by traumas from the past, engulfed by something that has happened, is happening, or that we're terrified won't ever stop happening.
Furthermore, the daily mix of worldly and personal woes is endless: kids struggling, marriages exploding, businesses collapsing, people dying, friends hurting, countries starving, contingencies battling, and bodies ailing.

Culturally we are indeed fascinated by suffering, not only because it moves us, but also because it reminds us that we are not alone in our struggles. Though we often skulk away from poignant feelings, we are also drawn to them, as they make us experience deeply what it is to be human. Still, dealing with the feelings is at times unbearable. We believe they will crush us and that we won't be able to move through their heaviness, their viscosity.

Life has uncannily provided some serious opportunities for me to re-investigate the wounds from my chaotic childhood. Knowing however that I have a tool kit when stuff starts brewing is huge. The question becomes not how to keep from ever feeling this way -- pain is inevitable -- but rather how I am in the middle of the pain.

When I feel like I am coming undone, there are the five things I like to do. When we work through these steps, the intensity of the giant tornado overhead changes. It no longer feels like we are the ones breaking apart. Instead, the tornado itself -- of harrowing feelings that make us want to freeze, hide, wail, give up, escape, die, you name it -- is what begins to break up. 

Rather than falling apart in these moments, we instead crack open, in a wonderfully vulnerable and true way. Please hear this: Cracking open is not a terrible thing. From it, we become privy to an indescribable sweetness, yes the sweetness in pain that rises up from our willingness to not turn away.
Right here is where we behold the remarkable human spirit. Right here is where the jaw drops in wonder at our strength and unparalleled bravery.

Here are the five things I like to do, and that you can, in your own way, do too:
Let go. Drop your resistance and realize that you just don't have control. Surrendering to your suffering is, believe it or not, comforting.
In letting go of our need to make difficulty go away, we also let go of the clenching involved in the battle with our struggle.
Once we release our fierce grips, we can observe our pain more clearly and evenly.

Accept. After letting go and observing without resistance, it is equally vital to stop wishing that the scenario were different.
Instead of spending emotional energy on fantasizing about how better off you'd be if only this or that were the case, allow for what is happening to be exactly as it is.
Sounds obvious, but wow is this one hard! Only once we drop our comparing can we gaze plainly into what is really going on.
Seeing our specific pain, without trying to escape it, is the ultimate way to move beyond it.

Express. Let everything pour out into a journal, an art pad or an audio recorder. Whatever your medium, the articulation of your pain freely and without censor is key.
This kind of expression is fundamentally organizing, and incredibly healing.
It gives the feelings a safe place to collect other than our swirling burdened brains, and makes room for us to enter a more intuitive state.

Sit. You will eventually reach a natural stopping point in your expression, where everything that needed to come out has.
The best thing to do next is sit quietly, re-inhabit your body and experience yourself breathing.
We so often leave our constricted bodies when things get this overwhelming. Yet, being in them and really paying attention to our physicality is one of the most grounding, calming tools.
Simple mindful attention softens us and yields tremendous receptivity to the moment at hand. We become compassionate to our suffering selves, and this in essence diffuses the pain.

Move. Movement at this point is magical. Walk, practice yoga, dance, take a bike ride, go swimming, or anything else to decompress after the thrashing waves break.
Blessedly, the intensity of whatever is troubling you has subsided. You don't feel so derailed and you regain your center.
In fiction, this step would be called the denouement, or relaxation after the tension.
It is the perfect moment to get the blood moving through our bodies while our minds re-calibrate.

Now whether or not this will work…..completely and utterly depends some factors. First, is it new stress, something that came up recently? Or is the stress masking a deeply imbedded demon from the past? I have seen how ugly and utterly painful it is when demons come back to haunt us. Stress can get so bad it begins to take physical signs and before you know it you are not only ailing in mind and emotion but also in body. 

This is something I know all too well because I internalize things. I keep all the pain, frustration and stress to myself and handle it on my own. Lesson I have yet to learn…is the bigger the issue the more difficult it gets and signs then pour outward. 

My past demons are something I can’t handle myself. Not without walking completely away from life as I know It. Then guilt kicks in. How is it possible to feel anger, and resentment towards people when you knew what it was going in.? But yet the anger and resentment builds….towards yourself, others, whoever it may be. Before you know it you end up feeling alienated and so alone your own breathing is deafening. Your friends tell you that you have changed and all want to help and figure out what your problem is. You are grateful to all of them and yet the more you are pushed, the deeper down the rabbit hole you fall. You find yourself wanting to be alone and cry to yourself…since you are the only person who gets it. 

How does one get out of that? I suppose you could go to counseling or be medicated for being labeled depressed or point blank face the demons and move on. Whatever you choose as an individual to do is your own thing, but remember one thing…the deeper and further you allow emotions to go the more damage that the demons can and will have on your life. 

Anyone who understands this, you are in my prayers. It is a dark road all alone.