Whether you are struggling with a big T trauma or a bunch of little 't' traumas or something else that you can't quite put your finger on, sometimes life just feel hard and it can be confusing as to how to handle all of it and what to do to get out of the funk that you find yourself in.
In this episode I'll be talking about what I do when things feel hard and give you one of my most favorite actions that will help you complete the stress cycle. You will feel reassured that you will be okay and have some solid tangible actions to take when things feel hard in your life by the end of this episode.
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Full Episode Transcript:
I am Karin Nelson and you are listening to Become You Again podcast episode number 94.
Welcome to becoming You Again. The podcast to help you with your mental and emotional wellbeing during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the trauma of your divorce by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so your life will be even better than when you were married. I’m your host Karin Nelson.
Welcome back to the podcast my friends. I am so glad that you are here today. I am just going to jump right into today’s podcast and the reason is is because of the topic, when everything feels hard. I am going to be just very transparent with you, my amazing, beautiful listeners out there and everything in my life right now feels very hard which is kind of a funny thing for me even say because actually nothing, when I really slow things down and look at it with my logical prefrontal cortex, nothing really is going wrong. Nothing really is terrible. I am not going through any kind of life crisis or death in the family or, you know my divorce was six years ago and I have definitely healed so much from that. So I don’t have any like giant traumatic event that I am dealing with right now and yet over the last few weeks I have been noticing myself really struggle to be motivated. Really struggle to get things done in my day, really struggle to trust myself. Everything feels hard.
And whether you are going through the big T trauma events in your life like a divorce, maybe a death, maybe you are working through a bunch of grief for you know whatever you are dealing with or maybe your life is a little more like mine right now where there is nothing that you can really pinpoint as being a big T trauma, maybe it is just a bunch of little ‘t’ traumas that have built up over time, maybe it is just a bunch of things that you are not even sure, you cannot really put your finger on is creating distress within you like me in this moment, I just wanted to give you a little insight into how I am dealing with myself as I go through these weeks of where everything feels very hard and my hope is that you can take some of what I do or what I use and try it on for yourself and see what works and see if anything helps to create a sense of peace, helps you to love yourself and find the compassion for yourself as you move through this stage that you might be going through.
I am not going to say that everything that I do will work for you because I do not know that that is true and I even have days where one thing that I do work yesterday and I tried in the next day and I’m like yeah I’m not feeling today. So just know that it is a process and it is okay if everything I am teaching it does not work and it is okay if only one thing does and something doesn’t. We are all different human beings. We have different bodies. We have different connections with ourselves. We are complicated and we are nuanced and what works for me may not work for you and what works for you may not work for me and it is all okay. We are going through this experiment called life and sometimes trying things on and figuring out what works for us is how we have to deal with it.
So the first thing that I want you to know that I do and that I have been doing is just reassuring myself that it’s okay that things the hard right now. I don’t need to judge myself and tell myself that I am doing something wrong or tell myself I should be trying harder or tell myself that because no huge dramatic event has happened that I should not be feeling this way. I am not doing any of that. I am loving myself to the best of my ability. Some days I am better at it than others and I am really doing my best to tap into and ask myself in moments what is it that I need. What is it that is going to serve me best in these moments when I am feeling like everything is hard and heavy and difficult. So I want you to do that for yourself right now. First of all, it’s okay that you are feeling likings are challenging if you are feeling that way. It is okay for you to feel unmotivated. It is okay for you to feel numb at times even. It is okay for you to be struggling in whatever you might be struggling and it doesn’t mean that you are bad, but you are wrong, that you have done something wrong, that you are living your life terribly. That you are unmotivated and you will never accomplish anything else. It doesn’t mean any of that. Drop that story that you are telling yourself that you are not good enough or you are doing wrong because none of that is true. Just give yourself an internal hug whatever that looks like for you and ask yourself what do you need right now? Do you need to cry? I have been doing a lot of that lately. I have definitely been allowing my emotions to pour through me through my tears. Sometimes that is what we need. Do you need to scream and have a rage fit? Do you need to yell into a pillow? You need to put yourself into a timeout and by that I mean take a break from kids, from work even, from life for a minute and just check out? Whether it is you lock yourself in the bathroom for 30 minutes by yourself or in your bedroom if that is good enough. Do you go to bed a half an hour early? You go for a walk on your own. You create a playlist for the mood that you are feeling right now and you listen to it as you drive around in your car just to get out of the house.
I saw a Reel other data popped into my feed on Instagram and I loved it so much. I can’t remember who made this Reel. I don’t remember her name. I’m pretty sure it was not someone that I follow. It just, you know how Reels the discount of pop in to see if it is something that you might like, but I do remember it was a woman who had young kids and she said there are some days where things just feel hard and I can’t show up as a mom that I want to in those moments and that is when I know I need to take a break and so I put in my headphones and I strap my kids in the car and I go get myself a coffee and I drive around listening to, I can’t remember if she was listening to a podcast or music or whatever it was, but what she didn’t do was pay attention to and give all of herself to kids. What she did do was give herself the timeout that she needed while still attending to her kids, making sure they were safe and taking care of, and yet she allowed herself those moments to take care of herself in the way that she needed in that moment. And I loved it so much. So if you are a mother who has young kids maybe that is a way that you can take care of yourself when things feel hard.
These are just some ideas I am offering to you and are probably hundreds more that you could come up with that will meet your needs of what you need right now and only you can answer that. But you have to be willing to ask and then listen and really try to tap into what it is that you need right now while you are feeling like things are very hard. How can you best support yourself in these moments? And again, like I said, some days I will do something for myself and it will feel like exactly what I needed in the moment and the next day I will try that seeing and it is not right. It is not what I need and I will have to ask myself and really tap into and listen to what we need in this moment when things the hard. How can I best support myself? So what does that look like for you? I gave you a few options. Try some of those out if any of them resonate with you or ask yourself and maybe something else will come to you in a moment. Try it out and see how it works for you.
All of you who listen to this podcast regularly know that I really love the book Burnout. I talk about it quite often on here because I have found so many things in a book to be so useful and in the completing the stress cycle chapter, it is kind of a beginning, there was one thing that really resonated with me in this book and it is the part about hugging for 20 seconds. This is something that my daughter and I actually do with one another when we are around each other. She is going to university right now so she lives about 30 minutes away from me and we don’t see each other as often as I would like. I would like to see her every single day like I used to but we do see each other usually once every at least two weeks. But when we see each other something that we like to do to help complete our stress cycle, to help give ourselves the support that we need even though we are using another body to do the act, it is such a comfort and what you do is you hug one another for 20 seconds at least. It can be longer but at least 20 seconds but not so, you are not hugging each other where one person is leaning on the other person and taking all of the support and one person is the support and the other person is the leader. You are both supporting yourself in your own stance and then you hug and you just allow the relaxation and the safety and the love and the support of each other to be present in the moment and it is one of my favorite things. Now of course I do this with my boyfriend as well. So if there is someone in your life who you can go to. If there is someone that you can share a hug with, a friend, your sister, your mom, maybe even just a neighbor or your boyfriend, your partner, whoever it is, if there is someone that you can have this shared experience with it is such a beautiful way of allowing yourself to release some of the heaviness that you are feeling and to let go of what feels hard in the moment.
So those are a few of the things that I open myself up to when things feel hard. Now of course you know that I love the minds at work and I teach so much about changing your thoughts and all of that. And I think that is a beautiful thing. And I don’t necessarily always talk about the actions that you should be taking in moments but I also think that sometimes it’s okay to let go of needing to change the thoughts, let go of needing to try and fix what is happening in your head and just allowing yourself to act in a way that is supportive for you in moments and maybe we just let go of the thoughts for a minute. Maybe we just let go of the need to change the thoughts that are happening and to just reconnect with our bodies and our emotions in that way where we continue to let things be hard or let our brain think that things are hard, in my case, and instead I ask myself what is it that I need in this moment and then I do my best to provide that for myself.
Alright my friends. Thank you for listening. I love you. You can get through those moments where things are hard. I know that I will get through this as well. It is not going to last forever. It never does. But I hope that this gives you a little bit of guidance on some things that may be useful to you when things feel hard. I will be back next week.
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