It seems like half the clients I spoke with last week told me how overwhelmed they are. When I asked what was going on I heard about sick friends dying, fear of job loss, relationship break-ups, divorce dramas and financial strain.
It seems like life is always throwing something unexpected our way. Just when we get through one thing and think it’s now going to be OK, something else often comes along to disturb our peace of mind.
In exploring the pain of these situations further with my clients, they began to say things like, “I don’t think I’ll ever make more money than I do now.” “I’m afraid I’ll never meet anyone to be in a relationship with.” And, “What if I never find a new job?”
It was clear that it’s not just what is happening in our lives that causes us pain, it is all the out-of-control thoughts that our mind thinks about what is going on that makes things worse.
Our minds are so good at future-tripping and creating negative fantasies that it is a wonder any of us get out of bed in the morning.
And when you take the difficult circumstances going on in our lives at any given time and couple it with the constant chaos in the world, you have a recipe for chronic low-grade overwhelm that dulls our ability to fully experience and participate in life.
So how can we deal with this better? Here’s three quick steps:
There are more and more messages these days about the healing power of pleasure. Well known doctors such as Christiane Northrup and Sara Gottfried are providing us with the scientific reasons why pleasure is so healing to our bodies, minds, and souls.
Over the years of working with clients as a psychotherapist and life coach, I have witnessed many people go through periods of time in which they felt everything was falling apart. Life is full of unexpected losses, changes, and transitions such as an illness, a job loss, a divorce, a cross-country move, a major financial setback, etc. However, there are those times in life in which multiple uncontrollable events may be happening all at once that push you to the edge of your ability to cope and keep you from wanting to get out of bed in the morning.