Anyone else feel like life is just handing them so many challenges this year?!? I personally feel like I’m on a bit of a rollercoaster. I'm still recovering from a broken ankle and surgery in February. I started to be able to play around with light running, but that aggravated my heel and I had to pull back. I got a taste of normal and hope that one of my favorite activities was back and now I can’t do it again for a while.
Then there’s COVID. Things start to open up, I miss seeing clients in person, but science is showing that it is not safe, so governments are tightening up restrictions, enforcing masks, and closing some businesses down again. We were moving towards more of a sense of normal and have to pull back.
Same with BLM and politics and social media. Same with grief and eating disorder recovery, business growth, athletic performance, marriage counseling, addiction, the tide, the seasons, etc. You get it. Growth and change are not linear. F*** that...LIFE is not linear. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes we don’t even notice the flows, but we sure do notice those damn ebbs!
Thankfully (??) life has given me plenty of opportunity lately to practice dealing with setbacks. Here are a few tips I can pass along:
1. When the moment sucks, zoom out to the bigger picture. You may be having a setback right now but is the overall trend positive? If yes, great! Trust it will get better if you stay the course. If not, great time to pivot and try something new.
2. On the flip side, while big stuff that you can’t control may feel stuck, maybe you focus on smaller, day to day skills or ways you still can improve. It may seem silly, but while I can’t run, I have been stretching and doing calf raises. I'm getting my leg prepped for the inevitable day I can try again. With sobriety, you break it down to one day at a time or practice noticing triggers or emotions or practice calling friends now so that you can more easily call them when you need them. With grief, maybe you take a few bites of food, go outside for 5 minutes, snuggle with a pet to feel some comfort and normalcy in the eye of the storm. There are usually small things you can do, even during a setback
3. Remember it's not permanent. Every process has setbacks. Remember it's a moment or a phase or a season, it’s not permanent.
4. Remember it's not pervasive. You may be having a setback in recovery or grief or a relationship or health or whatever. But not EVERYTHING has gotten set back. Where can you find gratitude? Where can you find confidence? Where can you find joy? Where can you find solace? Find those and focus on those. Sometimes a setback is like a bug bite: it happens, it’s painful, but the pain gets better if you leave it alone. The more you itch it and focus on it, the more pain you feel.
5. Remember it's not personal. If you’re like me, you can tend to take a setback personally. I don’t rationally believe it, I'm a trained therapist who has done therapy and gets lots of support, but I'm not immune from fear and ego and grief. Sometimes I feel punished. Sometimes I feel that if I just tried harder or was better, setbacks wouldn't happen. It’s important to remember, and have a support network that will help you remember, that those things aren’t true.
6.Speaking of support network... get support! You don’t have to be alone. And you being vulnerable will help your friends and family feel less alone when they inevitably hit a setback themselves.
7. Try to find a growth mindset. What can you learn? How to you use this to refine your skills or refine your resolve or refine that values you're practicing?
Give it a try! Reach out to let me know how it goes or if I can help with more support!