Some mornings are okay.
If I can get out of bed quickly enough and start moving, I can often jump start my day through assertive action and coffee. I almost always wake up with some anxiety, but I can usually douse it by getting productive.
Other mornings are not okay.
I wake up from my anxious dreams and my mind races through everything that could possibly be wrong. My relationship, my tiny apartment, my work as a consultant, my failed marriage, my lack of children, my feelings of isolation. Real estate in Vancouver is a favorite and frequent stressor.
Rather than feeling connected, alive, and grateful, I implode like a dwarf star: dense and tight.
Here are five ways I cope.
1. Move
Get the energy OUT. Put on loud music, move your body, make sound, and shake. There is a lot of energy in anxiety: get it out through chaotic movement. You don’t need to be controlled. Shout in a pillow, cry, or just stand and jiggle your bones.
Depression is harder. When you are depressed, the last thing you want to do is move. Move anyway. Jump in place fifty times. Then see.
I prefer the freedom of not being in public so that I can move wildly, make horrific expressions, emit weird noises, and not alarm the general populace. It’s not pretty. However, if you can’t get yourself to move on your own, then go to a class. Not yin. Go to one that gets your heartbeat up and makes you sweat.
2. Speak
Scrawl into a journal (it doesn’t have to be legible), scream it into a pillow, or channel your voices into a flowing deluge of tongues. However you do it, expressing your truth will move your energy as well. By speaking your truth (no matter how crazy-cray, ugly, or irrational), you get the voices out of your head and into the world where you can have some distance from them. When you hear these stories outside of yourself, they begin to shift and lose their potency. It’s a little like exorcising demons, friends.
Actually, it’s a lot like that.
3. Connect
Call a friend, go to coffee. Confess yourself. Get vulnerable. Share. Accept a hug. Give a hug. Expose yourself and your truth to someone safe and trusted. They don’t need to fix you or give advice: the act of being heard and seen is profoundly healing.
4. Do good
Sometimes the fastest way to feel better is to be of service. Go do something good. Listen to someone’s problems, give blood, clean your mom’s windows. You will remind yourself that what you do matters and you make a difference by being here. Sometimes we forget.
5. Clean Up
It can also be helpful – if you are a control freak like me – to do housework. Physical work like scrubbing the floors and walls is therapeutic. But you can also “clean up” by finishing those old chores that you have back burnered for a few weeks (or months, or years). Getting those tasks off your plate reminds you that you can take some control in your life, and that can feel really good. If you are feeling mentally overwhelmed, start with physical housework to get in your body and go from there.
6. Get in nature
If possible, get in nature. Reconnect with the earth, the trees, the sky. The sky reminds us that we are part of something greater. The mountains remind us that our problems will pass. The trees mind us how to breathe. Mama earth can hold a lot in her generous arms; give her your time and she will hug you back.
Finally, remember that you are not alone. Every human understands heartbreak; we’ve all felt the overwhelm. Some of us may feel it more, but we can move through these feelings if we keep taking one breath at a time. Our spiritual daily work: when our hearts break, let them crack wide open. Let the sun and wind in.
“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen
