How to Support Yourself When Shit Goes Sideways
Do you ever have one of those days where one bad thing snowballs into the next and before you know it you want to quit the rest of the day, go home, get into your soft pjs, and curl up in bed? I had a day just like that a few weeks ago, and instead of it wrecking me for the rest of the day, I used a few tools to turn things around and get back on track.
To set the stage: This was the first Christmas since my mom passed away and I was having some big, messy feelings that were already impacting my day-to-day mental health. There were also the usual holiday stressors - choral concerts for kids, office pot-luck, gatherings with friends, shopping for sustainable and ethical gifts to keep the magic of the holidays alive without getting eaten alive by Capitalism, and meeting work deadlines before everyone checked out over the holidays. Needless to say, it was a lot. I recognized the signs that I needed some additional support so I booked an appointment with my psychologist.
Side Note: In addition to working with a few clients here at Hummingbird Consulting, I have a day job doing similar leadership and organizational development work within a large corporation. Building a sustainable, ethical, values-aligned business takes time and I love learning and growing in both areas of my professional life.
Everything was going great. I’d had a busy but productive morning, I had a healthy lunch packed, and I even remembered to put my notes from a ‘homework’ assignment in the car that morning. I had just finished my lunch, hit ‘send’ on one last email, and headed down to my car to zip across the river to my appointment.
The plan was that I would be there in less than 10 minutes, with ample time to park. I would have a helpful session and then zip back to the office for a couple more meetings. Then, I would head home for the usual Wednesday night combo of evening activities for everyone (family dinner, musical theatre rehearsal for E, choir for X, coworking for me, and band practice for P).
Except, my car wouldn’t start.
I turned the key in the ignition three times, and nothing.
And then I realized what happened. My battery was dead. I had left my lights on that morning while rushing to get into work on time. I was not going to make it to my appointment. Insert all the expletives.
I could feel my chest tighten and my heartrate quicken. My breathing got shallow, and my shoulders and glutes clenched. My mind start racing to troubleshoot and find solutions. All signs of a stress response in my body.
It would have been easy to just spiral into a melt down. Instead, I paused, and consciously shifted gears using The Resilience Toolkit.
I asked myself the guiding questions:
What is my stress state? Fight/Flight!
How do I know? All the symptoms I just listed above.
Is it a helpful response for me in this moment? Ummm… maybe? I definitely have a sense of urgency to figure out a solution, but I’m not experiencing an actual threat to my safety at this time, so it might actually be more helpful to get to a lower state to be able to think more creatively about next steps.
What practice can I do to support myself? I used a combination of a few practices - one that was focussed on breathing, and two that involved some movement.
How do I know that practice was helpful? I could feel my shoulders drop and my breathing slow. I yawned. My thoughts slowed down and I was able to consider the pro/cons of a few different options before choosing the best next step.
In the end, I was able to catch an Uber to and from my appointment, and my AAA membership got my vehicle boosted quickly once I was back at the office. I had to reschedule one meeting, but that felt like a tiny impact considering the complexity of the rest of the day.
Learning to check in with both my feelings and the stress response in my body has been really life changing.
I’d love to help you learn how to use the tools to learn more about your own stress responses and build capacity for supporting yourself when shit goes sideways. A stressful moment doesn’t have to snowball into a stress-filled day or week.
I have a 4-part series to individuals to learn to use these guiding questions and a minimum of eight embodied practices to support yourself (and your nervous system). If you’ve ever gotten stuck feeling stressed and would like some support, I’d love for you to take a look and see if my approach might be helpful.
