Webinar: How to Care For Yourself Through Times of Change and Transition

This webinar will support individuals in managing their overall wellness when experiencing stress and uncertainty throughout life changes by evaluating their overall wellness so that they can build a better understanding of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and identify the support they may need.

Attendees will learn:

• How to evaluate their physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual wellness.
• How to better understand and cope with negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• What it means to identify and ask for the support they may need while navigating change or transition.

This webinar is facilitated by Margaret Mayer, LMSW.

As a therapist at Eddins Counseling Group, Margaret utilizes a variety of relational therapy techniques to support clients in times of change and transition. They understand that just as the seasons change, so do our lives, feelings, and experiences.

These changes can bring about uncertainty and leave you feeling:

• overwhelmed,
• stuck, or
• unsure of what to do.

It takes courage and strength to address this and to prioritize taking care of yourself!

Margaret helps clients in addressing life changes and transitions, in order to better understand and address their overall health and wellness. In recognizing that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors collectively impact individuals, they help clients grow and heal by leveraging a holistic approach to happy, whole, and healthy lives.

Curious to learn more about self-care? Take our self-care assessment.

Watch a replay of the presentation here.

This is a free monthly webinar that is brought to you as part of Eddins Counseling Group’s regular monthly wellness series. Our website contains great previous sessions that are recorded and up on the site. 

This webinar is facilitated by Margaret Mayer. She uses the pronouns she or they. She is a licensed master of social work and a certified daring way facilitator based on the work and research of Dr. Brene Brown. 

Margaret Mayer has over ten years of experience as a social worker and a ten-year background in utilizing relational approaches. The relational approach is an approach to working with folks, kind of highlighting and recognizing that human beings are hardwired for connection. With this, we are and have been impacted by the relationships we’ve been in, both in the past and the present. The degree to which we have been in connection or in disconnection with others really impacts us.

This relational approach can be used when there is distress in relationships for people. This can be interpersonal relationships (the relationships we have with other people), and family relationships, and it can be used even in organizations or social relationships and social settings. A really important way that it can be used is intrapersonally, which is the relationship you have with yourself.

What Is a Time of Change or Transition?

• Job/career change
• Conflict with partner or family 
• Death of a parent 
• Loss of a friend 
• Moving 
• Getting a pet 
• Welcoming a new child 
• Child leaving home 
• A health diagnosis 
• Spending a large amount of money unexpectedly
• Creating a new budget 
• A major milestone birthday  
• Accepting a necessary loss 
• What else?

Thinking about self-care during times of change and transition, there’s a story that tonight’s session called you here for a reason. What is going on for you right now? Are you in a time and change and transition? And if not, if you’re here tonight and you’re listening to this session in order to help you when you’re going through change and transition, think about something in the past, something you’ve gone through in the past. 

Write that down on your capture tool. Think about what’s coming up for you, what sort of called you to join in, be here, and write down your change or transition as you’re thinking about it, as you’re capturing it.

How to Care for Yourself in Times of Change and Transition?

What do we know?

• Why is it so hard to manage change and transition? 
• What does work during these times? 
• What doesn’t work during these times?  

When we think about self-care during times of change and transition, let’s think about what we know. What kind of things can we start thinking about? Why is it so hard to manage change and transition? What makes a change or transition hard to manage?

We also want to think about what does work during these times and what doesn’t work. 

This means really thinking about what is supportive during these times, what is supportive to us and our well-being, and being able to manage the change. What do we know works and what do we know doesn’t work? 

The unknown makes it hard to manage. It’s new ground and requires lots of new learning. It requires us to adapt and bend and change really quickly sometimes or unexpectedly. 

For example, if you’re going through a job change, it can be really helpful to schedule times to apply for a job and to take breaks. So you can manage that. That is helpful. Looking for a job can feel overwhelming, and it can feel uncertain, but you can schedule some time in your day to really work on that. 

If you’re mourning the loss of a pet, that same approach isn’t likely going to work. So what has been working for you when managing change and transition and what has not been working? When we start thinking about what’s working and what’s not, it’s really easy to have more ideas of what isn’t working and to really be able to recognize and change and transition. We’re sort of confronted with barriers and what doesn’t work, what makes it hard is easier to identify. 

Oftentimes it’s easier to identify and what doesn’t work rather than what is helping us in the change, which is why we often become overwhelmed uncertain, and really stressed out during these times.

In this, we also often feel like we’re going at it alone. It can be really hard to think of what to do or what needs to change. And it starts to feel really personal. It starts to feel like something is wrong with us. We end up often using negative coping skills or reprimanding ourselves for not being successful.

This negative reinforcement we’re trying to use to address our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviors is very common. That doesn’t always work. It doesn’t always work in allowing us to really address the issue in meaningful ways. And so because it’s not working, we often shut down. We isolate ourselves. We don’t see our friends and our community, and we can get really lost in the hurtful feelings that really perpetuate the uncertainty and the instability of change. 

A lot of us may get on our phones and start scrolling. We find ways to disconnect. And all of this really perpetuates the overwhelming feelings and the fatigue that come with change.

What Exactly Happens During Change and Transition in Life?

Common Experiences

Some common experiences include symptoms of change and transition in life, the impact on your body, and what you move away from. So when we’re talking about this to help think about how we get to clarity of mind and understand what’s happening to us. We’re going to build out more on this together. Build out on symptoms of change and transition. We’re going to think about the impact on our bodies, and then we’re going to talk about what we move away from.

This is a kind of data gathering of what we do and what we may experience, and then we’re going to shift them to how to help ourselves with the change in transition, how to cope, and how to manage this. 

Symptoms of Change and Transition: stress, overwhelm, anxiety, worry, avoidance, dread, fear, vulnerability, excitement 

What is the symptomology? What are the feelings and the experiences that we have while going through change? The most common, what we know through the data and the research in relationship to a sort of human behavior and how we respond during these times is that we often feel stress, overwhelm, anxiety, worry, avoidance, dread, fear, vulnerability, and excitement.

Stress 

This stress word is in bold because stress often accompanies these other feelings, or these other feelings accompany stress. Stress is sort of the primary indicator, a primary symptom when we’re going through a change in transition. Stress is what we experience when there’s an environmental demand that we see as beyond our ability to cope with successfully. 

So something happens, and we have a physiological or a psychological, so a brain or body responds to the event, and we feel unable to cope adequately. What increases stress is unpredictability, uncontrollability, or when we feel really overloaded when it’s just coming on too strong, too fast.

Overwhelm

As a result of this, it can be an overwhelming feeling. The overwhelm is just experiencing extreme levels of stress to the point of not being able to function. This also can bring up anxiety. Anxiety is really an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes in our body (like the increase in blood pressure). 

It’s important to differentiate between anxiety as a state and a trait. And so what that means is “a state” is a state of being. I am feeling anxiety as a response to this situation. For example, recently getting fired, or losing someone close to you. A person might be feeling anxiety as a result of this situation. 

Anxiety 

Anxiety as a trait. Some of us are more naturally predisposed to feeling anxious, so some of us have more anxiety. And while that is true, certain states can increase the anxiety, certain situations can increase that.

Worry

Often during these times, we experience worry. And worry is just that negative chain of thoughts about bad things that may happen in the future. So the change happens, we become worried. We sort of get stuck on this chain of negative things that may happen as a result of the change. Worrying isn’t an emotion. It rather indicates our thought patterns. 

Avoidance

Avoidance is kind of not showing up or doing something that you need to do because of how you’re feeling and spending lots of time sort of dodging or moving away from things that already feel as if they’re consuming you. It’s also a coping strategy for anxiety. We move into avoidance, and it can be really hurtful because it can be hurtful to ourselves and to other people. When we need to show up, we need to do things, we need to get things done, and we just don’t feel able to do it. 

Dread

Dread is frequently experienced in response to high-probability negative situations. So we think that the situation is going to be really bad. It has a high probability of not working out well for us or not in our favor. And so we really dread the event. Typically it can often make the actual event worse than what it was or what it is. 

Fear

There’s also fear. So fear is usually shorter lasting, but it’s a high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat. Like anxiety, fear can be measured as a state or trait. Some of us are more often afraid or feel that quickly respond to physical or psychological danger, and some of us are. We don’t have the experience of fear as much until a situation happens. And so it’s a state of being rather than a trait.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. This is really important because we often hear a lot about vulnerability and it can be also used or thought about positively. “I’m going to show up and be vulnerable in this situation to create a deeper connection with someone I love and care about.” 

That same emotion can be experienced in times of change and transition where we’re just, again, it’s uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure when we’re uncertain about a situation. Like, for example, starting a new business, dating after a divorce, trying to get pregnant after a miscarriage, or sending a kid off to college. All of these things create the emotional response and we’re feeling very vulnerable. 

Excitement

Excitement is defined as an energized state of enthusiasm leading up to an enjoyable event. It’s important because it often feels very similar to anxiety. Like “coming out of your skin feeling”, something’s about to happen, and there’s a lot of energy around it. It’s important to name because when we’re feeling the excitement, we can also be feeling anxiety. 

It’s helpful to slow down and get introspective and curious about what feeling is coming up for us to best address it. 

Some ways that excitement shows up in change and transition are things like starting something new, changing your job, going on a first date after a breakup, or standing up for yourself in a tough situation. Or maybe you’re starting college and excited about getting up in front of the room in your English program and reading your first piece of work. It can be really exciting, but it can also feel a lot. There are a lot of other feelings that come with it. 

Think about what symptoms come up for you when you’re going through change or transition. What do you feel and what do you experience? And write them down. It’s just a good way to help you name and understand what you’re feeling and experiencing.

What Is The Impact That These Symptoms Have on Your Body? 

Source: Body Signals: How Stress Affects The Body

Impact on your body: high blood pressure, less sleep, weight loss or gain, headaches, body/muscle aches, stomach

Stress is a symptom that typically accompanies change and transition. And in and of itself, it’s also accompanied by several secondary signs and symptoms. It’s the most common that’s present during change in transition. So we need to pay attention to what it does to our body and the impact on our body. 

It creates things like high blood pressure. You feel stressed out, and you can feel that blood pressure rising, or maybe you’re stressed out, going to the doctor even, and your blood pressure is higher than normal. Oftentimes, this stress response in our body makes it hard to get sleep. We have weight loss or gain, headaches, body and muscle aches, and stomach aches. 

It’s really hard to manage stress because it can be so physiological and psychological. 

What’s going on in your body right now? What’s happening to you? What are you feeling? 

We’ve been talking a little bit about symptoms, naming what may come up. Hopefully, you’ve been thinking about and working to make connections with the symptoms you’ve experienced in times of change and transition for you. Pay attention to what you’re feeling and what’s coming up and create and sort of model this practice of taking time to pay attention. Take big, deep breaths, listen to your body, and understand how your body responds to what you’re feeling. This is important and is an important part of understanding what’s happening for us when we’re going through a lot.

What we move away from: connection = growth-fostering relationships, empathy, hope

So we have these symptoms, and we experience the impact of stress on our bodies. We now need to understand, what do we move away from. And this is often a connection. We often move away from connection when we are going through change and transition, and we’re feeling overwhelmed by it, struggling to manage it a little bit. 

This speaks to that experience of feeling sometimes like we’re going at it alone. The mere fact of talking to someone about what’s going on can feel like a lot to manage. In reality, we need those connections, but it can be hard to reach out for them. And so we move away from connections. What we know about connections is connections move us towards what we call five good things.

 

“Five Good Things”

• Zest 
• Clarity
• Worth 
• Productivity
• A desire for more connection 

It’s really hard because this is compounded when we think about connections. What helps us engage in deeper connections is the connection. But in change, we’re sort of moving away, and we end up being disconnected. 

What have you moved away from? Who have you moved away from when you’ve been going through a change or a transition in life? Something that often comes up is that there’s also this piece of societal pressure on other people’s expectations. Have you ever gone through some sort of change or transition at the same time as someone else? And so while you’re going through the same change, you’re recognizing that they might be dealing with it differently.

This could be something like the loss of a loved one (how did your siblings cope your spouse cope or your kids cope?). Another example is losing a home in a natural disaster. That can happen for a lot of people, but how you deal with the change to the same situation is often different than those that you’re in it with. Most of us don’t handle it in the same way. This is also a piece that moves us away from the connection. 

This could also happen if you get a new job after searching for one for a long time. Everyone will expect you to be excited, but the stakes could feel too high. There’s still too much that needs to happen, and there’s still a lot of pressure on you that it doesn’t feel like it’s worked out just yet, and you don’t have the space to be excited. 

Connecting to your ‘Whole’ Self

Physical, Mental, Emotional, Social, and Spiritual Wellness

Understanding how the symptoms of change and transition impact your thinking, your feelings, your body, and what you move away from. You want to connect this back to your whole self in the sense of understanding what happens to all of the different parts of us during these times. 

“Whole Wellness”

What this does is it allows us to create these buckets: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual. We can create these buckets to take inventory of what’s going on for us in these five areas while we’re going through the change and transition, and then we can have a better understanding of what needs our attention most. 

We can sort of triage a situation and creating this outline of your whole self can allow you more clarity and get it from big to it being bite size. How do we make this bite-size? What’s going on? It feels really big. The stress of change can feel super overwhelming. Let’s kind of get clear on what’s happening, and then let’s make it bite-size so we know where to start. 

Physical Wellness

So for you, is there any area that needs your attention and might need your attention the most? Thinking about physical wellness, are things like: “What is physical self-care? Am I moving my body? Am I exercising? Also, am I going to healthcare appointments?” Also: “Am I taking my medications, eating regularly and nutritiously? Am I feeding my body what it needs? And am I addressing maybe the high blood pressure or the gut issues?”

Mental Wellness

And then we have mental wellness. And so this is the part of: “Am I challenging my brain? How am I taking care of my brain as a muscle? How are we flexing that mental muscle? Am I getting curious? “ Going on adventures, learning something new, thinking about what it means to create safe and secure environments for yourself is also a part of mental wellness. 

Managing stress and establishing routines. Establishing routines is important because a routine can also help you get grounded in creating that ritual for yourself, creating a routine. “I’m going to use the mornings to do x, y, and z. I’m going to take care of myself. I can anticipate this. I know what’s going to happen and I can be in control of this thing.” 

Emotional Wellness

Emotional wellness. “Do I understand my feelings? Can I name and listen to them? Am I engaging in play and self-compassion? Have I identified my support systems? Am I addressing mindfulness or meditation? Do I have a care plan for how I take care of myself?“

What is the plan that you have in place when you start feeling impacted by going through this change? Your physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellness might be impacted, but what’s the care plan? And this looks different for different folks. There’s no script for a care plan. This is based on the individual needs of individual people. 

Social Wellness

Then there’s the social wellness. “Do I visit and interact with friends and family? Am I getting out of the house? Do I have appointments? Do I have support groups? Are engaging in social activities? And it can be virtual or in person? Do I volunteer? Do I run in-person errands?” This in-person errand is really important because it’s just a low-contact social experience. 

Spiritual Wellness

Spiritual wellness means different things to different people. It’s a word that works for a lot of people, and people can feel like they can attach to and leverage it, but it doesn’t for others. And all of the above is okay. Spiritual wellness and the way in which I’m speaking about it is: “Do I have a greater purpose or do I feel connected to my inner purpose?” This can look like going out in nature. It can be praying or meditating to some people, and it can be prioritizing that clarity, your connection to self, and your connection to something outside of yourself.

What Next? Places to Find Clarity

• Start with an assessment; take an inventory of your current state of being
• Where is your focus? What’s keeping your attention? 
• Naming and addressing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

So what next? Where do we go? How do we find clarity? One helpful tool is you can start with an assessment or take an inventory of your current state of being. If you signed up for this, you may have seen this in the sign-up information, but at Eddins, we have a wellness inventory that you can take. It’s called a self-care assessment, and it helps you evaluate these different parts of your whole self. 

This is a great place to start. Do an assessment, and get an inventory of your current state of being. Challenge yourself, to be honest and open with yourself about how you’re feeling and what’s coming up for you, and then be able to recognize where and how you want to tend to yourself differently or to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.

Another part of this is understanding where is your focus. What’s keeping your attention? What part of your whole self is taking up the most space in your mind and your thinking, and how are you able to then create an opportunity for reflection on what keeps coming up as you’re thinking about this focus? 

“What’s troubling you” list is where you create sort of the same idea of those buckets, of the different parts of your life that you identify as important. And then you list what’s troubling you in those areas, what’s coming up. And this allows you to have a place to start and look at what’s taking up a lot of space for you. 

Sometimes just naming your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can feel empowering. 

These are the things that are coming up for you. This is where your focus is. These things are happening over here, but your focus right now is on this part of your life. It gives a good place to put attention and it gives a good place to start. 

As we’re unpacking those things, as we’re unpacking what is coming up and what’s troubling someone in that change and transition, we can also understand what it’s rooted in. And sometimes the root of that trouble is something completely different than maybe they thought in the beginning. But it’s an opportunity for us to explore what’s happening, and what are we experiencing in that trouble. 

This brings us to naming and addressing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And this is very important and very powerful. It seems pretty self-explanatory, understanding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But it’s one of the hardest things for us as people to slow down and do. We live lives that require us to move pretty fast.

Often in times and change and transition, the symptoms that we experience make it difficult. How our body is experiencing, moving away from those connections. As we talk through thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, again, get out your pen and paper think about your experience, and try to make some connections here. 

Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors

Talking about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they are always preceded by a situation, something that happened or has occurred. For example, while searching for a job, you get a rejection email stating you did not make it to the next round of interviews. The next thing that happens when we experience something is we immediately have a thought. It’s how we think about or interpret the situation. This could be: “This is hopeless. No one will ever hire me. I’ll never find a new job.” That’s your thought. 

Then you have a feeling. Feelings and emotions occur as a result. You feel sad, rejected, deflated, or anxious. Then there’s behavior. You slam your computer shut, delete the list of saved jobs, and avoid searching for jobs for a week.

Oftentimes what we see is the behavior. This is what we focus on, and what’s easier to understand. It doesn’t always indicate what we’re thinking and feeling. This is the important part of understanding what we’re going through in change and transition.

What are we thinking? What are we feeling? Sometimes the behavior doesn’t happen immediately after the experience. Maybe we had a meeting at work where we were given some really difficult feedback about a project we’ve been working on and we’re told that we’re being moved to a new team unexpectedly. 

We can feel hopeless, sad, and dejected, and it might come out in road rage. Or we get home and our kids are asking us question after question and we yell at them. We have these thoughts and these feelings that have been sitting with us, and then we have this behavior in response to it. It’s really important to understand what we’re thinking and feeling and how it’s impacting how we’re behaving. 

Understanding our thoughts and feelings:

• Self-reflection, vulnerability  
• Slowing down 
• Recognizing thought patterns and connections
• Naming fear, minimizing hurt 
• Asking for support  

As we get to understand this better, what now? We want to look at how to get a little bit more clarity on this. The first thing is to be able to practice some self-reflection. And this self-reflection piece requires some vulnerability. Again, some uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure within ourselves. The “intra”. I have to think about what is happening to me, and I have to get vulnerable and honest with myself. 

This means we have to slow down. Life is fast, things are going quickly. And so we sometimes move in the urgency of a situation, and we don’t slow down and think about what is our purpose. How am I able to recognize thought patterns and make connections with situations that have caused me to feel something or experience something?

Have to name the fear and where that fear comes up. Fear can get in our way of being self-reflective. This minimizing hurt is something many of us do, if we’re hurt in a situation and we try to minimize it because it might induce some fear to have to sit and think about what we’re feeling. We have to kind of unpack that and we have to be sort of vulnerable enough to ask for support. 

Again, moving away from a connection. This is an opportunity to step back towards connection and to ask for support from folks from those around us, people we’re close to. Maybe the support is a group, maybe the support is individual therapy. Maybe the support is deciding you need to go to couples therapy. What does it look like to ask for support?

Coping and Self-Care

And then finally, in this piece of connecting with our whole self, understanding these five wellness parts, understanding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how to slow down and pay attention to that, we’re going to talk about coping and self-care. 

Coping During Change and Transition 

• Addressing what can you control versus what is out of your control
• Identifying support groups and/or people  
• Creating ritual and/or routine 
• Working on connection 
• Coping vs. Numbing 

Coping during times and change and transition can include addressing what you can control versus what is out of your control. This is a great activity when you’re feeling flooded or overwhelmed with uncertainty. 

What can I control versus what is out of my control? And let me start with what I can control. Let me make that list, write that down. Let me capture it. Identifying support groups and or people. Who’s my go-to person who can help me through this? Let me give them a call. 

Creating ritual or routine again, I mentioned this earlier. It creates an opportunity for some bite-sized certainty in our day. I can create this ritual or routine, carve out time for reflection, I can work on a goal, evaluate what I can control, and create a routine around it to help give me some certainty in a uncertain time. 

And then working on connection, making this a priority. How do I make sure I’m prioritizing those connections with other people and not allowing myself to become too disconnected? Then coping versus numbing. So thinking about ensuring that we are leveraging coping skills, which are addressing the feelings that we’re having and helping us understand them, that’s a coping strategy. “I am addressing what I’m feeling. I am addressing what is happening, what I’m thinking and experiencing, and I’m using tools to cope with them”. 

Whereas numbing is “I want to suppress and ignore this. I’m uncomfortable. This makes me feel really bad. I’m going to do something to numb it.” 

Self-care

Ways to tend to and care for yourself

Write down what’s coming up about your change and transition example, and think about what are some ways you can tend to yourself and take care of yourself.

Intention Setting

This can be intention-setting. Make time to identify what are your intentions during this time. What do you need? What do you want? How are you capturing this? A lot of folks are going through something very uncertain, very dysregulating this big time of change. They don’t know what they want or need. So, they are starting things slowly, but with some purpose. They’re not going to move in urgency. They are going to think about what they want and what they need. 

Things To Do

There are also things to do to take care of yourself. And I think these are things that lots of folks know and understand. Journaling, walking, moving, getting outside, and token up. That sun is always helpful. Vitamin D helps create that dopamine and helps us feel good. Talking to our friends, doing breathing exercises, and reality checks. Those reality checks are similar to what can I control and what can I not control. The reality check is when you’re going through something that’s causing some dysregulation, a big change. Do a reality check of what is real and what is not.

And then things like watching a funny movie in relationship to watching a funny movie. Some of these self-care things to do have to be careful about. Is it numbing or is it coping? You can watch a funny movie as a tool to numb and want to suppress these feelings.

You don’t want to deal with a certain thing you have going on. So you’re just going to put on funny movies all day rather than dealing with having a tough day, or a really difficult conversation with, for example, your boss about leaving my job. You’re going to put on a funny movie to help yourself decompress. 

Reflection and Change 

What is working and going well and what isn’t working? If it’s not working, are you willing to try something new? Does doing something new or different feel doable for you right now? And most folks say are ready to do something new and explore some new ways to deal with this. And some folks are not. They don’t have the energy right now, they need to just talk and process. They need to work on identifying how they feel first, to even be able to do something new. And that’s okay, too. 

But this is that part of that self-reflection piece. We cannot change something for ourselves if we can’t understand what we are and aren’t willing to do about it. 

Finding and seeking support

Individual, Couples, or Group Therapy 

Some other ways to find and seek support are things like individual couples and group therapy. These are some other alternatives and ideas. Reaching out. Eddins has lots of groups, individual therapists and couples therapy are great ways to navigate finding and seeking additional support.

Why do we go into a spiral? Are we just coping the best way we know how? 

I’m connecting that back to a lot of those symptoms. We have different emotional reactions and responses, and the psychological and physiological responses to change often make us feel that spiral. 

The stress, the overwhelm, the uncertainty of it, the fear, the dread, the avoidance… All of those feelings are our emotional and physiological responses, and that can induce the spiral. And then when thinking about coping, a lot of times we are. We are using what we know to cope the best we know how. Most of us are trying our best. We’re trying our best to manage and regulate those feelings. 

The difficult part is sometimes we just don’t know how. Sometimes we are trying things that aren’t working for us, and it can be challenging to manage and kind of get a grip of what we’re feeling and what we’re experiencing. And I hope that the content above helped create some connections and some understanding.

A lot of times helping the spiral is just naming what we’re feeling in the spiral because when we name it, we understand it. We can get clarity on what it’s doing to us. We can think about those buckets of our wellness what’s going on, and where do we need to start tending to something differently. Where can we increase some connection and some care for ourselves to manage that spiral?

What do you suggest if one has a history of confrontation being negative, especially when in stressful situations, and so when one tries to address how they feel, the thought of addressing things is stressful in and of itself? 

This is a really common experience for people. When there’s confrontation happening, negative confrontation, difficult, uncomfortable conversations, we often can start to feel those symptoms of the change in transition. We can start feeling those symptoms, the stress, the overwhelm, and we can become dysregulated with what we’re feeling and experiencing.

Oftentimes, addresses, what is happening in the confrontation. So how can we reflect on this? Think about, and use an experience that an individual has been through. Each of us might be experiencing the inability to engage because it becomes very difficult, but what we’re experiencing and feeling might be different. 

So we first want to address what feelings are coming up, talk about what is rooted in, and where it started. What is our understanding of having difficult conversations, what does it cause for us? And then building some resiliency and some tolerance to those feelings in the session, and how we have conversations, and unpack some of that in order to help better prepare us for those situations. 

Whenever I have really difficult conversations, oftentimes, more likely than not, my face will turn red and my voice will shake. And it’s that physiological symptom of the stress. That is something that I’ve had to recognize and understand. This is going to be a part of my response. And so also building up some of that resiliency of how can I tolerate and handle the situation, even when it’s negative? Because I can also get rooted on what’s the benefit of having it, and what I want or need the outcome to be.  So then again, understanding the experience and then linking that to what could the benefit be.

How do we stop rumination? 

That is something that if we had kind of a statement, or this is the solution to that, that would be wonderful, but that’s not the case. So that is a question that is specific and different to different people. And so that would be something that we would have to dig into individually and understand what’s causing the rumination. What does the rumination look like? Is it on thoughts? Is it on behaviors? And get curious about that to better understand what’s happening. 

We are such fragile beings. Sometimes we are so vulnerable, and other times we are confident and in control of our lives. It’s so easy, and other times it’s so debilitating. Sometimes we feel great and sometimes there’s some uncertainty there committing to think about what’s coming up what are we experiencing and how to create opportunities to be in the community and connect with others for support as I’m going through something really difficult.

I encourage every one of you, if you aren’t already reaching out to communities of support, please do. We’re here at Eddins. There’s a team of us here to support folks every day going through some difficult things. We are a source and a resource, so please use us.

We’re coming to the end of our time. I want to finalize with just immense gratitude for being here, for listening, for showing up, being willing to be a part of this conversation with me. And I hope that you have a great rest of your day wherever your time this evening takes you. Thank you all for coming.

References:

• Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. First edition. New York, Random House
• Jordan, J. V. (2018). Relational–cultural therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association
• Dimensions of wellness: Change your habits, change your life
• Applying the CBT Model of Emotions
• When Feeling Overwhelmed With Life Means a Mental Health Issue
• Relational-Cultural Therapy: Theory, Research, and Application to Counseling Competencies
• CBT Psychoeducation
• 12 tips for coping with change