How Do We Grow Through Challenges?
5 strategies to help you evolve and gain wisdom through COVID-19.
With so much uncertainty right now, one thing is for sure: I don’t want COVID-19 to be a thing of the past without positively being impacted by it. I want to feel like I was here for the coronavirus pandemic, and not just in body, but in presence. I want to know that I was awake as I surfed this wave, and maybe even developed some wisdom as a byproduct of going through something so tough, as we often do when challenged.
challenges can bre great gifts, when met with intention.Source: Pixabay / No Attribution Required
To develop insight, it helps to be awake for the breadth of the experience: the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Being awake” means creating awareness around our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations as we travel through the hardship. If there is grief, it is feeling the intricacies of this phenomenon. If there is worry and uncertainty, it is feeling them too, in all their complexity.
At a meditation retreat that I was on not that long ago, the leader quoted this amazing line from a short story written by James Joyce, an early 20th-century Irish author, entitled “A Painful Case.” The phrase goes as follows: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” Just let that sink in for a moment. Profound, right? I absolutely love this quote. It reflects how so many of us live through the stories our mind produces about what is happening, without really experiencing what is coming our way.
A benefit of living with awareness and not getting caught up in the narrative of our minds is that we often develop tremendously when we are here for what is happening. We learn a lot about what we are made of: our strength, grit, compassion, purpose, and resilience. We discover what values are actually important to us and which ones aren’t. We begin to understand what it means to "dig deep" within ourselves to weather the storm.
How many of you can look back in time and identify experiences you have had that you were not present for? Times in your life that you were so caught up in the cognitive experience of the anxiety and stress that you missed all the moments: the hard ones and the ones holding power and joy? I know I can.
Surprisingly, many of us coast by and pay little attention to what is happening, regardless if the situation is happy or painful. We often sleep through our own party (read: life). Sure, our bodies may be present and going through the motions, but our awareness is not there. Our mind is often busy with a story about the past, future, or ruminating in an unhelpful way about the present.
I remember a client describing to me her experience of getting a new puppy. She explained wistfully that those short puppy months went by quickly, and when her dog was a bit older, she regretted that she wasn’t more present for the puppy months. She was caught up in all the “doing” of his care, that she spent little time just “being:” with the stresses and the pleasures.
I’ve heard other stories of remorse from friends and clients in not having been present for important -albeit stressful- life happenings. For example, it’s common for new parents to describe ‘checking out’ for the newborn phase, or people zoning out during other difficult times such as when a loved one is sick. You know the phrase, “wake me up when this is over?” It’s like that.
While the temptations of taking a snooze when the going gets rough are certainly understandable and appealing on some level, when we do this there is often regret on the other side for not having really lived through the experience. Often, in these ‘big wave’ moments (times of intense feeling and emotion), there are many opportunities for connection, growth, and awe. Riding the big waves and not getting caught up in our mind’s narrative of them creates an opening to live a life that is rich with self-discovery.
We are all, right now, riding a very big wave. We are collectively experiencing an unprecedented time of grief, uncertainty, and fear. There is job loss, educational challenges, death, and also…what else? Can you find elements of the power of community, resilience, family, and love? You may be noticing a gamut of feelings in response to what is happening. Thus, this time holds a tremendous opportunity for change and growth.
With so much uncertainty right now, one thing is for sure: I don’t want COVID-19 to be a thing of the past without positively being impacted by it. I want to feel like I was here for the coronavirus pandemic, and not just in body, but in presence. I want to know that I was awake as I surfed this wave, and maybe even developed some wisdom as a byproduct of going through something so tough, as we often do when challenged.
challenges can bre great gifts, when met with intention.Source: Pixabay / No Attribution Required
To develop insight, it helps to be awake for the breadth of the experience: the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Being awake” means creating awareness around our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations as we travel through the hardship. If there is grief, it is feeling the intricacies of this phenomenon. If there is worry and uncertainty, it is feeling them too, in all their complexity.
At a meditation retreat that I was on not that long ago, the leader quoted this amazing line from a short story written by James Joyce, an early 20th-century Irish author, entitled “A Painful Case.” The phrase goes as follows: “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” Just let that sink in for a moment. Profound, right? I absolutely love this quote. It reflects how so many of us live through the stories our mind produces about what is happening, without really experiencing what is coming our way.
A benefit of living with awareness and not getting caught up in the narrative of our minds is that we often develop tremendously when we are here for what is happening. We learn a lot about what we are made of: our strength, grit, compassion, purpose, and resilience. We discover what values are actually important to us and which ones aren’t. We begin to understand what it means to "dig deep" within ourselves to weather the storm.
How many of you can look back in time and identify experiences you have had that you were not present for? Times in your life that you were so caught up in the cognitive experience of the anxiety and stress that you missed all the moments: the hard ones and the ones holding power and joy? I know I can.
Surprisingly, many of us coast by and pay little attention to what is happening, regardless if the situation is happy or painful. We often sleep through our own party (read: life). Sure, our bodies may be present and going through the motions, but our awareness is not there. Our mind is often busy with a story about the past, future, or ruminating in an unhelpful way about the present.
I remember a client describing to me her experience of getting a new puppy. She explained wistfully that those short puppy months went by quickly, and when her dog was a bit older, she regretted that she wasn’t more present for the puppy months. She was caught up in all the “doing” of his care, that she spent little time just “being:” with the stresses and the pleasures.
I’ve heard other stories of remorse from friends and clients in not having been present for important -albeit stressful- life happenings. For example, it’s common for new parents to describe ‘checking out’ for the newborn phase, or people zoning out during other difficult times such as when a loved one is sick. You know the phrase, “wake me up when this is over?” It’s like that.
While the temptations of taking a snooze when the going gets rough are certainly understandable and appealing on some level, when we do this there is often regret on the other side for not having really lived through the experience. Often, in these ‘big wave’ moments (times of intense feeling and emotion), there are many opportunities for connection, growth, and awe. Riding the big waves and not getting caught up in our mind’s narrative of them creates an opening to live a life that is rich with self-discovery.
We are all, right now, riding a very big wave. We are collectively experiencing an unprecedented time of grief, uncertainty, and fear. There is job loss, educational challenges, death, and also…what else? Can you find elements of the power of community, resilience, family, and love? You may be noticing a gamut of feelings in response to what is happening. Thus, this time holds a tremendous opportunity for change and growth.
Source: Kanenori/Pixabay
How do you want to reflect on this pandemic when it’s over?
Living without regret is about being present and intentional: Have you met every day that you were gifted? And how did you meet that day? Were you responsive and in your body, opening yourself up to the lessons and wisdom that were presenting themselves to you? Or were you checked out of your body, stuck in your thoughts, and reactive or dissociative? Going through experiences in this mode is often where remorse stems from. The flip of that, undergoing hardship with a sense of alertness and spaciousness, often leads to positive change.
This doesn’t mean we need to come out of this experience with magical lessons, ‘aha moments’ (though it’s certainly nice if we do, at least a little bit), or finding silver linings (there is a time and a place for that, and there is a time for grief and mourning). All we’re aiming for is to know that we were there. We lived through Pandemic 2020 with our eyes wide open, enough so that this is something we can write heartfelt stories about when we are older, or tell anecdotes to our young children when they are grown.
As we are weathering this current worldwide tsunami, how can we achieve and ensure we emerge on the other side whole, intact, wiser and humbled? The following are five ideas:
1. Do daily check-ins with yourself. Ask yourself, where are my thoughts right now? What feelings am I having? How is my body feeling? You can try doing this multiple times a day, and at set times so you remember. For example, before you get out of bed you may want to check in with yourself, then again at lunchtime and again at bedtime before you go to sleep.
2. Notice the small moments of beauty and pleasure in any given moment. They are there, I guarantee you, even in the hard bursts. If you tune in, you will find them. You may even want to write them down so you have a log of all the beautiful moments that are happening in your life right now, alongside the stressful times and feelings.
3. Make the most of your down-time. Read that book you’ve had on your night table for months. Learn something new. By doing this, not only will you have tangible evidence that you grew during this experience, but you will be developing a sense of mastery. Building skill and knowledge in a specific area of interest is a wonderful way of coping with stress and uncertainty.
4. Keep a journal or a scrapbook of this time. At the end of the week, or at the end of the day, write down stories of your own strength. How you have adapted? How you have been flexible? How have you dealt with challenges that came up? What did you struggle with? How did you show up for yourself and your feelings? This can act as an archive of stories of your bravery as you lived through COVID-19. A client of mine told me she was going to start keeping a scrapbook of what it is like living right now- a time capsule of sorts. She is also crafting vision boards in her scrapbook as a way of maintaining the perspective that this will pass and all that she still has to look forward to.
5. Make memories. A teenage client of mine shared that she and her sibling had a mud fight with each other outside, for fun. We laughed at the silliness of this act, and reflected that if she wasn’t “stuck at home with nowhere to go and nothing to do” she would never have entertained such an activity, with her younger brother no less. But out of their shared boredom, this idea was born, and now they have a great memory that they will surely talk about as adults. Think about making memories, solo, or with your family. Be playful and silly with each other and yourself. Doing so will allow you to look upon this time with some wistful nostalgia when it’s all done.
When this uncertain and in many ways painful chapter is over, you will be the historian of your life during COVID-19. What can you do right now so that when it is a memory, you will recall the elements of pain and suffering, but also those of profundity and gratitude, knowing you were awake, alive, and positively changed by this episode of your life?
Building Your Pandemic Toolbox
We are living in times that are rapidly changing, stress-filled, and unpredictable. This may be bringing up anxiety and worry for you. The following are some ideas on coronavirus stress management from three different psychological modalities: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness. Understanding different approaches to cope with anxiety may help build a more robust toolbox to deal with your current worries.
In all anxiety management approaches, our work starts with noticing what is transpiring in our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies. Without awareness, we often don’t know that we have work to do, or that there are strategies we can employ to help ourselves. We may take the frazzled way we are feeling for granted and forge on. However, once we tap into awareness, we can make active choices about what we are going to do with those troublesome sensations and thoughts, and begin adaptively coping.
The following is a break-down of what three different psychological schools of thought would say to help mitigate your coronavirus related stress and anxiety:1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). One of the principles of this modality is learning to identify our thoughts, recognize their impact on our emotional response, and then reframe the tricky thinking. By adjusting our thinking, we change our emotional response and the actions that follow.
Anxiety thoughts, by their very definition, are not accurate. They may start with a kernel of truth but then expand into a worry-story that is full of inaccuracies that feel highly believable. Replacing inaccurate thoughts with more accurate ones can be very helpful. This is not about cultivating positive thinking, it’s about accurate thinking.
With anxiety related to COVID-19, you may want to try this: Practice slowing down, isolating the worry thoughts, and "talking back" to them using past evidence, history, and your rational brain.Identify the thought that is worrying you, and use logic and evidence to put it in its place, so to speak.
For example, if you’re thinking is, what happens if we get very sick? Or, what if we run out of supplies? What if society crumbles? Challenge it with more rational thoughts such as, There is a very minimal chance that will happen. Yes, it’s a possibility, but it’s not a probability. I can’t live in the realm of possibility — because anything is possible, always. I choose to live with probability, which is the more likely scenario. I am resilient and can deal with hardship that comes my way [and this is how…]. I’ve dealt with difficulties in the past. I can’t control the future. All I can do is meet myself at this moment and ask myself the question, what do I need to do right now?
2. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). This form of therapy is about learning to accept our thoughts and emotions, and regardless of what is happening in our noggin, committing to meaningful actions. Here, instead of challenging the thoughts, as we do in CBT, we notice them, watch them, and let them go so that they don’t act as a barrier in pursuing your goals.
This form of therapy emphasizes shifting our relationship to our thinking so that we become the observer of our thoughts, recognize they are just thoughts, and gently set them aside as we pursue our life and dreams.An analogy I like is that of a bus or a car: You are in the driver’s seat of your life, driving yourself to the places that you want to go to, together with your passengers — your thoughts and your feelings — whatever they might be. You are not being driven around and being told what you can or cannot do by your thoughts or emotions.Another popular analogy for ACT work is to learn to watch your thoughts come and go like the clouds in the sky. You are not the cloud, nor are you on the cloud. You are lying flat on your back, watching the clouds (thoughts) come and go.With our current worry surrounding COVID-19, an ACT approach would be to observe your thoughts. Remind yourself that they are just thoughts and allow them to be. Don’t fight them or get swept away by them. Ground yourself in your personal values: the actions/mindsets that provide you with meaning.
When you have stress-related thoughts about the coronavirus, you may want to try saying, Oh hello, thoughts. Come on in. You can come with me today as I do X if you’d like. I will not allow you to dictate what I do or don’t do with my life. Practically, this might look like coming up with a daily list of activities that you can do from home that give you a sense of value. One client said she came up with a quarantine "bucket list" of sorts — things she has been wanting to do for a while that she finally has time for.
Doing these value-driven tasks regardless of what thoughts you are having may be helpful in weathering this storm. Some ideas might be: texting a friend, doing something kind for someone, cleaning a space in your house, being creative with music or art. Identify what gives you meaning, chunk it into attainable goals, and stay connected to those things.
3. Mindfulness is learning to cultivate a gentle, non-judging awareness to what is unfolding within, moment to moment. It is different than the ACT approach in a fundamental way. Whereas ACT is a cognitive strategy where we use metaphors to learn to watch our thoughts, mindfulness doesn’t use metaphors. At its core, this practice is about creating non-judging awareness. It is being present for whatever is unfolding within you moment by moment, noticing where your mind is, and shifting your attention back to one of your five senses or your breath.
To help with the anxiety of the coronavirus, a mindfulness approach might involve noticing the thought, creating space for it, and kindly bringing your attention back to one of your five senses or your breathing. Your breath can serve as a wonderful anchor to come back to when you notice your mind going off to anxious places.
When you notice yourself having a worry thought, you might want to say, thank you for that, mind, and then notice other sensations you are having at that moment: your breathing, what sounds your ears pick up, feeling your feet on the ground, or the sensations in your hands.4. Self-Care. This isn’t its own modality per se but is a foundation from where we use all the skills discussed above. Practicing self-care is fundamental to psychological health and wellbeing.
Self-care is nurturing yourself. It is also staying tethered to preventative strategies such as exercise, eating healthfully, and getting enough sleep. When we do the things that take care of our souls- and our bodies- we are practicing self-care.Unfortunately, self-care is often one of the first things to go during times of stress. The irony is that while self-care is always important, it becomes even more so during hardship. Why? It’s how we prevent depletion and exhaustion and sustain ourselves to weather the stress. Right now, you may want to pay extra attention to how you are caring for yourself and be creative and committed to making this happen.
Try making a list of things that recharge you, a menu of sorts, and choose from them and practice them daily. Get outside (this has been scientifically shown to lower anxiety), even in your own backyard. Move your body. Talk to comforting friends and family. Meditate. Listen to music that lifts your mood. Lose yourself in a hobby. Find your anchors, and allow them to ground you, keep you steady in these difficult times.
As it is in therapy, there is no one size fits all when it comes to skills and tools. Perhaps try these different skills as you confront the unfolding stress of the times, and see what works for you. Experimenting with different coping strategies may lead to increased self-awareness and feelings of empowerment, reinforcing that you have the ability to help yourself through these difficult times.