The Life Changing Shift from Victimhood to Empowerment

Ever find yourself feeling like life is happening to you and you have no control? Maybe a person did something that was unfair or hurtful. Maybe a storm disrupted your home or event. Maybe airlines canceled your flight. Maybe a health condition is making your life difficult. Living life inevitably results in discomfort. It can often feel like things are being done to you and you are a victim of people, your environment, or conditions you can’t control.

Human nature extends us a tempting invitation to see ourselves as victims because victimhood lets us off the hook for taking responsibility for what we can control and casts the blame onto someone or something else. For a moment, embracing victimhood can feel comforting because it keeps you from having to self-reflect or take meaningful action toward change. However, in the long-term, victimhood ends up creating helplessness, hopelessness, bitterness, and resentment.

In reality, life throws curve balls and there are many things outside our control. But, even when the curve balls come, there is a helpful alternative to seeing yourself as a victim. Regardless of what is happening in your environment, you have been granted the gift of self-control. When someone does something unkind and when hard things happen, you have a choice about how you will respond. You can slide into victimhood, blame others, feel helpless, harbor resentment. Or, you can acknowledge the pain of your situation and then shift toward using your self-control to decide how you’re going to show up in the given situation as a healthy version of yourself.

David Emerald writes about the shift from seeing yourself as a “victim” to seeing yourself as a “creator” in his book, The Power Of TED (I highly recommend the short read). Shifting to a creator mindset is accomplished by figuring out where your self-controlled power exists in any given situation and to take meaningful action toward what you’d like to be true that is within your control. Determining what healthy control you have and how you want to respond to people/circumstances creates empowerment. So, what are the practical ways to begin shifting from victim to creator?

6 Ways to Shift from Victimhood to Empowered Creator

1. Acknowledge the discomfort of a person, situation, or condition impacting you in ways you can’t control. For example, your friend betrays your trust. Admit to yourself this has happened, that it hurt you, and that it impacts trust in the relationship. Don’t skip the pain.

2. Sort what you can and can’t control. You can’t control your friend’s behavior, the weather, illness, traffic, etc. You can control or manage yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, your behavior, your responses.

3. Notice the invitation to victimhood. Notice feeling helpless, blaming, telling others your story of being wronged when you did nothing to deserve it, your internal story of life happening to you, your over focus on someone else’s bad behavior or negativity ofcircumstance rather than focus on what you can do.

4. Gently decline victimhood’s invitation. No thanks, victimhood. Yes, this situation is uncomfortable and there are some things here I can’t control, but, I’m going to figure outwhere I do have power and I’m going to use it.

5. Ask yourself, “What do I want to be true in this situation?” I want my friend to know their betrayal hurt me. I want to set a boundary to let them know I won’t continue thefriendship as it has previously existed without loyalty. I want to have friends I can trust.

6. Use the healthy self-control (not others control) you have to help create the reality you desire through meaningful action. Have the uncomfortable conversation with your friend. Change the closeness of the relationship if they continue to betray your trust. Explore deepening other relationships that feel more respectful.

Stepping from victimhood into a creator role is certainly work, however, the resulting empowerment is life-giving, healthy, and produces mature growth in yourself and your relationships.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 20 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

Kindness vs. Cancelling

You’re in the middle of a conversation and suddenly it becomes apparent the person you’re talking to holds a different opinion on an important topic. Maybe you start to worry if you share your thoughts, you’ll be judged or cancelled. Maybe you feel incensed the other person could possibly hold that opinion or belief and you feel tempted to judge, cancel, or shame them. Maybe you want to learn to hold the tension of differing views and values but you feel confused about how to be true to your values while not judging or shaming someone else.

Cancel culture regularly sacrifices kindness in the name of being right and holding others accountable. Cancel culture says for justice and rightness to prevail, people must be publicly shamed for holding independent beliefs that deviate from some moral majority. And when you’re part of the moral majority, cancelling others can feel justified. The problem is cancel culture is built on the false idea that shame creates true change. In reality, current shame research (read anything by Brene Brown for more on shame) tells us shame actually breeds insecurity, self-loathing and hopelessness. Shame may create a temporary, superficial, face-saving shift but results, long-term, in the opposite of healthy change. Ashamed people are highly likely to make poor choices that have negative, hurtful effects on themselves and others.

So, if you remove shame from your toolbox, what options do you have? Reflect on a time when you needed to learn something new. What was most effective in helping you move forward? Maybe someone said you were unintelligent and you needed to get it together. Maybe someone said you must be ignorant for not already knowing something. Was that helpful to you?  Or, maybe someone lovingly and kindly said you are a valuable person period. Maybe they directly and kindly shared a different perspective and allowed space for you to hold your value while also presenting a new possibility. Was that helpful to you? Kindness consistently moves people toward change more effectively than shame. And, kindness makes you feel better about yourself at the end of the day.

5 Ways to Practice Kindness Over Cancelling:

1.     Slow down and take a breath. Different opinions/values can create emotional overwhelm if you feel strongly about something. You may find yourself going into fight or flight and impulsively speaking words of shame. Try taking a few breaths and reminding yourself that someone else having a different value than you does not mean attack or shame are needed. Instead remember that both values can exist even if you disagree.

2.     Humanize the other person. Often when someone holds a different value, it’s tempting to begin viewing them as “other” and deserving of shame. Try remembering traits you like and appreciate about the person. Remind yourself they are a whole person with strengths and weaknesses and try not to define them by the one issue about which you disagree.

3.     Seek to validate. Validating means try to understand how the other person might believe or feel the way they do based on their history and experiences. You don’t have to agree. Instead, try to embrace and articulate to the other person that you can understand how they might see things the way they do even if it’s very different than how you see it. Validation reduces defensiveness and opens avenues for seeing the other person as valuable despite differences.

4.     Embrace humility. Try remembering that while you may hold your values to be very true and dear, you are not the absolute authority on truth. You can believe your values are right and true while also recognizing others can differ from you and still be worthwhile humans who may help you understand something new.

5.     Communicate directly and kindly. Share your thoughts and beliefs calmly, directly, and with a kind tone. Remember that your values/opinions can exist securely even when others don’t agree. 

Approaching others with kindness instead of cancelling creates opportunities for growth in yourself and others. Kindness brings more conversation, connection, and increased possibilities for change without the unnecessary negativity of shame. As you practice walking in kindness, connect with us for support along your journey at journeybravely.com.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

What's Your 2021 Story?

2020 is over and yet you may continue to face many of the same challenges as you enter the new year. It can be easy to feel resentfully stuck in survival mode and to view yourself as a victim of the pandemic and other major stressors of 2020. Isolation, financial challenges, racism, political change, value debates on social media, and missing the way things used to be. It’s all a lot to carry and work through as you hope for recovery and continue to walk in the mess.

Resolutions may feel trite and impossible this year as we limp along and try to hold it together. Honestly acknowledging our personal and collective discomfort and suffering is a healthy practice. However, getting stuck in bitterness and hopelessness only feeds the negative energy we are all hoping to escape. 

What if instead of writing resolutions, you were to ask yourself what you want your story to be at the end of 2021? 

While there are many circumstances in life that are often out of your control, you are in control of your behavior and choices. You get to decide how you’ll treat others, how you’ll talk to yourself, how you’ll live out your faith, how you’ll engage with your values, how you’ll take healthy risks, how you’ll respond to challenges, and how you’ll step into personal growth. These personal practices will largely shape your story this year.

What if instead of carrying the weight of victimhood from 2020, you were to step into the practice of writing all of the parts of your story that are within your power?

5 Ways to Move from Victim to Writer of Your 2021 Story:

1.     Acknowledge struggle while looking for redemption. Honestly admit to yourself when you’re experiencing grief and hardship. Feel the feelings associated with the difficulty. Watch for short and long-term ways you see suffering in your life create opportunity for growth, connection, and comforting others.

2.     Create a mental or written list of 3-5 big ideas within your control you want to be true of your story at the end of 2021. Examples: I want to have been a loving, connected parent, friend, partner. I want to have given generously from what I earned. I want to have expressed a grateful attitude regularly. I want to have faced challenges and pain with grace and dignity. I want to have spent time on things that matter most to me. I want to have said encouraging things to myself and others most of the time. I want to see progress in this specific business skill. I want to have engaged a spirit of adventure.

3.     Create a more detailed story for each of your 3-5 big ideas. Big idea: I want to have lived generously. Detailed story about living generously: I want to look back over 12 months and see that I intentionally set aside money, time, and other resources as a monthly practice rather spending all of my resources on myself. I want to see that I used those resources to give to people and causes I value. Some of the people and causes I value are my church, Caring & Sharing of South Walton, Compassion International.

4.     Take steps to make your story real. If I’m going to look back and see that I gave generously this year, I’m going to: set up auto-giving for my top 3 valued organizations, set up a specific auto-transfer savings account designated for generous giving, set up regular monthly volunteer hours.

5.     Read and edit your story as you go. Check in monthly on your story and determine if you’re living into the story you want to be true at the end of the year. Be gracious with yourself, determine where you’re struggling, and make edits when needed. For example: I planned to auto-give to 3 organizations but I had a financial change. I’m going to reduce my amounts to all 3 or I’m going to choose one organization instead.

The healthy way to engage your 2021 story is to face the circumstances outside your control with acceptance and focus on writing what you can control with hope and determination. As you move from victim to writer of your 2021 story, remember that Journey Bravely has coaching sessions available to help move your story forward. Connect with us at journeybravely.com.

Todd and Stephenie have been helping people find hope, clarity, and clear steps forward toward a meaningful life for 19 years. Todd provides life and leadership coaching for young adults and adults to assist in clarifying values, goals and generally getting unstuck from the overhwhelm of life and relationship. Stephenie provides professional counseling, specializing in emotional/relational health for teens, adults, couples, and families. Read more about how we can help you move toward the life you want here. To schedule an initial, free consultation for counseling with Stephenie call 918-221-9987 or email here. To schedule an initial, free consultation with Todd call 918-740-1232 or email here. For more general information about Journey Bravely Counseling & Coaching, look here. We look forward to connecting with you along your journey.

Our Shared Grief

What comes to mind when you hear the word grief? The last year is inviting you to see grief as the emotional experience surrounding the loss of anything or anyone important to you. Maybe you’ve lost a person, a pet, a relationship, or a home. We are experiencing loss of jobs, physical touch, in-person contact with family, the ability to visit sick loved ones, gathering in large groups to celebrate or to mourn. We are also experiencing intangible losses like feelings of certainty, control, and the way life was before COVID. 

As the struggles of the last year continue, we are invited to acknowledge our loss/pain and remember that we aren’t alone in our grief. While we all wish 2021 would bring “normal” back, we struggle to make sense of our current and ongoing challenges in a world where COVID exists.

So, what are we supposed to do with all the uncertainty, sadness, anger, and depression? 

Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler, authors/social scientists, provide helpful guidance in messy, chaotic grief. The 6 Stages of Grief are not tidy categories, neat timelines or defined behavioral markers. Grief is complicated, unique to each person, and not linear. Rather, the Stages of Grief are ideas providing structure for understanding complex emotions. Stages are experienced in any order, repetitively, and you don’t have to experience every stage. There is no typical or normal grief. You can’t do it wrong. What’s important is acknowledging your loss and allowing yourself to feel.

6 Stages of Grief to help you navigate loss:

1.     Denial. Denial is the numbness/shock that occurs shortly after a loss. Your brain can’t completely process and reorient to loss, so denial helps you ease into the reality. Denial feels like your brain is tricking you into postponing acknowledgement of loss and the full onset of grief emotion is sometimes muted temporarily.

2.     Anger. Anger can be powerful and overwhelming. Let yourself feel and express anger. Losing a person, a job, or sense of normalcy are hurtful experiences. Your body uses anger to find structure and strength in the emptiness of loss. It’s ok to feel anger toward yourself, loved ones, strangers, God. Let yourself feel rather than pushing anger down.

3.     Bargaining. “If only I had left the house 15 minutes later…” “I will do anything to get things back to the way it was before so I don’t have to feel this pain.” Bargaining is your brain seeking control in the midst of out of control circumstances. It’s okay to entertain these thoughts and wonderings as a path toward accepting death, pain, and loss happen in this world outside of your control.

4.     Depression. Loss is terribly sad. It leaves you feeling empty, exhausted, withdrawn, lacking motivation, lacking a sense of purpose, and lacking mental clarity. Situational depression is common in grief and different from clinical depression that is prolonged and not related to circumstance. Don’t rush yourself or “quick fix” grief-related depression. It’s normal and over time, it decreases.

5.     Acceptance. You don’t “get over” loss. Instead, you move through it in your own time accepting the loss will always be part of you and your story. Acceptance happens as you accept the new reality of daily life in the absence of what you lost. You will still hurt at times even as you begin to experience joy again in your life in small doses. 

6.     Making Meaning. Loss cannot take from you all of the moments, lessons, and joys you carry from time before the loss. You make meaning by remembering the value and beauty in what existed before. You make meaning by bringing what was before into the present and creating meaningful moments of memory and carrying legacy forward. You make meaning by allowing loss to motivate positive action to help others through the loss you’ve experienced.

These stages will not help you skip pain, however, they can provide reassurance along the journey. Allow yourself whatever time you need to grieve. Let emotions rise to the surface even when they threaten to overwhelm you. Releasing feelings is the slow path to lessening emotional intensity and embracing the current reality of your life. As you navigate grief and other difficulties, remember that Journey Bravely has coaching sessions available to help you. Connect with us at journeybravely.com.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

You Are NOT Your Mistakes

Ever find yourself wishing you could crawl into a hole after you’ve made a mistake or failed? Or maybe your spouse or child made a poor choice and you feel ashamed? 

Shame is incredibly powerful and will invite you to keep secrets, hide, and to feel less than. Shame also encourages you to shame others to avoid dealing with your emotional pain. The helpful news is everyone fails and makes mistakes because mistakes are part of being human. Sometimes mistakes are small like missing an appointment. Other times mistakes are big, destructive, and damage opportunities and relationships. Regardless of the size, realizing you or someone you love has made a mistake can be difficult to navigate emotionally.

Mistake shame will often trick you into believing you should define yourself by your worst moments. “Only a bad person would do what I did.” “Only someone who doesn’t care about their family would do what I did.” However, creating a healthy framework for navigating mistakes and failure can transform your most difficult moments into deep opportunities for growth and flourishing. So, how do you get from failure shame to flourishing?

5 Healthy Steps for Navigating Failure and Mistakes

1.     Approach each day with humility. Remember daily you are human and likely to make mistakes. Set reasonable expectations for yourself, strive to make wise decisions and remind yourself that mistakes may happen. 

2.     Honestly identify and take responsibility for mistakes when they happen. Watch for a tendency to avoid owning mistakes and blaming others to make yourself more emotionally comfortable. It’s okay to just say, “I really messed that up. I’m human. Everyone makes mistakes. Now I’m going to take the necessary steps to make it right if possible.”

3.     Tell those involved about the mistake. Hiding failure and mistakes breeds shame and results in lies and broken trust. It’s better to tell people you messed up. Apologize when appropriate. Then determine action steps to correct the issue. “I was supposed to have my part of the project done today. I’m sorry I didn’t follow through on time. I’m going to cancel my other plans today and get my part of the project to you by the end of the day. I will also take responsibility with our boss if we turn in the project late.”

4.     Extend grace to yourself. Watch for shame messages that will invite you to judge yourself harshly. “I can’t believe you did that. You’re so irresponsible.” “No one will ever trust you because you screw up everything.” “Everyone is going to know what you did and it’s all people will remember about you.” Instead, create a gracious mantra you can repeat to yourself each time you fail or make a mistake. “I messed up. Everyone messes up because we are human. I’m a loving, responsible person. I will take responsibility and action to fix my mistake. I will learn from this going forward and become a wiser person.”

5.     Reflect on what happened to increase wisdom. After you have moved through being honest and taking responsibility for your mistake, take time to reflect on the situation. Where did you go wrong? Were there decisions you made that led up to the failure that you could change in the future? What valuable lessons did you learn from the mistake? What did you learn about yourself in the process? Is there a pattern to the mistakes you’re making? Is there deeper personal work that needs to be done so you can learn from what happened? Internalize the answers to these questions and incorporate them into daily life to avoid making the same mistakes moving forward.

Failure and mistakes are inevitable. Even the most careful, responsible people make mistakes often. Remember, mistakes do not define your identity or the identity of others. Extend grace to yourself and those around you with the healthy knowledge that your most recent failure might be the catalyst for the most significant growth of your life. 

When sorting through failure and mistakes, sometimes it helps to have professional support. Journey Bravely currently has adult, teen, and couples coaching sessions available to help you navigate life’s challenges. Connect with us at journeybravely.com.

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 19 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

Self Care During Coronavirus Pandemic

The COVID-19 Pandemic has hit hard and now you’re trying to figure out how to stay home, homeschool kids, work from home, figure out getting groceries without being exposed, cook more meals…and that doesn’t even cover the emotional turmoil created daily by the rising diagnosis/death tolls and constant news coverage. All of these changes are occurring at the same time and it’s natural for your brain to feel overwhelmed, confused, and forgetful.

You may be focused primarily on taking care of others in your life, however, self care is very important right now to help your brain find the balance it needs to develop it’s new routine and rhythm. Self care is not selfish. In fact, one of the most helpful and loving things you can do to make yourself healthy and available to help those you love is to incorporate some self care into your daily life. Constant stress increases your Cortisol levels, contributes to lower immune system, and puts you at higher risk for unhealth. Taking as little as 10 minutes a day to do something calming and loving toward yourself can make a significant difference in your mental and physical health.

What Is Self Care?

Self care is any activity that creates a sense of calm, rest, relaxation and kindness toward yourself. The goal is to remember that while others are important, so are you. The purpose of self care is to get a physical and mental break from the constant busyness and stress associated with transition and crisis. There are many forms of self care that vary widely based on the personality and enjoyment of the individual. Some common examples are:

• Getting enough sleep

• Eating healthy foods

• Exercise

• Prayer/Meditation

• Reading

• Sports

• Talking to a friend

• Journaling

• Creative writing

• Playing video games

• Taking a bath

• Doing your nails

• Being outdoors

• Dancing

• Singing

• Jumping on the trampoline

• Art

• Cleaning

• Swimming

• Riding a bike

• Baking

• Decorating

• Holding your pet

• Deep breathing

• Diffusing/applying essential oils

• Organizing

The best way to make sure self care happens is to be realistic with your expectations, set aside specific time, and let your loved ones know you are taking your self care time and ask them to respect that time. It may also be helpful right now to create some boundaries around when work and school are happening daily so you can identify non-work time to schedule your self care activities.

As you consider your self care time, remember that others in your home need self care too. Consider asking them what they will do for self care and when they will set aside time so you can support their efforts to maintain their emotional health, too. Once you get a self care routine going during the pandemic, maybe you will find it easier to incorporate self care when the pandemic ends and you return to work, school, and other activities outside the home.

If you’re struggling with the pandemic or something else and are wanting to connect for online counseling, Journey Bravely is here to help you get started with online counseling this week. Call 918-221-9987 for your free 15 minute consultation call or if you’re ready to schedule your initial online counseling session, connect to our client portal to schedule now here.

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

Pandemic Anger, Sadness, Fear....Or Is It All Grief?

We are all feeling emotionally disoriented as we walk through this unprecedented pandemic experience. Maybe you find yourself reading news and feeling fearful and anxious. Maybe you feel annoyed and angry every time another restriction is placed on your community. Maybe you’re sad that your special trip, Prom, graduation, or wedding has been postponed or cancelled after months of hoping and planning. Maybe you’re feeling devastated because you cannot comfort someone you love who has COVID-19 or you haven’t been able to attend a funeral in person. Maybe you’re facing a positive diagnosis yourself.

So much is happening around us that is very much out of our control and the way we understood life before the pandemic has been taken from us. This whole experience is an emotional roller coaster. Some of us are irritable, some claustrophobic, some controlling, some numbing out, some seeking perfection in isolating, some exhausted, some tackling home projects, some trying obsessively to be positive. But, at the heart of it, all of these emotional responses are forms of grief. We are all in the midst of some form of loss. Loss of freedom, loss of physical connection, loss of comfort, loss of hope, loss of person, loss of job, loss of income.

Our grief shows itself in our confusion, our big emotions, and in our stress behaviors. It’s tempting to be avoidant of our feelings because they are uncomfortable, rapidly cycling, and difficult to manage. But, pushing down feelings is counterproductive, keeps you stuck, and does not move you to the other side where you can find acceptance and peace. And, people who stuff emotion, often are at higher risk for forms of anxiety, depression, chronic pain, migraines, and stomach problems.

So, we’re all grieving and our emotions feel out of control….so now what?

When we experience various forms of grief, the healthiest thing we can do is CREATE SPACE TO FEEL OUR EMOTIONS. Don’t swallow feelings, push them aside, or avoid them. Instead try the following:

• Let the feeling rise like a wave. Let it surface and give it space to exist.

• Be mindful not to immediately launch into avoidance or fixing strategies.

• Say to yourself, “I feel sad, mad, overwhelmed, scared…..”

• Validate your feeling, “This situation is weird and hard, it makes sense that I’m overwhelmed.”

• Remind yourself that the feeling is temporary, “I’m not always going to feel this overwhelmed.”

• Take deep breaths while you sit with the feeling.

• Give yourself permission to surrender the feeling to God and ride the wave knowing it will move on soon.

• Give your emotion a way to escape your body such as crying, running, drawing, singing, talking it out.

• Give yourself permission to ask for help and support when you need it.

Giving space to your grief helps you feel better and helps you prevent the unhealth that comes with emotional stuffing and avoidance. You are most certainly not alone in your struggle. This may be the time to begin some online counseling to get additional support in working through the high intensity emotions you’re experiencing. Journey Bravely is currently accepting new clients and providing professional online counseling, also known as online therapy, telemental health, Telehealth, and distance counseling to support those living in Oklahoma and Florida through this difficult time. We look forward to connecting with you.

If you’re struggling with the pandemic or something else and are wanting to connect for online counseling, Journey Bravely is here to help you get started with online counseling this week. Call 918-221-9987 for your free 15 minute consultation call or if you’re ready to schedule your initial online counseling session, connect to our client portal to schedule now here.

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

Coping Through Coronavirus

A few short weeks ago, I woke up, took a beach walk, got the kids off to school, went to work to counsel people in person, and stopped on the way to a baseball game to pick up a few things from the store including toilet paper and lunchmeat. This week, I woke up, the beach is closed, the kids are doing school at home, all counseling sessions are online, no baseball games, and walking the empty toilet paper and lunchmeat aisles at the store sparks anxiety. Most things that felt normal and gave daily structure to life a few weeks ago are now completely different. 

Experiencing so much change at one time in the daily infrastructure of our lives is disorienting and overwhelming. You aren’t alone if you’re experiencing brain fog, forgetfulness, exhaustion, depression, irritability, fear, anxiety, anger and grief. It is overwhelming to the brain to have so many life anchors cut loose simultaneously. Your brain has shifted from doing everyday tasks automatically to having to intentionally think through things that were simple a few weeks ago. Any room your brain had to give to higher level thinking about your goals, dreams, relationships, and life satisfaction has been overrun by crisis mode focused on basic needs and survival.

The good news in the midst of our current difficulty is your brain is created to change and adapt. Your brain will embrace a new version of normalcy after about 3-4 weeks if you engage in some repetitive daily practices that help you feel normal even in the midst of very abnormal circumstances. 

5 Ways to Stay Mentally Healthy During Coronavirus: 

1.     Be intentional about your sleep, nutrition, exercise, social connection, spiritual support, and medication regimen.Make intentional, reasonable efforts to take care of yourself in these areas while also being mindful to lower your expectations of yourself and others. 

2.     Adopt 5 daily practices to keep you grounded in a sense of purpose and connection to others.  Personalize your 5 practices to what helps you feel normal, hopeful, and a sense of accomplishment each day. My 5 daily practices include: laying eyes on the ocean, walking outdoors, listening to hopeful/spiritual podcast or sermon, send an encouraging message to a friend/family member, and naming 10 gratitude items.  Make a meaningful effort to engage your 5 practices daily, giving grace to yourself when you aren’t able to make it happen

3.     Connect socially. Whether by phone, text, Facetime, Facebook, Zoom, Marco Polo or talking to your neighbors from across the yard, find a way to communicate with others. Talking with others reminds us that we aren’t alone in the current struggle and serves as mutual encouragement that we can survive the challenges we are facing. Don’t hesitate to share struggles with a trusted friend.

4.     Engage in Self-Care. Find time each week to do something that feels calming and soul nurturing. Take a bath, read a book, watch your favorite show, call a friend, get outdoors, hold your pet, etc. Your brain and body need a break from your higher stress level. 

5.     Limit News Consumption. While we need to be wise and informed, there is wisdom in determining an amount of trustworthy news that feels informative and helpful for the day vs. falling into a black hole of fear mongering and confusion. 

As we are navigating this new, socially distant, stressful world together, don’t hesitate to seek extra mental health support. Many therapists are accepting new clients and providing online counseling sessions to accommodate increased mental health needs in the community including Journey Bravely. 

If you’re struggling with the pandemic or something else and are wanting to connect for online counseling, Journey Bravely is here to help you get started with online counseling this week. Call 918-221-9987 for your free 15 minute consultation call or if you’re ready to schedule your initial online counseling session, connect to our client portal to schedule now here.

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.