10 Tips to Weather a Hard Season
It’s been a minute since I have posted a blog article.
I have been in a season that left me feeling like I have to catch up to my life again (just in time for the busy of the holidays!).
Recent events in several contexts caused me to take a giant step back from work so I could be present with some major transitions with family members.
I’ve still been seeing clients, but I had to take a little break from blogging.
I’ve written before that work/life balance is a balancing act.
Sometimes we get out of balance, necessarily, because…life.
I’ve also mentioned that work/life balance, self-care, and boundaries work together.
Knowing what you need for your own self-care and putting those practices in place makes it much easier to get back to those practices when you get through the transition/crisis/hard season.
Many of the tips I have written about are practices to put in place to prevent self-care and balance from getting out of whack during life’s difficulties. Today’s blog will focus on some extra ways to approach restoring balance to your life when you are in the hard season.
10 Tips to Pursue Self-care, Balance, and Boundaries During a Hard Season
Remember you have needs (and that you are allowed to have needs!)
Maybe you can’t do everything you normally do, but take some time to think about what your needs are in the first place. You may think you don’t have time to think about your needs, but you probably have little pockets of time you could use more productively. For example, instead of scrolling social media while you are standing in the checkout line or sitting in that carpool line, maybe you read some articles about self-care to jog your memory about what needs you might have.
Check in with your emotions
Yes, you may not be able to do much about them, but taking some time to just name what you are feeling can go a long way.
My new favorite way to do this is the “How We Feel” app. This app will send you reminders to check in, and it give you options of low energy pleasant/unpleasant and high energy pleasant/unpleasant. From there, it gives you LOTS of options of feelings you might be feeling in that category (and defines those feelings for you). It allows you to type in themes, people, and places that are relevant to your check-in, and gives you an opportunity to journal about it. (But don’t feel like you have to do that – it may just be enough to name the feeling and the accompanying themes/people/places). You can also track your sleep, exercise, and weather on this app, but again, all optional. Tracking this extra stuff is good for looking back on the trends and analyzing how those external factors impact your feelings, but when you are in the hard season, just the naming of feelings is the really important part.
Why does naming your feelings help?
I have heard someone (I would cite them, but I can’t remember where I heard it, and I don’t know if it is actually scientific or not) say that naming feelings gets the emotional part of your brain working together with the rational part of your brain. From what I know about trauma and EMDR therapy, it makes sense to me that the more integration between the different parts of the brain, the better.
It also helps you create a little distance from the emotion. When you are feeling it, it feels all-encompassing. You feel like you are the feeling and it’s going to last forever. Taking a step back to notice what you are feeling changes your stance towards the feeling, and helps you realize that you are having a feeling (instead of being a feeling). We can feel much more empowered in this stance of curiosity, and it is easier to be reminded that we won’t always feel this way.
Drop what you can afford to drop from your to-do list.
Sleep, regular meals and hydration are never on the “drop it” list!
This step involves prioritizing your needs, and letting go of the low-hanging fruit.
Like I mentioned, I dropped writing blog articles. I also dropped a lot of extra admin-type tasks from my work. The non-essential stuff.
Normally I spend much more time researching and taking trainings, listening to podcasts on topics that make me a better counselor. During this past season I focused on my time in session with clients and the specific administrative tasks essential for immediate client care.
I dropped some things at home, too.
Environmental self-care is a big thing for me. Alas, I had to leave some things undone, because they just did not carry the weight of the other stuff I was dealing with.
Dropping things doesn’t just mean not doing them. It means finding a way to tolerate the discomfort of not doing those things.
This is hard for some of us! I am a finisher!
It’s not easy for me to know that I have steam-cleaned most of the upstairs carpets and left the steam cleaner sitting in a bathroom, waiting for me to finish the job. Dropping that task (for now) meant I had to decide that the steam cleaner was not actually taunting me. But I left it sitting there instead of putting it away, as a sign of good faith that I will get to it eventually. Maybe after Christmas.
You may want to visit my article on overwhelm for some ideas on how to figure out where to focus your time and efforts.
Get creative about how you can do the things you need to do.
Identify those self-care things that seem to be falling by the wayside and see if there are ways you can work them in, even if on a much smaller scale than you usually do.
You can set reminders on your phone.
You can bring a journal with you so you can journal in a waiting room somewhere.
You can walk a lap around the perimeter of the grocery store before doing your shopping, just to get a little bit of physical activity in.
Differentiate between your stuff and other people’s stuff.
We rarely go through hard seasons alone, although we feel alone because other people are going through it differently alongside you.
This is one of the main reason these seasons are hard.
Just like you are interacting with that season based on your personality, needs, experiences, blind spots, and past trauma, so are the others involved. For more on this, you may want to refer back to my article about how we all go through things differently.
When we differentiate between our stuff and other people’s stuff, we can find more compassion and grace for them. And for ourselves!
The way someone else reacts may seem abrasive, or entitled, or irrational, but through the lens of their experience it may make perfect sense. This doesn’t excuse the way they treat you, but it might help explain it, and help you recognize it’s about them and their stuff, not really about you.
If they have unhealed trauma or dysfunction, they may actually be bringing unfair expectations to you. It doesn’t mean you have to accept those unfair expectations. Differentiating between your stuff and other people’s stuff is a first step in setting some boundaries on what is yours to carry and what is not.
Just like #3 about dropping things…dropping other people’s stuff requires us to tolerate the discomfort that they are thinking or feeling a certain way about us.
I am not at all pretending this is easy.
Create some key phrases, or a mantra to help focus yourself.
One of my favorites is, “Do what I can, when I can, decide it’s enough.”
For the Christian, Bible verses are great for this, too. One of my go-to’s is 2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” It is so comforting to be reminded that I just need to do what I can do, and trust God for the rest.
Having a phrase that you can keep close can be a great way to remind yourself what you want to be thinking. It gets you out of the emotional part of your brain that reacts and back into the pre-frontal cortex where the rational thought exists.
Look for the gratitude, the silver linings.
This may be a hard season, but it might be hard because you just loved the last season so much and you don’t want to see it change. Take time to be grateful that you had so much to love in that last season.
It may be hard because it takes you away from your normal life, which you LOVE. So much gratitude for that life you love.
This may be a hard season that makes the future much easier in some ways. Count those ways with thanksgiving.
Hard situations often cause us to interact with others in different ways, and that can bring us closer. People we weren’t super-close to may step up with a helping hand. So much to be grateful for.
Look for little ways to reward yourself.
This one is not always feasible.
Time and money are usually necessary for even little rewards, and those resources are often scarce in a hard season.
But maybe there is a little extra for a little treat you don’t normally get yourself, like a flavored coffee or a smoothie.
Maybe you burn a favorite scented candle while you plug away at some overwhelming paperwork.
Maybe it’s allowing yourself to scroll pinterest to find ideas for something you are looking forward to once you are done with the hard season.
Find a way to remind yourself that this season is temporary.
My grandmother used to say, often, “This too, shall pass.”
It’s hard to believe that when you are in the thick of it.
Some seasons are reallllllllly long.
Some of the things we deal with in life are permanent things, and we have to look at the possibility of lighter seasons within the lifelong difficult circumstances. For some that deal with chronic situations, it may just be a few lighter days here and there, but they do happen.
When you can pinpoint a reprieve in the hard part of that season, look ahead to that time-stamp with hope. Remembering that there is an end in sight can give you the energy to keep going through the “hard.”
Don’t go it alone.
The people you are going through your season with you may be good sources of support. They may not be. (see #5!).
If they are not actually supportive, you may need to lean on other loved ones, or a counselor.
Sometimes someone who is not in the situation with you is the best source of support because they have the bandwidth to be supportive.
They don’t have the “stuff” attached to it that others in the situation do.
They can offer an objective perspective, and even opportunities to take a temporary break from it.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need someone to walk you through a hard season. In addition to the support a friend can offer, a trained counselor can help you identify the ways your past trauma may be exacerbating the experience for you and teach you coping strategies for regulating your emotions in the midst of it. You can reach me securely through my website, or give me a call at 717-219-4339.
I am here holding out hope and help as you navigate this season.
Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.
