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Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?
Is it this time of year or the time of this year?
Posted September 12, 2020
Change always confronts us in September. Demands for maintenance, adaptative learning, and connection to others can contribute to feelings of being overwhelmed, anxiety about our capacity to cope, depression when we confront the loss of what was and acknowledge what now is. Today’s unknowns can feel oppressive rather than motivating.
This morning I awoke with that familiar fall feeling: change and challenge were in the air. Tree leaves had begun to fade, some to turn colors of apricots, plums or burgundy wine. The view from my window forced me to recognize that the minutes between sunrise and sunset were collapsing, assuring shorter days, accompanied by ever more artificial light. School buses interfering with traffic flow, office supply stores feeling as crowded as football stadiums, and people of all ages revising their lists of priorities: autumn was on the way.
All these changes can energize, excite, fill a person with images of opportunities to grow, possibilities of doing a notch better than the year before. After all, are we not a year older and supposedly wiser and more capable? But the changes can also evoke fears—what will the future hold? Will I be able to cope? What can I expect from the "authorities" in my life, whether teachers, parents, bosses, people who make and enforce the laws—or rules? What will this year’s transitions require of me? Will digging out a warm jacket, sharpening pencils along with my mind, and preparing to turn on the furnace, be enough?
This year confronts us with additional and sometimes unique challenges in maintenance, adaptative learning, and connecting. An overriding question looms: Will I be safe? The novel coronavirus threatens us all. Its push to survive, regardless the source of resistance, renders it mysterious in transmission, cellular targets, and responsiveness to treatment. We now know that tiny invisible droplets (aerosols) spray from humans talking, yelling, breathing, even singing, and that they are a major source of contamination. Other vectors—larger droplets, found on surfaces we touch, groceries, even a toilet plume—are not ruled out, but the air we breathe has emerged as a primary challenge. Remembering our masks and the importance of physical distance between people adds demands for our psychic energy every time we venture beyond our homes. Concerns about those we love who may be ill—perhaps dangerously so—further drags attention away from the focus we may usually devote to whatever tasks call to us.
Our carefully mastered ways of functioning in our world can face defeat. Scarcity exacerbated by a disupted economy limits ways we can (or want to) outsource activities. We enlist our creativity: trails for walking, running or biking replace gyms, fitness centers or spaces dedicated to team sports—but we miss the casual contact with others. Our cooking skills are pushed to the max and then expanded as we replace the variety of tastes offered by restaurants with those we can concoct in our kitchens. Our wardrobes, instant indicators of season and lifestyle, may have changed radically this year. How many social events, from football games to dinner parties, will you not be attending? Will you need extra layers to stay warm if working at home all day or meeting others outside as a way to maintain physical distance and soak in precious sunlight and fresh air? Will you need energy and attention to rethink your clothing needs? Your resources for meeting them? One young woman I know is buying things at thrift shops and modifying them with paints, scissors, sometimes a sewing machine. Her “new” wardrobe brings her a sense of creative accomplishment, pride in designing a pleasing and useful garment. Personally, I’ve used tortillas to not only make burritos but also casseroles, quesadillas, unlikely sandwiches. Surprise, modification, and transformation can turn the monotonous into an innovative delight.
With cinemas, theaters, stadiums, concert halls, museums, malls, restaurants, bars, and arenas closed, entertainment demands rethinking. When the neurons in your brain feel fried from the efforts of the day and your body rebels against efforts to exercise or meditate, what can you turn to? Advice: if you choose screens, note how you feel and how you sleep following different sorts of content. The emotion-draining thriller or intellectually challenging foreign film may require more of you than usual—the stimulation, instead of energizing you, may leave you feeling depressingly depleted. Do you need more of something, less of something, or simply something different?
Yet again, Aristotle had it right: the keys to happy living are balance and moderation. Balance in your body, mind and soul; in your relationships as you give and take, share and separate, support and receive; in what you take in from the outside world and what you put back out into it; and balance in what you need and what you want. Try juggling these principles as you meet the challenges of fall: Maintenance. Mastery. Connection.
Maintenance. The temperature dropped so I reached for an old pair of sneakers instead of my sandals. One step and I went flying. The material of the soles of the shoes had deteriorated while aging in the closet untouched. As my feet flew from beneath me; I remembered learning to roller skate as a child. Time. Change. Of everything. And the essential of maintenance. Some changes take place independently of anything we may or may not do, but maintenance can help delay deterioration in others. Renovation can even replace what is with something that may be better.
Everything needs maintenance—bodies; emotions, cognitions, beliefs and intentions; our homes and vehicles, clothing and menus; our priorities and spiritual attunement; and, most of all, our relationships. Our relationships to ourselves, to those with whom we feel close, to those with whom we have transactional but necessary connections, to those we care for or inspire or entertain; and even to those at a distance, who may seem anonymous but nonetheless live in our universe.
Mastery. We are hardwired to feel good about mastery. A seasonal transition, especially during a pandemic that brings challenges like no others, offers ample opportunities. Can you learn the new schedules, technologies, rules, procedures, constraints, even languages? Limited social contact can make mastery harder as people rely on distanced contacts, YouTube videos and online learning platforms replace the rich communal sources of feedback, encouragement, and new ideas offered in classrooms and workplaces. Efforts at mastery may need to focus on finding ways to manage our homes under new conditions; update old and learn new skills, information, applications; solve previously unknown problems, ranging from how to support a child's online learning struggles and their suffering with loneliness to how to keep goals small enough that the pride (and hormones that come with it) kicks in. So much anxiety subsides when we feel competent.
Connection. I began “Life, Refracted” in 2016 writing about relationships and how important they can be to our sense of self and our well-being. Throughout 2017, each Sunday I published a post describing a different way of showing love, fifty-two of them, and I was just getting started. How well can you modify these ways of showing love when the precious rewards of physical touch are not available? When facing the challenges of long-distance relationships or dealing with separations? Can you adapt any of the ideas to fit your specific situation?
Above all, do not allow the challenges of the seasonal transition overwhelm you. When you feel that beginning to happen, take stock, examine whether maintenance, necessary learning or relationships are most critical to you at the moment. Step back and break off one small challenge, set an achievable goal, and stick with it until you have met one challenge in your life with the triumphant sense that “I can cope!” Repeat. By the time the tulips bloom, you will be celebrating your mastery of that disturbing sense of overwhelm.
Copyright 2020 Roni Beth Tower.
