Life is hard. It has ups and downs. Live long enough and tragedies tend to accumulate. That’s just the nature of a life on earth – no one gets out of here alive. When life events happen, they can be emotionally, physically, and financially devastating. They take a toll on your relationships, career, self-esteem, pretty much everything. Most people struggle with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, isolation, and a fear that everyday from here on in will forever feel like this.
As someone who has been through more devastating life events than I care to detail for you now – I get what you’re going through. It’s awful. It’s hard. Few people understand what you feel like in those moments unless you’ve lived them yourself.
I know that me saying to you that it does get better, and some day you’ll look back on all of this and be so very grateful that you went through it doesn’t help right now. But it does get better. And you WILL be grateful for this experience.
The thing about the hard times is that they give us wisdom, compassion, and experience. When people you love go through something similar – and believe me, eventually they will – you’ll be able to support them in all of the ways you will now know that they will need. You’ll have first hand, insider information on everything that they will feel, experience, and have to do to get through it. And from that place of first hand, insider knowledge experience – when it’s someone you love going through something you now know how to expertly navigate because you went through it yourself, it makes every heart-aching moment of what you’re going through tragically worth the suffering. You will be so very grateful that you had every hardship that you did, so that you can be there for them in those gut-wrenching times that very few other people in their lives will be able to fully appreciate.
To that end – here are some things that I have learned that may benefit anyone going through a difficult time right now.
1) People are dicks.
They just are. It’s unfortunate that the world is full of people who are all at various stages of their own journeys. The important thing to remember is that everyone’s got something happening in their lives. None of us are immune from hardships. Oftentimes, those dickish behaviours are defense mechanisms of someone who’s struggling themselves. People are used to being screwed over, and we all have experiences of someone taking advantage of us when we’re vulnerable and need someone to not do that to us. So we develop prickly exteriors that tend to come up during hard times to ward off attacks from other people while we’re vulnerable. It’s a very primal instinct and we usually do it unconsciously.
This can be helpful to remember so that you are a) aware of your own dickish behavior towards other people and b) can be a bit more forgiving of other people’s dickish behavior towards you.
2) You will need more sleep.
The same way that you need more sleep when recovering from a cold or an injury, your emotional and mental states need recovery and rehabilitation too. Since healing only happens in a parasympathetic state, your body will do its best to protect you by inducing a state of lethargy and exhaustion. Go with it. Give yourself permission to take naps, sleep more often, take more breaks. You’re healing. Do it now or do it later, but eventually, the healing process will win out and you will need to recover and heal. So do your best to honour what you feel like you need.
3) How you eat right now can have a huge impact.
You won’t want to eat healthy right now. Your body is expending extra energy trying to keep up with the healing process, and your stress response hormones will both be making you crave sugar and carbohydrate loaded comfort food. Now, I’m not saying don’t indulge. But recognize that you can perpetuate an inflammatory state, delaying your healing process, contributing to brain fog and tiredness if you indulge too often. Getting extra healthy fats like fish and nuts and generally trying to follow an anti-inflammatory diet can help your brain function better, stave off hunger and binging, and keep you from packing on extra weight right now, which may further contribute to any self-esteem issues you may be experiencing.
4) It’s okay to cut people out of your life.
Both hard times and good times tend to have the same effect on the people around us – especially the attention seekers or those we have unhealthy attachments with. As soon as you are no longer there for them, they get awful. They will say and do incredibly hurtful things. They will blame you, often very loudly to anyone who will listen (especially mutual friends or co-workers) and try to pull other people to their side. Your hard time is useful for their attention-needing, you see. When you are no longer able to provide them with the high your constant attention was giving them, they’ll turn to ‘negative attention’ behaviours. You see it in children all the time.
I know that in the moment this feels like an awful betrayal, but it’s such a blessing in disguise. 1) They reveal themselves to you for who they really are so you are free to move on without any attachments to them whatsoever – so let go of the guilt or shame of ‘not wanting to leave them behind’ because they didn’t deserve you to begin with. 2) Time has a funny way of showing other people who the good guy was in those situations. Don’t play their game. Play yours. The outcome will always be the best proof. 3) Most people worth their salt understand that when someone is loudly proclaiming that it’s someone else’s fault, well, ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ is the phrase that comes to mind here… 4) Most often, those people haven’t actually gone through their own hardships. Realise that and forgive them their ignorance. Hardships make compassionate people. People who haven’t experienced hard times are typically judgmental and often act superior to those experiencing them. They think hard times are a lacking in the person experiencing them, which is just their own lack of self-love and self-acceptance and a fear of failure. Just wait for life to do its thing. They’ll realize why they were awful when they have it happen to them and they finally grow as people. Because the truth is, no one is immune to the difficulties of life. And anyone who judges someone else’s hard time is just begging the Universe to show them the error of their ways.
I like to think of hard times as God’s way of clearing the things out of your life that you no longer need to set you up for your super awesome rockstar future. So just let the process happen and focus on getting prepared for all of the fabulous things heading your way! There’s always a plan. And it never disappoints!
Take good care of each other and treat each other with kindness, compassion and respect. But also - keep good boundaries.
Till next time, Folks!