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By Iris J. Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC,

Life & Loss Transformation/Life Reinvention Specialist,
Owner of Vision Powered Coaching, Bloomfield, CT

If you are going through some tough times and are feeling very stressed for multiple reasons, you may find it hard to face a new day sometimes.  You may even want to curl up in a corner and rock away your stress like a baby, if things feel pretty bad.   You may well know that for you, this is generally not a feeling that lasts. Your brain may be telling you this is a rational sort of depression. It is about some things going on in your world that are primarily beyond your own control, but that are still making you feel worried, sad and anxious.

You know from past experience that you possess some tools to help you out of the hole, but with all that’s  been happening lately in your life,  it just feels more and more difficult to make a search for that figurative ladder hiding in the bushes that you can drag close and use to climb out of the deep, dark pit.

Have you had days like that? Have you ever awakened and thought to yourself, “This is the worst time I have ever gone through”?  I know I have, but then I mull it over some more  and remember (though sometimes I don’t really want to) that as bad as whatever it is feels now, I have lived  through times that were equally as bad, or even worse.  During those earlier bleak times, it seemed that things would never get better and that I might never feel joy again.  I was always wrong.

I had a client once, who compared every bad occurrence or bump in her life’s road to “dead baby”. She had been through such a horrible loss and survived it, though the pain will always be with her.  In  what seemed to me at the time like a strange way of coping, she used that shock and awareness she made herself feel, to help her get through whatever difficulties were happening in the present. This was how she reminded herself that she was a strong woman. It worked for her!

I am a huge advocate of doing whatever works for you, as long as others are not hurt in the process, and as long as in making your choices, you are not doing something that simply feels good for the moment, but has the potential to cause you longer term harm.

I know what it’s like to feel as though life could not possibly throw one more horrendous thing at you. It feels like you will explode if you have to cope with anything more than is overflowing your already full bowl.  There are folks who believe that God only gives us what we can handle. I don’t know what I think on that score, but if it’s true, He or She must consider me a veritable rock. Sometimes I surprise myself by feeling that I am indeed a rock, albeit a wobbly one, not always on level ground.  In those moments, I marvel at my ability to summon up courage and strength in times of adversity.  At other times, I just want to curl up in a very dark corner and shut out reality, at least for a day or two. I think most of us feel that way sometimes.

There can be days when nothing we do works at reducing our stress, no matter what we try.  When our worry, anxiety and sadness prevail, it is a good idea to seek professional help.  However, when these responses are caused by real-life situations that  hit us all at once, such as being in the Sandwich Generation, worrying about serious issues our children and parents are facing, or any other combination of very real, painful, troubling problems, there is no magic pill that is just going to make everything get better or disappear.

That doesn’t   mean, though, that we can’t get some help, because we certainly can.  It disturbs me that some doctors are so quick to pull out the prescription pad and offer a chemical solution without knowing all of the facts, or even what the individual’s coping techniques are, and have been historically. Remember that it is not the stress itself that causes our defenses to break down and makes us feel bad, but how we handle it.  We can definitely learn more effective methods of relaxation and can find outlets and activities that help us unwind and cope better.

If you are somebody like me and have a long, cumulative history of stress and hardships (and a lot of us do) and also a history of being a perpetual caregiver, always there for others, always needed and always ready to the best of your ability to step up and help, maybe it is time to stop and take some breaths.  Maybe it’s a good time to re-think your next course of action and to take stock of what tools and help you have available for yourself.  I hope you can do this before you go on depleting all of your resources.  When that happens, people are usually not of any use to themselves, or to anyone else they care about.

We know that repeated and prolonged stress takes a terrible toll on us. We know that chronic stress can diminish our immune systems and can affect all of our bodily organs.  It can make us more vulnerable to a variety of infections and conditions.  It can zap our energy and our creativity if it has gone on for a long while, though in small doses, can spur us on to change and growth.

Still, even with the best help and with the most superior tools and resources we can put into place, there will be some days when we really do want to curl up in a corner and self-soothe. Is this so awful if it is not something we do often?

Maybe we don’t need to be strong and giving all of the time? Maybe part of our journey is learning how to allow ourselves to retreat,  to lick our wounds once in a while and just shut out the world for a bit.  Maybe we need more practice in calming and comforting ourselves, rather than relying on external measures to carry us to a healthier place.

It is considered a good thing to teach infants to self-soothe when they are anxious or irritable, because eventually they must separate emotionally and physically from their maternal figures. The world can be an unsettling place if babies don’t have the ability to calm themselves and to get a little respite from the over-stimulation of their environment.  Neglected infants engage in too-much self-soothing, because that is all they can rely on.  I don’t recommend that we retreat into behaviors like that, but a healthy amount of curling up and pulling in may be just what we need some days.