Words to Live By: Tips for coping with grief, anxiety and depression (magic wand included)

Over the past year, I’ve been tumbling up and down the rollercoaster of grief, anxiety, and depression as a reaction to various life events—death, getting hit by a Ford Explorer and living to tell the tale, a second car collision, etc.  They’ve compounded with my traumas and triggers of communicating with my abusive ex, work responsibilities, parenting responsibilities.  Sometimes, I feel like a fishing bobber wildly flailing about at the whims of the deep blue tides.

To be truthful, I’m desperate for a magic wand.  But like I tell my daughters, we can’t rely on a prince (or princess or queen or king) to save us.  We have to save ourselves.

So to the lady who needs a magic wand (me), I’m offering some magic hopes for when you’re at the bottom of the barrel (also me, sitting at the bottom of the barrel):

1. This too shall pass.  It might not feel like it, when the tidal wave presses in all around you, but I promise that emotion you’re feeling will not last forever.  It’s the law of physics, the law of emotions.  It will blink, simply by virtue of time, because no one emotion can sustain itself indefinitely.  (Thank goodness.)  You will be able to come up for air at some point, and that point is crucial, because...
2. That breath you take?  Stay with it.  Follow it as it goes into your nose, down into your lungs, and hold it.  Count to 10.  Then gently lead it back out of your body, focusing your exhale in one, slow, long breath out.  Feel it leave your lips.  Repeat.  Repeat it five times.  Each time, staying with the experience of breathing and only your breathing.  This is the beginning of mindfulness.
3. Which leads to the fact that you’ve been so focused on breathing, the initial tidal wave of emotional complications has receded just a bit.  Your magic wand is your breath.  And your magic spells—are your own words.
4. Words are power—as simple as it sounds.  We can use magic to change them—by inserting the opposite of the negative ones.  Instead of: I can’t get through another terrible moment of feeling like this—it can become: I can.  Or I will.  Even if you don’t feel like you can, just changing the word has power to it.  I will never be enough to protect my girls.  Strike never.  I WILL be enough to protect my girls, even if I don’t feel like it right now.  I WILL get through this next moment of pain, even if it feels impossible.  It’s possible.
5. Take those words and make them move—which may also feel counterintuitive, but sometimes when I’m locked into the paralysis of anxiety and depression, I forget that I have a body that’s capable of movement.  And not just exercise (which does help, although lately I’ve been limited in physical activity), but further, in taking action to help others.  The act of giving can take away some of the burden of your pain—through the balm of helping people who need it and the positive feelings from being kind.  It also subtracts the actual time submerged in sadness/pain as you’re filling up your time with the action it takes to do the giving (rounding up donations for the local shelter, cleaning up a church hall, helping kids in the classroom/girl scouts, etc). 
6. Another magic wand move:  transform your feelings into a different medium altogether—pick up a pencil and write them down—sometimes having them spilling out of you can help.  Or draw them into a color, a design, or a picture.  (I can’t draw figures at all, but I can mix colors).  Or if you have the gift of singing, sing.  (Or if you don’t, still sing.  Sometimes when I’m super frustrated, singing opera into a pillow is kind of cathartic).  Or play music, I don’t have musical talents, but I can pluck an ukulele. 
7. Lean into your support network—one thing about overwhelming grief, anxiety, and depression, is that it’s isolating.  We feel like we are the only ones trapped in the wave or in the hole of our feelings.  If you have access to a therapist, yes!  Or your loved ones—someone you trust—even the smallest of hugs can help.  Or if you’re not into hugs, a phone call.  Or if you’re not into talking, a text.  An emoji.  A giphy.  Just one small reach out can help you feel less alone.
8. Be gentle with you.  The tidal wave will come and go.  The big secret is that as much as we have the capacity to feel pain and anxiety and grief, we also have the matching capacity to love, be kind, and to heal. 
9. It takes time.  This is just some magic to get you through the day to day and from moment to moment.  I believe in you.  You can be the light and love you want to see in the world.

p.s. Happy early Birthday to you!  Every day is a new day.  Keep waking up, because the world is better with you in it.  Hopefully this new year will bring more love than pain.  That is my wish for you.  More love, please.