07 September
Julie Henderson
I’ll be honest: I’ve been going through a lot over these last 6 or so months, and it all came home to roost in the past several weeks. The "what" isn’t important. We all have our times where life throws stuff at us and we need to deal.
What IS important is what I’m learning as I grapple with the repercussions of my particular coping style in the last 2-3 weeks.
For me it's the after-dealing that has been the hard part.
By this point in our lives most of us have well-honed (and often unconscious) methods for dealing with stress, yet whether they’re particularly functional, supportive, and sustainable is debatable.
For many of us, our approach is a cobbled-together collection of various coping strategies and trauma responses that we’ve been resorting to for most of our lives. Often they were really useful, and they helped us to survive and even thrive in the face of adversity.
But that doesn’t mean they’re particularly good for us.
My own brand of coping involves a sort of hunkering down: quashing any and all feelings of fear, sadness, panic—you know, all the “bad” ones—and moving into "manage" mode. In addition to the emotion-quashing, there’s a fairly large degree of breath-holding and muscle-tension that happens.
But damn I’m really good in a crisis, quickly able to hone in on what needs to be done and seeing that it gets done.
Sadly, that is apparently not a sustainable way to live.
So now I’m having to pause, and allow the feelings I so effectively blocked, to flow. To do a little self-care. To maybe take a step back from all the work of business and just be, just integrate.
What a relief when my business coach said, “That makes total sense to me. It rings very true, and that’s just what you should do.”
I don’t know why some part of me needed that permission, but apparently it did.
So since then I’ve been giving myself a little more leeway, being more gentle with myself, and making room for my feelings—even when they are scary, even when they are inconvenient, even when they don’t make sense in the moment.
And exploring that Superhero part of me that jumps in to manage things.
No surprise that I had a SoulCollage® card for her, or that she was one of the first ones that I created over 10 years ago. She has lots of wisdom to offer about her strengths, the cost of those strengths, and how to bring greater balance.
It got me wondering if other women might need external permission, so I thought I might offer that for you.
Just in case.
Consider permission granted for any and all of the following (and by all means add your own!). Print it out if you need to! Just give yourself a break.
You are hereby granted unlimited permission:
- To pause
- To relax
- To stop managing life and instead allow to simply flow
- To start breathing again
- To put down the need to make sure that everyone and everything is OK
- To feel ALL your feelings and even ugly cry if you need to
- To find your own way, even if it’s messy
- To choose joy
What do you need to give yourself permission to do—or not do?
Need support in finding more sustainable strategies and healing those vulnerable places? I'm always open for a free Wayfinding Session to explore your needs and how I might support you, including blanket permission slips!