When Everything Feels Like a Crisis

It’s commonplace and even expected for all of us to stay busy, constantly communicate, and multitask. We workout at 2am while shopping on our phones, then have food and groceries delivered to our front doors while simultaneously answering emails while in bed and binging an entire season of House. We consume news and quick social media clips from before our feet ever hit the floor until well after our energy drinks and double espressos have worn off.

So, it’s no surprise that the term “burnout” has saturated our collective vocabulary and talk of anxiety, overstimulation, emotional exhaustion, and dysregulation seems to permeate every conversation.

We are inundated with constant stimulation and have legitimate reasons to be concerned. We’re all dealing with a lot: economic insecurities, work stressors, family and relationship instabilities, health struggles, political/social divisions, future uncertainties, information overload, environmental worries, global crises, epidemics of disconnection, and the everyday demands of simply getting through life.

Although we may disagree about how to prioritize these issues or which concern is the most urgent, we can agree that most people are carrying a lot. And CARING a lot. The problem isn’t that we care about these things. The problem is that our nervous systems begin to experience everything as an emergency. Thus, we end up in a chronic crisis-survival mode while our society sneers at self-care and rewards the workaholic. It is not sustainable.

There is a great clip of Marsha Linehan, creator of Dialectical Behavior therapy, talking about how a crisis is a short-term event so if you feel like your life is just “crisis after crisis after crisis” … that’s not a crisis. That’s your life.

While that may sound a bit harsh, the distinction is an important one; we use different skills for each.

If you’re truly in a crisis, then you want to survive the moment without making things worse. For that, you want to use distress tolerance skills. These are ways to deal with the situation, as best as you can, in the moment. It’s a band-aid.

If it’s your life, then you want to face problems head-on and solve them. To do that, you acknowledge the reality of your situation, figure out what you can and cannot control, and decide what needs to change. Maybe you need to set a boundary, have a difficult conversation, ask for help, make a different choice, or accept something you cannot change.

The point is that you don’t want to spend your whole life putting band-aids on problems that need to be addressed/solved.

Held together by band-aids, we become hypervigilant and emotionally reactive rather than thoughtfully responsive which means we lose the space between feeling something and reacting to it. Instead, everything becomes urgent and personal.

When we use the space between feeling something and taking action, we can slow down long enough to decide how we actually want to respond rather than letting our emotions make that decision for us.

But what happens when we don’t use that space? Time slows. Seconds tick by as our thoughts become gridlocked in rush-hour traffic OR … harder to find than a newly adopted feral kitten.

Bob Dylan talked about that feeling in “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.”

“And there’s something on your mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin’
But it’s trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when yer layin’ in bed
And no matter how you try you just can’t say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it…”

We all have intense feelings/emotions (some more extreme than others) because they are signals and messages from our subconscious mind through our body to our conscious awareness. And, like a cranky toddler who’s late for a nap and trying to get your attention, it’s going to keep pestering you until you get the message.

Like the toddler, we also may not have the words to understand these thoughts/feelings ourselves or to be able to express them to others. This is where having a therapist or an understanding, compassionate, and patient friend can help. They can give you the time and a safe space to allow you to talk things through and/or problem-solve.

Some things can be difficult to talk about, however, or even say out loud. Either because we can’t find a way to articulate how we feel or what we’re thinking, or because we’re worried or afraid to be embarrassed.

Often, the most important conversations are the ones we’re most afraid to have as our silence might be hiding our shame, grief, loneliness, anger, depression, fear, uncertainty, or some other proof that we’re actually human. Our fear of opening up may be justified because we know from experience that the other person likely won’t understand or care about what we share. Or it may not.

Regardless of why we hesitate to talk, choosing silence and self-suppression can have a profoundly negative impact.

The thing about emotions is that they don’t disappear just because we don’t talk about them. They fester. Eventually, they have to go somewhere. Either we deal with them in the moment, or they show up later when and where we least expect- sabotaging our relationships, bodies, coping mechanisms, etc. We might even take them out on people who had nothing to do with creating them or aim the frustration at ourselves with unprecedented precision.

Social/cultural messages or norms can make talking about our thoughts and feelings even more complicated for boys and men, who think vulnerability is weakness, don’t have languages for certain emotions, and are bombarded by messaging centered on toughness, independence, and emotional restraint.

Regardless of that messaging, all human beings need emotional connection, a sense of belonging, and somewhere safe to tell the truth.

If you’re tired of being covered head to toe in all the fun band-aids you could find and you’d like to actually solve some problems and make changes toward making a life worth living, reach out a counselor and keep reaching out until you find one you can connect with and learn from.

Talking about our emotions doesn’t magically fix everything. Sometimes we need people in our lives who can sit with us when we don’t have the words yet and help us find them. If you’d like us to help you, email info@thebalancedlifellc.com today to start or continue your journey.