You’ve probably heard the phrase, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry?” Well, it’s very relevant to my life right now. In a previous post, I shared our family’s recent adventures in deciding to relocate to California:  from our house not selling to breaking down on the side of the road on the way to our new state. While that post was deliciously cathartic to write, it also prompted me to think about how I got through it and am still standing. Because really, we all go through “adventures” that are stressful. Life can be like that. Come to think of it, parenting can be like that. So know that I don’t have any grand delusions that my recent experiences were unique to me! Here’s some of what I did to come out on the other side of some pretty stressful events.

1. I let myself feel angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, sad, and afraid. I didn’t “coach” myself out of my feelings with platitudes and positive thinking. For example, when we were broken down on the side of the road I didn’t immediately say, “That’s ok! There’s always a silver lining!” (I’m picturing a musical here, with a smiling woman bursting into song as butterflies flit around her…). I hate it when others say to me, “It could be worse!” when something  just happened. Goodness, people! Let me feel my feelings for a minute, will you? I also hate it when I do that to myself. So..this time, I didn’t. Progress! Oh–and I’ve also learned that many times, people who try to jostle me into a better feeling place right away do so because THEY are uncomfortable with feelings. It’s about them and their comfort level.
2. I kept breathing through the feelings that came up. Maybe you remember to breathe during stressful times, but I often find myself holding my breath. And when I do that, I find that my feelings don’t pass through me and I remain stuck. By breathing and feeling my feelings I find that sooner than I think, I am ready to move forward. In the case of waiting on the side of the road for the taxi and the tow truck, it took about 15 minutes. During those 15 minutes I experienced thoughts such as, “Why me?” and “This sucks…what ELSE could go wrong?” and “It WOULD have to be 90 degrees…this is so not fair” and “I’m tired of crap happening. Is this some sort of sign that I’m on the wrong track?” So the thoughts were definitely there; it’s the breathing through them that allowed me to acknowledge them and then move into a different emotional space.
3. I got my “thinking brain” going by asking myself a few questions. Okay, so this is probably going to sound all “coach-y” but hey, I am a coach, and I do know a little about how to view things from different perspectives so I (and others) can get different results. The first question I asked myself was, “What’s great about this?” Sometimes when I’m still feeling a bit pissy I might think, “So, what DOESN’T suck about this?” In this case of being stuck on the side of the road, it was easy to come up with several things. First, I had cell phone reception which was amazing considering we were out in the boonies. Second, we were unhurt. Third, we were safely able to pull over to the side of the road and avoid being hit. Fourth, it only took the taxi and tow truck an hour and a half to get there instead of several more hours (or not at all if we hadn’t have had cell coverage). As I was generating my mental list of things to appreciate, I started to feel better. I still wasn’t digging the heat, or the notion that the cat, who had been stuck in her cat carrier for several hours, was probably getting severely dehydrated. However, because I had let myself feel ALL of my feelings I was more open to doing this mental exercise. I could tell it wasn’t time for me to be “Mary Sunshine” and ask my family what they were appreciating at that moment, on the side of the road. I did do it later on with them, once we were back at a hotel again.
4. I also focused on the humor in the situation. I imagined my life as a sitcom that I was watching from afar and it suddenly became kind of funny! It gave me the necessary distance from the stressors to see the whole situation in a new light.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I fell down with my dog and took six inches of skin off my arm. Even though it hurt badly, there was actually a point when I was flat on the ground (and so was the dog) and the thought occurred to me: “I really could laugh at this. How freakin’ hilarious is it that I am stuck on my back in the heat while I wonder how much my car is going to fix?” Ahem—let me come clean and share that I did NOT laugh. I was in too much pain. I was delighted that my brain would even consider trying to find the humor, however, since I am not immune to being a drama queen.
5. I reached out to others so I could feel more connected and less alone.  One of the ways I did this was to post pictures and updates on Facebook of our mishaps. Doing so kept me looking at the lighter side of life, since I didn’t want to come across as depressing or boring to my friends. I really had no idea how much this would help me feel the love and support of my friends during a time when I was feeling alone. Just reading comments such as, “Hang in there!” or “Thinking of you!” really helped me. I tried to steer clear of complete “poor me” updates that focused on only the negatives.

Going through so many trying times one after the other has strengthed many muscles that I’d forgotten I’d had: the humor muscle, the flexibility muscle, the appreciation muscle, etc. Using those muscles has also prompted me to think about how, in parenting, we often experience one stressor after another. From our child tantrumming about not getting to eat candy before dinner to our tween telling lies, parenting can feel like just one thing after another. My relocation is only one example of an adventure that got pretty stressful. In retrospect, I learned (and was reminded of) that being willing to be with what is at the moment is powerful. Only then was I able to move to the next step towards appreciation or humor.

And that’s no joke.