During this lockdown/government-imposed holiday/house arrest/apocalypse/home spa retreat, (depending on your persuasion) some new worries have risen to the surface:
#TRENDING WORRIES
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- Why is everyone so brilliant while I am terrible at homeschooling?
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- The children are going to be so behind when they get back.
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- What if they get the virus?
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- What if I get the virus?
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- What if the money runs out?
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- Am I a terrible mother?
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- Are they going to be emotionally scarred from this
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- Am I drinking too much?
- Will it ever end?
…and rather dramatically, in one of my recent private messages.
- Will I end up in a mass, unmarked grave?
Worry, it’s a pretty constant feature of motherhood, from antenatal classes onwards.
(sorry if you’re new at it – their late-teen exploits are going catapult you into a Steven King film-level worry bootcamp, with more terrifying sequels in their twenties, forties and beyond)
It just occurred to me that young adults that would otherwise have been planning to go-backpacking to ‘find themselves’ are currently finding themselves locked in the house with mum and dad.
Which is probably their own Steven King horror scenario.
Tomorrow I want to get into the nitty-gritty of the ‘stuckness’ – but let’s stay focussed.
When youngsters strap themselves to backpacks and head off to Thailand – they’ve purposely removed everything familiar… and what’s left is themselves.
Their own ‘self’.
Often mums talk of ‘losing themselves’ amidst the mundane-ness of everyday life.
‘Finding yourself’ requires a stripping away of normality.
What’s just happened to you, well all of us, it is such a weird mixture of the two – it has an ‘uncanny valley’ feeling to it:
Even more mundane and completely, ridiculously, different.
Many of your human support mechanisms, friends, clubs, hobbies, bants, coffee dates – POOF gone overnight.
Rendez-vous points on your personal world map – scrubbed clean.
Even the things you could normally buy, freedom of choice, going for a drive, mooching round the shops, dramatically flouncing off to friends’ houses in a strop – BANNED.
Who would have thought the Summer is coming and instead of worrying about bikini bodies… everyone is banned from going to the beach.
And everyone just accepts that.
(We really might be in some kind of horror film – at this point, nothing would surprise me.)
The world as you knew it is as different – as it is to the backpacker landing in Thailand.
You wake up each morning and everything looks exactly the same.
Yet nothing’s the same
No wonder you feel unnerved.
No wonder you are worried.
No wonder you are worried.
One of your fundamental, ESSENTIAL human needs is being severely challenged.
(actually, the reason lockdown’s so challenging is that several of them are all at the same time).
But in this case:
The need for CERTAINTY.
Those that are feeling this the most sharply, are the ones for whom CERTAINTY is a really important value.
People who find the most comfort in facts, timescales and data – feel as though they are grasping at fog for answers that just aren’t there.
Worry and it’s big brother, anxiety, is the obvious reaction,
but:
but:
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- sleeplessness
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- snappiness
- brain fog
…or even real physical aches and pains can pop up – some of which make no sense, on the surface.
The reason for it is because it isn’t happening on the surface –
the uncertainly is challenging us deep to our core and erupting via the nearest exit.
If you know you are a ‘blue’ personality type,
and feel happiest with structure and certainty –
and feel happiest with structure and certainty –
you might be finding yourself starting to obsess about the statistics, the trends and the reporting to try to get answers.
If that’s you – or even if that’s not you..
we invite you to shift the focus a little, onto things you CAN make changes with.
Things that absolutely WILL help.
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- Find the data on the things you can do at home that make you feel happiest/calmest.
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- Make a plan for when you will schedule them.
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- Challenge yourself to see how good a night’s sleep you can get.
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- Plan the week’s shop so you get most variety and make the best use of ingredients.
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- Have a ‘bake-off’ or ‘ready, steady, cook’ challenge with someone on FaceTime
- Use some of our declutter plan to bring order to your indoor (or garden space)
The certainty-driven brain, left unattended, can start to head off on its own backpacking adventure in your Stephen King dark dungeons of anxiety.
Interrupt its travel plans by giving it something CERTAIN to get its teeth into.
Use that brilliant grey-matter of yours to power yourself through this in a constructive way.
(so it can’t get bored and start smashing the place up.)