Three Ways to Feel Better in a Bad Situation

I will start with a caveat - Caring for your own mental health is a lifelong endeavor, like nutrition, like education. Your state of mind and heart changes and evolves in seasons. It’s not a simple thing. But there are ways I return to time and again when things get bad.

I’m in the weeds of editing, and I’ve focused a lot on the beginning of my book in which I come out and then leave for Peace Corps. Coming out didn’t go well at home. Pain all around. Fear that caused painful words to be said. Hurt that I carried across the planet.

I started thinking about things that helped me get through that. I asked myself, “What did I do that helped me then that still helps me when things are bad?”

So, wherever I am in my heart and mind, when I am in a desperately hard place, there are three things that always work for me. I thought I’d offer them to you, in case you need them.

1. Gratitude. Focus on things you are grateful for. It’s easily said, but when things are really, really hard, this is work. There is discipline. This is not something you stitch onto a pillow (unless, of course, stitching it onto a pillow feels good to you. Then definitely stitch it on a pillow). Applying gratitude is the first and best mental health medicine I’ve ever applied to the abrasions, burns, and breaks in my heart, in my soul. There is a force, like gravity, that makes me want to fix the thing that hurt me. And maybe I should. But perhaps I can’t fix it and must sustain myself through pain. Or perhaps I’ve fixed it and the wound is deep.
   I turn to gratitude. I think of everything I could possible think of that I’m grateful for. I usually start with the list that comes most easily - my husband, my kids, my parents, my siblings, my dog…
   At this point in my gratitude meditation, I’m also usually deflecting the gravitational pull to focus on what has hurt me. I have to remind myself that I’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about that hurtful thing, and I need to pivot. And then I dig into gratitude.
   ”I’m thankful for my walk,” I’ll say to myself. And then, “I’m thankful for that orange color in the sky in the morning.” And onward, “I’m thankful that the sun rises. I’m thankful for the way the cold air wakes up my lungs. I’m thankful to walk for a few minutes in my neighborhood with my dog. I’m thankful that my dog is excited to see me in the morning. I’m thankful for the way I feel when I see my kids in the morning. I’m thankful for that moment, nearly every morning these days, when I hear my son open his bedroom door, close it, open my door, close it, and then run, his footsteps on the floor pattering away until he jumps onto the bed, pulls my face to his and smiles at me so genuinely I feel like I could jump out of bed.”
   And then, like a balm, my pain response relaxes. My chest opens up. My heart-rate slows down. I feel like I’ll be ok. Gratitude is medicine.

2. Remembering what’s temporary, which is everything. I start my upcoming memoir with a sentence that is truly about this. “The hills weren’t always there.” We are on a planet that is constantly changing, from the weather, to the animal and plant life around us, to the very molten center of the planet. Mountains and valleys are being created as we speak. We stand in the slow push and pull of eons of life, affected by the past, present and future all at once.
   So, like the Earth, we know that we will change, that our circumstances will change.
   I remind myself of this. I hate to do it sometimes, as if reminding myself that everything is a season somehow might diminish the acknowledgement of the pain I’m experiencing. It doesn’t. But it does allow me a bit more strength to sustain myself, to know that if I choose to hold on, a change will come, and perhaps an opportunity.
   Reminding myself of that helps me to look at my present as part of a larger story, puts it in context of a larger life and a shared experience with the world around me.
   This is all abstract, but in practice, it looks like this - When I came out, my parents did not take it well, and I felt an enormous amount of pain after that. I stepped away (very far away: I joined Peace Corps three days later), and from a distance I looked at the past, the present and my dream for the future. I told myself that their reaction was temporary and that there was hope that change would come. And it did. And it was beautiful.

3. Accept every small kindness you can. When you’re in pain, most of the world is oblivious. This is a fact. The world will not know. And often, the people around us who see us everyday will not know. But humans have a way of understanding that kindness matters, that everyone can use a little love. And so, though they may not see your pain, accept those tiny kindnesses of others. Accept the handshakes, the hellos, the extra change at the cash register so you can pay that extra penny, the smile when someone hands you a coffee, the birthday card or the phone call.
   The Armenians I lived around in Peace Corps had no idea I was going through a transformation and that I was carrying around a pain and a fear that coming out had destroyed my life at home. And yet, their kindnesses - the afternoon coffees, my desk mate calling me “harevans” (my neighbor), games of nardi every afternoon with my landlord - created a sense of belonging and safety that I desperately needed as my inner storm ebbed and flowed.
   Let the kindnesses permeate your skin. Let them in like light.

Sometimes people take things like gratitude and appreciation and perspective and lump them into a bucket they deem useless - flopsy, flimsy approaches that don’t hold up against the difficult parts of life.

To me, the disciplines of gratitude or perspective or appreciation, if practiced, become a prism in your heart. And when light comes in, that prism you made in your heart refracts the light and fills your body with color, brightness and warmth. That discipline allows those nourishing parts of life to magnify within you and sustain you through the hard times and the hardest times.