Why am I so bad at taking care of myself?
And why does the idea of being sad make me so panicked?
Welcome to can’t relate, a newsletter from me, Maria Del Russo, that I write biweekly on Fridays. If you like what you’ve read, consider subscribing so you’ll be notified whenever I publish. If you want to submit a question for my upcoming agony aunt column, you can do that here.
xxMDR
An intense bout of sadness has recently settled over my life. It hangs there, heavy, like gray clouds on a day where it keeps threatening to rain.
It’s the side effect of a hard year and an inevitability that seems to have been hiding behind the corners of my day-to-day for a while. But now that it’s not hiding, I can appreciate the full weight of this sadness. It grips my chest in the middle of the night, shaking me out of sleep. (Fun fact: It’s 3 AM as I type this.) It washes over me as I’m editing a story, cooking dinner, writing in my journal. And the force is so incredible that I need to stop what I’m doing to cry. When dealing with this sadness isn’t the sole focus of my energy, it’s always lingering in the background, waiting to swoop in and knock my day off focus.
And it’s the anticipation of the sadness that’s almost worst. I’ve been feeling like I’m in a slow-motion car crash. I known the sadness is coming, and whenever I know that something unpleasant is coming, I start to panic. I grip the dashboard, I pull my seatbelt tighter, I grit my teeth, and I screw my eyes closed.
Or I’ll start psych myself out. This is going to be so incredibly painful, I’ll whisper to myself. How am I ever going to go through this? I try desperately to avoid any situation that is uncomfortable. “I don’t want to go through this!” I’ll wail to whoever will listen to me on the phone. But I have to, and I know that, but that doesn’t stop the panic.
Recently, I realized that I am wholly ill-equipped to deal with sadness. I was raised on the “get over it and move on” mentality. The best way to deal with some type of sadness was to ignore it and throw yourself into the aspects of life that completely canceled out the feeling. Got dumped? Go on five dates in a row. Lose your job? Start looking tomorrow, and don’t mourn. A death in the family? Let’s not talk about it all that much, because it will just make everyone sad. And it is pointless to linger in sadness.
But in my attempt to distance myself from my sadness through self-preservation, I’ve completely atrophied the muscles needed to care for myself in hard times.
When I got laid off in 2017, I completely withdrew from friends and family. I didn’t reach out to anyone. I couldn’t control the sadness, and I didn’t want people to see it. So instead, I hid. And the sadness got bigger and ate at me until it sent me on a trip to Paris that I planned to never come back from.
This has been my way of dealing with sadness for 31 years, and it has made me sick. It’s detached me from my feelings and reframed them as something to deal with instead of something to, well, feel. I don’t want to be that person anymore, but turning on the faucet of your feelings after three decades of plugging it up has been a difficult and overwhelming experience. But there are ways I’ve been trying to make myself feel better.
I’ve been making plans, both small (a martini and french fry date with friends) and big (a yoga retreat, which has been on my bucket list for ages). I’ve been giving myself space for sadness and allowing myself to cry when I feel like I need to. I’ve been standing in front of my mirror every morning and repeating affirmations to myself: You are strong. You will get through this. You’ve got your back. Even on the days when I don’t believe myself, this exercise is a helpful boost to the rest of my day.
The most important thing, though, is that I’ve been trying to remind myself that this is temporary. The bad I’m feeling now won’t last. It will eventually fade, and I’ll feel better. I’ve written this sentiment on Post-It notes and stuck them all over my new apartment. Reframing the feeling as temporary makes it more manageable, and makes me less likely to run from it.
The sadness will stick around for a while. I realize that now. I’m in hibernation now, crying on my couch, watching old episodes of The Sopranos. But once this season passes, I know that on the other side, there is happiness, and newness, and opportunity. I am strong. I will get through this. I’ve got my back.
That said, any tips you’ve got for nursing yourself through sadness are much appreciated. I’m all ears.
xx