Human life is constantly changing and asking us to keep up in our adaptations to new variables in our personal and work worlds. The 3 nutrients our wellbeing wants everyday are: to be seen, to be heard and to be allowed to vent and blow off steam safely. Often, it is difficult to ensure your inner person is getting enough of these 3 basic emotional nutrients.
Stress is a given for each of us. This year, 2020, is a record year of never ending stressful events that seem to keep going. If we, also, are experiencing health scares, relationship stress and financial stress, we can easily get too overwhelmed to accomplish our goals and honor our preferences.
In order to stay as well emotionally as possible during the Holidays and the Pandemic, work to ensure you get enough time each day to be seen, heard and to blow off steam, too. Let’s begin.
How to ensure you are seen: Don’t wait on others to see you. Look into your own eyes several times today using any mirror you have available. What do you see? What do you feel? Is it pain, contentment, worry, or troubled undercurrents of all of these states? Notice and see yourself fully and all of your emotional states of mind and body. Write down or just mentally notice yourself and your emotions at least 3 times a day, like when you are washing your hands or brushing your teeth.
How to ensure you are heard: Don’t wait for someone to ask to hear you out. Say out loud or at least sub-verbally how you are feeling to yourself. Tell yourself whatever that is in all of its complexities and contradictions. Listen to yourself verbally or silently share with yourself each feeling. Write these feelings down or just mentally note each one. Actively acknowledge and listen to yourself talk about your feelings at least 3 times a day, like when you are washing your hands or waiting on the microwave to finish. Listen and notice your internal feelings and your self-talk about these feelings.
How to ensure you have a safe place to vent or blow off steam as needed during each day: As you travel through each of your days, there can be sudden moments when you feel your adrenaline surging. Notice these moments as soon as you can by paying attention to your muscle tension, especially in your face, jaw muscles, neck, shoulders, ribcage and solar plexus muscles. Take a moment to take a break from whatever you are doing. Say, ‘excuse me, I will be back.’ Take a deliberate moment to clear your head by going outside or to the restroom. Scream or sob or punch into a pillow or into the wind or into the running water of a sink or shower. Just take the moment to blow off steam. If you are not in a life threatening emergency, tell yourself to just let it all out. The wind and the water and the pillows can handle it. This process will relax you and help you clarify your true preferences, one situation at a time. A punching bag is helpful to have around any household for everyone to use as needed.
By ensuring you are heard, seen and allowed to blow off steam, you make sure you know you matter to you each day. It is not anyone else’s job to ensure we know each day that we each matter. It is easy to assume other people in our lives will help us with this big job, but they cannot. Even when another person does meaningfully help us with feeling like we matter a lot, it doesn’t get through to our hearts. Only the self inside each of us can let that message into our deepest hearts. With steady daily work towards allowing your inside person to be seen, heard and blow off steam safely, your inner person will slowly let that basic message in and feel calmer and more self-respecting one step at a time, too.
There is only one rule to remember during your moments of seeing yourself, hearing yourself out and safely venting your stored up adrenaline. The one and only rule to keep in mind is to refuse to judge yourself on any level or at any moment during each of these 3 processes. Suspend all judgement, so you can see, hear and safely vent your thoughts and feelings. Easy does it, steady as you go.
Happy Pandemic Holidays and Good Luck
