What I am about to share with the reader is something that has just recently been my own experience, very recent in fact. I am working my way back to what I deem as normal for myself, and this has definitely not been my first setback. I have had many.
First, I want to define what I mean when I talk about being held back. I am referencing those times when something interrupts our lives and interrupts our natural flow of things; when something happens that invades the race you are running and trips you up in it’s wake.
This can be a lot of things, like an interrupting health issue, an unplanned move, a horrible heartbreak, an unneeded job loss, and I can go on and on.
Most often these are “out of our control” events that take place in our lives.They can take us by surprise and leave us wounded, shocked, and even not ourselves, or confused with who we thought we were.
Events such as these can definitely contribute to us finding ourselves stuck in our lives. I know you are aware of these types of events, but I want to move forward with sharing some things to keep in mind when it is time to pick yourself back up and truly live again.
How we get back up again, when life knocks us on our back, depends a whole lot on what actually happened to us and how deeply it affected us. It also depends on other factors too, such as our resilience, if this has been the first or tenth time this has happened to us and if we had trauma in our past and so on.
Some of us will need more help than others to get back up, such as external tools provided by a counselor for example, but that never translates that we are less than because we need a different type of help. I want to take all shame out of the decision to get more help for yourself, in fact, it is actually a brave move and speaks of your strong character for reaching out in the first place.
With that being said, let us move forward with what you can do in the meantime to pick yourself back up.
I am naturally an over achiever and when I get knocked down while running my race, I have to work hard to give myself the time and space I need to find my footing again. I make a choice to show myself compassion and grace as I recover, and take off a whole ton of pressure to be my normal over achiever self.
It takes energy to work through difficult things in our lives, energy that we would normally be able to exert in daily tasks, working on relationships, and any work projects or personal hobbies we are used to doing. Now that we are trying to gather ourselves, we need to recognize that our energy level will drop for a time, and that we should be okay with that.
When I am in the healing process, I lesson my load where I am able to and can afford to. And since being an over achiever is my normal mode, I definitely have to back away from that tons.
Setbacks can happen for a reason and they can happen for no real reason at all. A lot of times we quickly question ourselves of what we did wrong to experience this horrible event. However, if we are reaping the consequences of our own wrong choices, then we will more than likely immediately or soon discover that.
Other times it gets gray and fuzzy in our minds as we try and understand why such and such happened to us. This alone can drive any of us crazy and create a lot of confusion for ourselves. I take this time to get out of my head and have conversations with trustworthy people in my life to help me gain the right perspective.
And if we cannot understand the why, we should be allowed to be okay with not understanding for a time or ever. Life is not always kind and fair. There are people in this world who hurt and attempt to destroy others, and trying to understand them may not be an option for us. More than likely they are hurting inside and have been for a really long time. Or an event took place in our lives that had nothing to do with another person’s choices, but instead was an uninvited illness or accident, or even a natural disaster. These instances can also leave us reeling with questions.
We cannot control what did happen to us, but we can control how we respond. We can choose to move towards healing, we can choose to let go and move on, and we can choose to try and learn something in this process of getting back on our feet moving forward (even if it is learning something awfully true about another person or something surprising about ourselves).
We can choose to allow this experience to deepen our faith, to strengthen our resilience, and to believe that things will get better, thus having hope.
Everyone of us will have setbacks in our lives, and everyone of us has had them already producing different intensities of grief within us. Some people do actually stand back up on their feet again, but sadly, there are those that have remained stuck in their pain and have not moved at all.
I have great compassion on those that are stuck, because a lot of times they are because no one gave them the encouragement, love, and support they needed to stand back up. We cannot save everyone, however, for there are those who refuse to get better, but we can become the comfort we hopefully received and the love we also desperately needed.
For some of us, the grief as a result of what happened is so intense, so paralyzing, that one baby step forward is a huge accomplishment and we need to applaud one another when these moments take place. We should never judge anyone for the time it takes for them to grieve something that has happened to them. If it takes them a matter of years to get themselves together and stand back up again, then we applaud them for doing so and rejoice with them that they made it back up.
My last word of encouragement with this is to show yourself the grace, compassion, and understanding you would show your best friend if it were them going through such a setback. Watch your thoughts and ask yourself if you would say the same things to your friends, or even your younger self. It is crucial when we are in the season of getting back up, that we are kind to ourselves and show ourselves love. This alone helps in our healing process and strengthens our hearts to continue on. Don’t give up, keep moving!