I’ve been walking around in a state of fog. Words struggle to find each other. Straining to form a complete thought. Anxiety takes over and I shut down. The brain fog of anxiety and depression rolls in heavy and hangs low.
I live on the outskirts of the city, not quite country but with plenty of room for fog to roam along with the intuitive deer that I love to watch from my front porch. When I leave my house with heavy fog and the sky still dark, I go slow. I change the head light setting on my car to help me navigate the fog. I stay alert and mindful of what’s going on around me. I do this for my safety, the protection of whoever is in the car with me and for my spirit animals (the deer).
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had multiple clients report brain fog as a symptom of anxiety and depression. Clients feeling as though they cannot make decisions. Folks struggling to carry on conversations or even function in their days. I too felt that strain this last week and it is terrible.
The blanket of despair covered me with heavy clouds of “who cares” sprinkled with “what’s the point”. When I had simple decisions to make about minimal issues, I felt stuck and could not make the choice. At one point, I just laid on the couch and watched a rerun of a show I’ve seen about 1200 times because I wanted comfort rather than to be entertained. The weight of the fog pulled me down and I let it. I sat in it.
I know feelings and emotions. I process all the feelings and all the emotions every day of my life for a living. I know the importance of having awareness and acknowledgement of feelings. I preach all the time about acknowledging how we feel and sitting in the uncomfortable feelings to allow them to do their job. However…it’s not so easy when the shoe (or emotion in this case) is on my foot.
I do not like feeling helpless, hopeless, angry and sad. I do not like “sitting it in” and letting the feelings do their job because it is uncomfortable. Feelings exist for a reason and if we run away from them before they have a chance to do what they are intended to, those uncomfortable feelings will follow us and we will lose any control we had over how those feelings manifest in our lives.
Have you ever had road rage or unloaded on someone who didn’t deserve it? Have you ever found yourself in tears for “no good reason”? (That is the effect of not letting uncomfortable feelings do their job – that is loss of control.)
So, when the uncomfortable comes. I will listen to my own words and sit in the shit. I will let sadness, anger, helplessness and pain do their business. I will have awareness of their presence and acknowledge their purpose (even when I do not know their purpose). I will not run away and avoid the pain. BUT I will also not stay there forever. I will not succumb to pain, only learn from it. Then, I will dose it with the best antidote…gratitude. I may even find gratitude for the uncomfortable which teaches me lessons to help me later.
And as the fog begins to lift (as well as my ass off the couch), I will push forward, change my headlight setting back to normal and I will keep going. I will take with me the lessons and I will be ready to do it again when the fog rolls in. And the fog will return because life is tough and pain is inevitable and each time I learn more to help me and those around me when we need it. And for that I have gratitude.
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