These last few weeks have felt so intense and volatile. I am watching a war live-streamed on multiple news and social media channels. Russia has invaded Ukraine and I can get updates on my phone or computer any time I want day or night. I am seeing people’s lives upended and changed forever. I am feeling so many intense emotions including overwhelm, helplessness, fear, and anxiety.
What we are witnessing in Ukraine is devastating. The military aggression by Putin is unconscionable. The humanitarian crisis is overwhelming and the emotional crisis is just beginning. Seeing the Ukrainian people fight for their freedom is heartbreaking. The senseless loss of life, the upheaval of relocation, and the trauma of violence are incredibly difficult to witness.
In the face of all of this, it is easy to become more reactive. We can find ourselves triggered by the constant access to information and the news. We can get caught up in the cycle of going from one tragedy to the next. We may find it difficult to stop our minds from racing or feel guilty trying to go about our lives when there is so much at stake in the world. Then if you add national and local news, plus any work or school stressors, mixed with our personal issues and concerns, it can all feel so overwhelming. In the face of all this, we can either become more volatile and reactive, or we can become more intentional and compassionate.
In a time of heightened emotions and very tangible stressors, how do we safeguard our mental health? How can we cultivate our capacity to be resilient? And how do we cope?
I’ve got 3 ideas that I’ve been using the past few weeks and I wanted to share them with you:
🌻 Cultivate self-awareness
🌻 Identify and process feelings
🌻 Take meaningful action
Cultivate Self-Awareness
Aristotle famously said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” This is why self-awareness is the cornerstone of Emotional Intelligence. Cultivating self-awareness means looking at your thoughts, beliefs, and actions in an intentional, objective way. Not through the lens of judgment, but rather the lens of curiosity. Self-awareness is using your conscious mind to observe how you show up in the world.
Right now an important way to cultivate self-awareness is to be conscious of the news cycle and how it could be affecting you. Just because you can have 24/7 access to news doesn’t mean that you should. When we see bad things happening over and over again our brain can get hooked on staying in a heightened state of alertness. This can cause stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. We keep those feelings going when we constantly check the news or our social media feeds.
You can bring self-awareness to this part of your life by being more intentional about how much news media you consume at any given time as well as when, where, and how you consume it. Most people want to be informed about what is happening, and going to a trusted news source versus scrolling your social media feeds can give you more direct access to the information you are seeking. Use your self-awareness to determine what boundaries will work best for you in terms of your level of consumption.
Identify and Process Feelings
Witnessing or reading about horrific tragedies can bring up a variety of intense feelings. It is important not only to identify feelings but to process them as well.
For some people, the idea of talking about their feelings seems self-indulgent at best, and at worst, a sign of weakness. Others are uncomfortable talking about their emotions because they perceive it makes them vulnerable in a negative way.
One thing that helps cultivate self-awareness is learning how to use words that describe how you actually feel, not how you think you should feel. Developing the ability to accurately recognize, name, and communicate your feelings is called ’emotional literacy’.
Emotional literacy can deepen our awareness of our own emotions by helping us to accurately express our feelings. We can do this by capturing the nuances in our emotions and naming them. For example, there is a big difference between feeling ‘good’ and feeling optimistic, satisfied, or joyful or feeling ‘bad’ and feeling disgust, pensiveness, or remorseful.
Accurately naming emotions can be a powerful step in processing our emotions. It can keep us from blocking our emotions by denying or negating them or lashing out because of them. Naming emotions helps to self-validate. Instead of thinking, ‘I shouldn’t feel this way’ you can say ‘This is how I feel’. Naming emotions helps us process difficult situations more productively and allows us to build our capacity to be resilient.
Take Meaningful Action
When we feel helpless and overwhelmed, one way to focus our energy is by deciding to take meaningful action. I like to think of meaningful action as the intersection of the things you care about and the things you can control.
Meaningful action can be directed internally or externally. When it is directed internally, meaningful action means taking care of yourself so that you can continue to function not just in your day-to-day but also in the future. It means you cultivate resilience and actively look for ways to practice self-care. You can do this by deciding to give yourself permission to make time for yourself, ask for help from others, and actively look for ways to decrease your stress. It can also mean setting a boundary for example, how much news you will consume and when you will consume it.
When meaningful action is directed externally, it means taking care of others. Meaningful action can look like donating money to a specific cause or group. It can mean gathering supplies and sending them directly to people in need. It can look like volunteering with an organization or volunteering your time to a cause. Taking action in this way helps us feel like we have some measure of control or at least we are making a positive impact towards a bigger goal.
It has been heartening to see so many displays of meaningful action towards people from Ukraine. Food stations at the borders, strollers at train stations, offers of places to stay, organizations taking care of displaced animals, people donating money, and volunteering to help in any way they can. Other people speaking out against war, participating in rallies, and documenting in words and pictures what is happening right now.
In the latest episode of my podcast, Get Big Out Loud, I talk in more depth about how we can build resilience during difficult times. You can listen here https://youtu.be/jq0JiTHK-VQ or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that you will find ways to cultivate your self-awareness and set good boundaries. That you will recognize, validate, and explore your feelings. And finally, that you will find ways to take meaningful action during this difficult time.
I stand with the people in Ukraine and people all over the world who are actively working towards peace.
