Riding The Emotional Waves In The Pandemic

Monday last week, I woke up to one of the darkest feelings of sadness I can remember. It was so dark and deep it took me by surprise, as I’m normally a very cheerful person. Looking back now, a few days later, I would put that morning’s feeling side by side to a really bad break-up of a few years ago and to the 5-year inner struggle I went through to accept my sexual orientation many many years ago.

So, for someone who has been so lucky to have never experienced serious depression, for someone who coaches people on how to be happier, I’m talking about a seriously dark sadness here.

I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to look at my phone, I just wanted to hide under the duvet and be forgotten by the world. All the lovely things I wake up to daily, a call with my partner when we’re not together, a cup of coffee on the terrace, my job that I love dearly, didn’t seem to matter that morning. I was completely overwhelmed by this oppressing feeling of misery.

Actually, there was just a little corner in the workspace of my consciousness that seemed to be holding a little lucidity and, through that corner, the irony of having to participate in a podcast called “How to create a life that you love waking up to” later in the week didn’t escape me. “How dare I even attend?” I was asking myself, through that tiny ironic corner of my consciousness.

Funnily enough, that gave me the anchor I needed. This is what I was going to tell them:

It’s not about never having bad days, it’s about where you’re anchored.

Even when many consider you a wise person, even when you consider yourself a very strong chap, tough emotions are like waves: they come and go and will rock your boat. If you’re anchored in shallow waters, the waves will crush you, but if you’re anchored in the deep, you know that they will come and then they will go, and then you’ll be fine.

So, while I was trapped in the dark storm of my emotions that morning, how could I find a way to anchor myself in the deep?

Where was all that sadness coming from? Well, we’re going through a global pandemic, the levels of uncertainty most of us are experiencing these days are unprecedented in our lifetimes. Many have lost their loved ones. My partner, who has asthma, has just tested positive to COVID while I’m away and I can’t go back to be with him now. Due to the recent lockdown restrictions, even if he gets seriously ill, I won’t be able to go be next to him. My aging parents live in another country and now I can’t go see them either. Work, my new venture, has been affected by COVID and the future looks beyond ambiguous despite my super hard work throughout the year. A project where I’ve invested all my life savings has been halted by COVID. That’s where all that sadness was coming from: tiredness, loneliness and vulnerability.

And you know what? It’s perfectly fine. Waves come and go for everyone, and these days’ are huge waves. It would be inhumane to expect not to be affected, not to experience fear, instability or misery.

So, the first thing we need to tell ourselves these days is:

Accept! Accept that you’ll struggle, accept that you’ll have bad days, accept that you’ll feel low.

Whenever you start experiencing sadness, fragility, worry, accept it. Give yourself a big, understanding, comforting hug. Tell yourself that it's OK to feel that way.

Resisting it will block and trap it. Accepting it will allow it to transform, flow through and then go.

When we resist sadness, we even get frustrated at ourselves for our own sadness, for example, or we get angry at ourselves for being weak, or we’re ashamed for feeling like a failure. Or any other similar scenario. And while we’re making things worse in our head, the original sadness doesn’t leave us.

While we’re giving ourselves that warm, virtual hug of acceptance and understanding, on the other hand, what is happening is that we’re creating more calmness in the workspace of our consciousness.

That’s what I did that morning, last week, when I woke up in the emotional darkness. From that little, tiny, lucid corner of my consciousness I started telling myself that waves come, and it’s ok to be rocked by them because the waves will also go. The important thing is where I anchor myself. And I started giving myself that warm, virtual hug and that tiny corner of lucidity started growing into a calm sea, slowly reclaiming the workspace of my consciousness.

I was still experiencing some sadness but I was no longer paralysed, neither emotionally nor physically.

There are many tools that help us anchor ourselves in the deep, where the waves of our emotions come and go without crushing us. Many of our blogs at Wise Humanity talk about those tools. But today I just wanted to share this one, an incredibly fundamental and empowering one: acceptance.

So many other things stem from there: self-love as well as genuine love towards others, resilience, gratitude and profound happiness.

So, how to bring more acceptance into your life?

Feelings are natural. They’re a natural mechanism of our body/mind to tell us something, whether about an external circumstance or our views of the world. Resisting them means we’re binning something very valuable that we could have otherwise learnt from.

Try not resisting.

What you resist persists.

Let yourself feel the feeling and express it, by writing, crying, singing, drawing... It could be by calling a trusted person to talk to. But, to be honest, even talking to a pillow or to the sky will work. Expressing it sets the feeling in motion and starts the transformation.

Now, here’s where the miracle begins. As your feeling transforms, listen to what it has to tell you, see what happens. What have you just drawn? What words have you just written? What can you learn from them? What more can you understand that was previously invisible while you were stuck? Journal about it.

Let yourself go to that sad place, or that vulnerable place of these days’ pandemic. You can do it safely because it's just a place you go, it's not you. Be the little kid with the scraped knee, and then be the caring parent or the wise grandparent who kisses it. The kiss is an acknowledgement, and honouring of the pain.

That’s what it is. Resisting your emotions is like scolding that little kid. Accepting them is like honouring the pain and cuddling the little kid.

Big hugs

Davide

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