Working through difficult times

Heartbroken. Job loss. Losing friends. Conflict in personal relationships. Family breakdown. Dissatisfied with life. Loneliness. Stuck in a job. Career not going anywhere. A non-existent love life. Constantly battling the mind. Deterioration in health. Struggling with body image. Financial problems. Dealing with bereavement. One of these, some of these or others reflect the difficulties that we as people go through.

Humans are an adaptive species. No matter what we go through we find a way to survive. But sometimes, we feel as if we cannot survive through a particular circumstance. We want to give up. When you get hit by the first blow of a hardship, it shakes you to your core. You feel as if your whole world has turned upside down. With every passing day you are carrying this burden. It clouds everything you do. There are times you feel as if you have forgotten it, it never happened. The smile slowly returns on your face and you begin to live normally again. But when all the distractions disappear and you are your only company. Then in the silence it knocks on the door of your mind; consuming your thoughts. You feel as if you are slowly falling apart. There is no light, only darkness.

Yes, life is hard. You might feel as if curve balls are being thrown at you in every direction. You cannot catch a break. Peace is an alien concept. As, soon as you work through one difficult time, another is anticipating to strike. You feel like it is just happening to you. You are the only one who is experiencing this overwhelming difficulty, feeling: sadness, hurt, pain, anger, alone, distress and hopelessness. No, you are not alone. There are many like you who are and have experienced difficult periods in their lives.

You might feel like you do not know how to move on or if you will ever get out of the circumstance you are in. But you can equip yourself with the tools to retrain your mind to work or survive through this hardship.

It is crucial to healthily emotionally process the difficult event at an early stage. It is easy to be tempted by escapism and avoidance. Do not resort to burying your head in the sand in order to numb yourself to prevent truly feeling the reality of that hardship. If you are resorting to avoidance, then ask yourself why? What are you trying to avoid?

Being honest with yourself and in essence speaking to yourself about why this hardship is hurting you can make a real difference. It could be this hardship is compromising a core value that you hold within yourself. For example, if you were trying to make it in a certain career and kept facing barriers. Your applying for job roles within a specific field and keep facing rejections. When you analyse why this is causing you so much pain you realize it is because the rejections represent failure. This failure hurts because you are an ambitious person who expects a certain amount of success for yourself. Not getting that career break is disturbing you core value of success.

What about them ruminations? The constant, consuming thoughts attached to the hardship. Them moments where you want to scream to your mind, shut up! You want to move on with your life, but you feel as if your stuck in the prison of your own mind. Working through the process of speaking to yourself, unravelling your emotional truths, will help to stop these negative ruminations. Being aware is the first step. Whenever you feel consumed by negative thought cycles attached to your hardship, tell your mind to be quiet. Close the door to these thoughts. Do not entertain them. It can be helpful, to say to yourself, “close the door,” as soon as you experience the negative thoughts in your mind. The more you are self-aware and consistent in doing this the quicker you will be able to retrain yourself to stop engaging and entertaining unhelpful thoughts. The mind is no longer a prison.

Once you have worked through these processes: unravelling your emotional truths and confronting the consuming negative thoughts, the weight of the hardship begins to feel somewhat lighter. You do not feel as broken. The jigsaw of your self feels like it is slowly coming back together. The heart aches a little less.

Throughout my life, I have worked through different hardships. Even though I feel that I have emotionally processed them, the remnants of them hardships will always remain, as I travel through the journey of my life. Whenever I begin to feel reminded about a difficult time, I experience the bitter after taste of the negative emotions I went through. Recalling feeling trapped in a room of darkness, all alone, with no one to turn to. The only sense of relief was the copious amount of tears that brimmed out of eyes and sped down my cheeks. But, I try not let myself slip. I pause for a moment and try to think of the lessons I learnt. I realize how much stronger, resilient and more focused them difficult periods made me.

You may have them moments where the aftertaste of a difficult time causes you to slip into a negative mind-set, making you feel as if the dark, heavy, cloud of your hardship is still following you. You feel as if you will never escape it. You need to try and be self-aware of when you are slipping, so that you can nip it in the bud or are able to get out after you have slipped. Remind yourself of the lessons those difficult times have taught you. Use that to affirm all your positive traits and them weakness within yourself that you have strengthened. Wear them difficult times as a badge of honour. Remember, you have the tools within you, retrain and remind yourself. You can survive.

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