Help! I'm falling apart

How to cope when the sh*t hits the fan - a first-aid kit for mind and body

The other day I found myself googling ‘Help I’m falling apart’. I was at a low ebb (clearly) - my work life was causing me stress, my anxiety was off the chart, my health and my appearance were troubling me and - just to add to the joy - the perimenopause was hitting hard and the lack of sleep the night before was taking its toll. I sat on the end of my bed with my head in my hands: my hair was at peak frizz, my glasses (old, not remotely trendy) were awful, my ears - which I had pierced a few months ago - still were not properly healed and causing me worry, and now - glancing down - I could see my fingernails were splitting and refusing to grow. I felt sad and unloveable. So, despite the wealth of self-help books on my shelves and the years I have spent exploring different health and wellbeing methods, as well as talking to some of the leading experts in these fields, it was google I turned to in my hour of need.

As you might expect, my search threw up practical ways in which to nurture body and mind in a bid to make yourself feel better. These ranged from treating depression to talking to a professional to going for a run. All good advice, but nothing really grabbed me. But there was one result which caught my attention, from the website Tiny Buddha - ‘A first aid kit for when life falls apart’ by Swedish writer and coach Helena Onneby. I clicked on the link and immediately felt seen. The blog piece opens, ‘When life is easy, everything seems easy. When life is hard, everything seems hard.’ This was where I was at. It all felt too hard. If I made a mental list of all the things I need to sort out, it was overwhelming. My head was full. I needed this first-aid kit.

A first-aid kit for when life falls apart - really?

The first piece of advice Helena offers is to feel your feelings, which is easier said than done. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent years hiding all the feelings or pushing them away when they got troublesome, doing anything other than feeling them (tidying! laundry! working all the hours god sends! getting drunk! buying shit on ebay!) I am still no expert, but being given permission to accept that I was feeling sad, unworthy and upset, was strangely empowering. I sat with my feelings for a few minutes, and remembered to come back to this. It was ok. I didn’t die.

The second tip was to let people in - now I am lucky, as I have some close friends whom I can open up to and this is a gift. A recommended strategy for anyone who is having a hard time - if you can find just one person to talk to, it is a massive, massive help. If you can be honest, and ask them to just listen without judgement, just the act of having that space held for you and you alone is very powerful. The third piece of wisdom? Remember you’re not alone - again, I found this a helpful idea. There are others suffering like me. We are all suffering. None of us have got our shit together, really, do we?

Ok, deep breath. Next? Write it out - ‘Let it all out. Don’t censor yourself. Take the pressure off by dumping it all out’. Well here I am, folks. Watch this space. I also plucked Julia Cameron’s self-help classic The Artist’s Way off my shelf and have recommitted to her daily morning pages to help me process everything that’s going on for me at the moment.

Number five was move outside - now this has been a game-changer for me. Since the pandemic - daily (or nearly daily) morning walking has become a big part of my life and I do agree that nature has amazing healing abilities. There are days when I do not want to drag myself around a park or walking trail, but I still do it. And I never regret it. I can now even recognise a few birds and some plants. So this one I do have nailed and can testify to its efficacy in terms of processing emotions, being present and enjoying green spaces. In fact I even have an Instagram page where I record the tiny joys in my life, and these are often things spotted on my daily plod. It’s here: https://www.instagram.com/micropleasures/?hl=en

The sixth tool in the first aid kit? Maybe you’re not dying? The author suggests being with the present, and resting there for a while. She’s right: I wasn’t in mortal danger. I have support. Maybe I can cope? Because the seventh piece of advice is to remember that this too will change - ‘Know that whatever you are going through right now, it will change. It might not all be good and fine tomorrow, but it will be different, if ever just slightly. Things will change.’ When my children were babies and I was struggling to cope I would repeat to myself, ‘This too shall pass’, and I suppose this echoes that thought: nothing is permanent, change is possible. Hold on.

Support structures for when you are struggling

Helena’s strategies made me feel less alone, and gave me hope that things would get better. Just feeling hopeful was enough. I could change my glasses, get a haircut and feel better about myself on the outside. The work stress would take longer to resolve and I am seeing a therapist now who is helping me cope with the feelings of shame, fear and anxiety on the inside. Importantly, what it did help me to see was that I already had support structures in place, and how - if I thought harder - there were other things I had already tried, or did regularly, in a bid to make me feel better. Simple self-care strategies and habits and ideas that I found helpful. Or things that brought me joy, or were interesting, insightful or inspiring. Things that lifted me up and could do the same for other people, in the way that Helena’s blog post for Tiny Buddha helped me when I was at my lowest.

And so this is the result: my Substack is born. I have never written a newsletter before, but here we go. I am going to keep writing, and I am also going to make recommendations - up to three at a time - of things that might help or inspire or motivate you to keep breathing, keep hoping and keep on keeping on. From my career in editing and writing I have a wealth of knowledge, interesting books, authors, podcasts, writers, musicians and so on that I would be happy to share, so subscribe for ideas and inspo so we can all feel better - or at the very least - a bit less shit.

Liz