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Change: the unpredictable journey through uncertainty

There is one thing that we as human beings know and that is that life is full of uncertainty. As much as we as we try and create a path – a system – of how our journey through life is “supposed” to go, it is close to impossible for life to turn out the way that we expect.

Life is all about change. It starts when we leave our mother’s womb and enter into this new environment on Earth. After that, each year as we grow older and develop, aspects of our lives begin to change. These include things such as what grade we are in, what school we go to, what we are studying, who we live with, what job we are in, what our most important relationships are, how we cope daily and the list goes on. These changes can be exciting, but can also be sources of extreme anxiety and fear. This can make change particular challenging for people to undertake and to cope with.

What is so derailing about change?

It is terrifying because it is new, it is different and it is unknown. Change can be great or it can be the opposite. The hard part about change is that it is impossible to know what things will be like on the other side. There is no way to know what change will bring. It is a concept in life that is characterized by extreme uncertainty and for anyone who likes order, routine, and certainty change is terrifying. We can spend hours thinking about all of the different paths that change can lead us on. We can obsess about what our lives will look like when we undertake change and transition – but in the end there is no way to know.

The only thing to do is to just jump right in and see what happens. And that is hard.

There is a reason why people like to do the same things for their entire lives. If they work the same job and live in the same area and socialize with the same people, then more or less they will always know what to expect. There is a sense of safety in what we know, in our routine. This sense of safety and “knowing” makes us feel like we are keeping our lives manageable when they have the potential to be volatile. The less risks we take, the less chance that disaster or the unexpected could happen. The more comfortable we are, the easier it can feel to cope with life’s challenges.

Then again, this same comfort keeps us from experiencing what life has to offer. Our world is versatile and exceptional for a reason. It is meant to be experienced. It is meant to be seen. If we stay comfortable for our whole lives, if we stay stuck in what we know, then we don’t actually live. We never get the chance to experience the world. We are meant to live. That is why change will always find us.

Change tests us. It tests the way that we interact with the world –the way that we cope. It makes us shift things up. It makes us question the things that we do on a daily basis. It makes us re-evaluate how we cope with our mental and physical states on a daily basis. Change makes us change how we cope. When we are forced to abandon our routines; our coping strategies, things that we have bottled up inside and chosen not to feel, whether in the present or the past can start to arise. These can be things that are both physical, mental or emotional such as pain, grief, stress, overwhelm, fear, panic etc.

Daily routines can help us cope with unwanted emotions or physical sensations that we don’t want to face. It helps to mask them from our minds so that it makes it easier to accomplish what we need to do. We can use routine to suppress thoughts from our minds, but our body will always remembers. Bodies remember the emotions that our minds refuse to feel and the messages that our soul is trying to share with us that our minds refuse to hear. When we don’t let these soul messages enter our minds, they don’t disappear. Instead they still come to the surface only through our feelings and physical bodies instead of our thoughts. It could be exhaustion, it could be a pit in the stomach, it could be aches or pain or nervousness or anxiety, but some way or another our soul will still be heard. The things we are trying to avoid feeling will always make themselves known in some way. Often it is a change in routine that will bring them to the surface.

Change will always come. Sometimes we must make it ourselves and other times it will find us. Either way we can only accept the inevitability of change. The same way we accept that people are born and will die or that the leaves of trees will change colour with the seasons, as a part of life. To fight change is to fight life. To avoid change is to avoid living. That doesn’t make change any less terrifying. That doesn’t make change any less hard. But change is a part of nature. It is our way to grow as human beings; our way to experience all that life has to offer. It makes us face things stored up inside us that are hidden by routine. By trying to accept and embrace change we can try and make it easier for ourselves by decreasing the inner turmoil that accompanies the change. It won’t necessarily make the physical act of change easier, but at least it is an attempt to decrease the disruption within us the change can cause.

As Abraham Maslow said “you will either step forward into growth or you will step backward into safety”. Neither is right or wrong.

Sending all the love on whatever path your life takes you today

xo Alexandra

To anyone struggling with mental illness and to all of us struggling to deal with our own minds day in and day out,

I know there isn't anything we can say to take the pain away, but now more than ever we can be there to SUPPORT each other. ALWAYS remember that you are never alone. No matter how terrible things are there are people who care deeply and who understand the pain that comes with grappling with your own thoughts and emotions. The same way families, friends and practitioners support each other through physical illness they CAN support each other through mental and emotional illness. Despite how isolating mental illness can be, there is so much HOPE for each and everyone of us. Never stop fighting.

The hardest thing in the world to feel is blackness. It is a physical sensation that encompasses the entire body. It hides all love, hope, happiness and connection. It replaces it with hopelessness, unworthiness and darkness. In the blackness nothing matters. Everything seems unimportant: life, love, and connection all mean nothing. It all feels like a never ending put of doom and despair.

The blackness encompasses every bodily sensation. It takes over emotions and replaces all good emotions with negative one. It takes over the physical. It is like a shadow gliding over the inside of the whole body. It makes you feel heavy and like you are being slowly crushed by an overwhelming sense of despair. It zaps every ounce of strength and energy in your body. It makes it feel as if there is nothing good in the entire world.

The blackness hides your soul. It hides your essence, the part of yourself that could help you to remember that there is more to life than blackness. By shadowing your essence it makes it so much harder for you to escape this sensation. The essence holds the love, your love and your strength. When that energy is hidden from view it is so much easier for the hopelessness and despair to take over. It makes it so much harder to overcome the blackness.

The blackness acts like a knife, cutting you off from reality. It is hard to connect with people or be present in the blackness because it those moments, it feels like there is nothing else.. It is like drowning in the world, unable to feel or experience anything as it happens around you.

If someone hasn’t experienced this sensation it is difficult to understand it. It does not make logical sense. You can’t just tell someone in the blackness to be happy. There is so much more then the blackness then just happiness or sadness.

It takes a special type of connection with oneself and one’s surroundings to be able to let in any light. It takes a special type of strength to feel the blackness and fight to see the light. It takes a special kind of strength to recognize you are drowning and choose to fight to get to the surface.

This strength cannot be described. It is a feeling. Some days it is accessible and some days it seems that you will never be able to find it again. This strength can allow us to overcome anything in our lives: the worst experiences, the most pain and the most hurtful rejection. This strength is what lets us survive when we know that we can’t on our own. This strength is our best friend. It is always there when we need it. We all have it. I promise. It is often hidden, so hidden that we don’t even know it is there. But just because you can’t feel or see something that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Support is available everyday from friends, family, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, private and public treatment centers, help telephone lines. It may feel like we are alone when living with our own mental health but I PROMISE that no matter how alone you feel you are NEVER truly alone.

Sending all the love and hope and strength xx

The winds of change

It is okay to not be okay.