HOW TO BE OKAY WITH NOT BEING OKAY
"You're just going to have to be okay with not being okay for a while."
This is what a good friend pointed out to me about two weeks ago, and it is something I have resonated with and been writing about and processing since. It was simultaneously comforting to hear the acceptance in her voice as she said it, prompting me to do the same, and scary to think I would have to somehow be okay with not being okay. I knew it was true as soon as she said it, but that doesn't mean it was any less daunting of a task.
I've said before that it is a funny thing to go through something as a counseling student...particularly as a graduate student assistant. Because we work with the basic counseling skills and techniques intensive courses, we are constantly in demo counseling sessions with each other and with professors in front of various classes talking about real life. Last week, I was in demos as the client with a professor in front of a class of 70-80 students, talking about the upcoming deployment in the mornings and observing the students practice the skills in smaller groups in the afternoons. In one session, the professor asked for one practical, measurable thing I could do to move closer to my goal of being okay with not being okay between that moment and the next morning when we would have our final session for the class. I am going to share what I came up with here.
Spending time with Jesus in a set aside quiet time, focusing on what the Bible has to say about whatever I am going through, has been an incredible source of comfort, challenge, and divine support for me in my life. As a result, I set a goal in the session to learn about what the Bible had to teach me about this topic and bring what I found to the final session. In this post, I am going to share some of what God taught me about this season of my life, and I am going to do it unapologetically from a biblical worldview. I don't know what you believe, and I am not trying to persuade anyone of my view in what I write today. If you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus, I encourage you to read anyway and see what practical steps you may glean to help you be okay with not being okay. I don't believe true, long-term and sustainable peace can be attained without a personal relationship with God, so taking those practical steps may not be as full and the peace not as evident, but I see cogntive behavioral therapy, cognitive restructuring, and behavior modification reinforcement techniques in the Bible when I read it. Take from it what you will.
1. Acknowledge that you won't be okay.
Remember, acknowledging that you won't be okay is not the same as being OKAY with it. It's simply recognition that, like it or not, for better or for worse, there will be days when it is simply inevitable.
2. Be intentional
Be intentional about processing your thoughts and emotions about not being okay. When emotion bubbles up inside, embrace it and find a way to express it rather than stuffing - whatever it takes. Draw, paint, talk to someone, write, sing, CRY...whatever works for you. If you don't know what works for you, try different things until you do. Give each avenue of expression the benefit of the doubt until you've tried it a couple of times to rule out the possibility that you simply don't want that coping mechanism to work or don't believe that it could. Give it a fair shot before moving on.
Be intentional about timing, too. At work? Ask yourself if you can pull someone aside to cry with or talk to, or step away for a few minutes. If you can't, set aside a time when you can. Maybe it's taking time in the car before you go home, or once you get home you can find a way to let it out. Keep that scheduled time like a doctor's appointment. Remember, if you don't prioritize self-care, your professional and personal lives will suffer. If you've been able to plow through it all so far without processing what's going on, great, but start the process before that avoidance tactic catches up with you..
3. Fully explore emotions first, and then turn to thanksgiving.
Too often, people do not know how to handle or are uncomfortable with emotion. As a result, they offer positivity with comments like, "It could be worse," or, "Look on the bright side!" These comments sugarcoat the problem and put a bandaid over a festering infection. Worse, they invalidate the person's struggles and can make the person feel guilty for having normal emotions. Instead, we need to be willing to sit in the fullness of our unpleasant emotions to explore them. Only once we have thoroughly acknowledged and worked through our emotions can be move on to thanksgiving and positive reframing of our situation without invalidating or stuffing.
When Jonah is inside the belly of the fish, he shares the depths of his distress: "The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever." After he vents his despair, the tone changes, as shown in Jonah 2:7, "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple."
When we're not okay, we are more likely to remember God and depend on Him. If my priorities have been askew, if I have been relying too much on my husband, on myself, or on anything other than God for satisfaction in life, deployment will serve as a reset year for me to re-organize those priorities and set them straight again.
Jonah recounts his story, reflecting and processing, and praises God for his redemption while still inside the fish. He thanked God before he was brought out of the sea, but after exploring the distress he was in. In the midst of his trouble, he was able to see God and be thankful. Imagine how he would have responded if, in the moment of his greatest despair, someone said, "It could be worse!" and tritely offered a Bible verse!
4. God is not afraid of our emotions and we shouldn't be either.
God is not afraid of emotions. He's the one that gave them to us! So, emotions can't be bad in and of themselves. On the contrary, if emotions were given to us by God, they must be good. Before the world was perverted by sin, God created humanity and called it good - and the full spectrum of human emotion is seen in Jesus' life as well. God isn't afraid of emotions, and we shouldn't be either...even unpleasant ones.
Jonah 4:3-4, " 'Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.'
But the LORD replied, 'Have you any right to be angry?' "
God could have thundered out of the clouds like he did to rouse Job from self-pity, but He didn't. He knows just what each of us needs at any given moment and deals with us accordingly. Here we see God calmly challenge Jonah's view and then let him stew while God went about a plan to prove His point and grow Jonah. God grows us in the most unpleasant of circumstances, in spite of ourselves. He is gentle with Jonah, though unflinchingly steady in His commitment to grow His child. At this point, God causes a vine to grow over Jonah and provide him with shade on an unbearably hot day. Subsequently, God causes a worm to eat the vine and it whithers. He then asks Jonah again if he has a right to be angry - this time about the vine. God ties this in as an analogy to why Jonah should care about the people in Nineveh, since Jonah was angry with God for being compassionate toward an evil people.
5. Pray about and explore/express everything.
Prayer provides an opportunity to vent, process, and let go. No wonder it changes us so much!
Philippians 4:6-7, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Expressing emotion, worries, and experiences is a critical component in the process of surrendering and letting go. It is an ongoing prerequisite, which is why when worries rise up we find we must again surrender what we thought we had already laid down at Jesus' feet.
6. Do not worry.
1 Peter 5:7, "Cast all anxiety on him who cares for you."
Okay, great. Just stop worrying. But how?
--> Replace anxious thoughts with positive ones
The passage from the previous point continues:
Philippians 4:8-9, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."
--> Lean on previously established resources.
Crisis or high stress situations are not the times to take in new information. Your brain is not ready to process new information in these moments, and needs to stabilize a bit again before this is possible. In our darkest times, we can follow these verses. I love that the promise of peace is given twice in these few verses, perhaps as reminders because God knows the mind in crisis does not retain information well. Along the same vein, when you are not in a crisis state or are having a hard time but are more stable, you are better equipped to educate yourself and build up internal and external resources to lean on in the future.
7. Take one day at a time.
God is present with us. He is outside of time, but chooses to continuously meet us in our present.
Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
God responds to us according to our present. Jonah was vomited onto dry land because of his present heart condition, not his past failures or future anger. God seems to be a fan of behavior modification reinforcement techniques. :)
Therefore...
8. Do not compare today to yesterday or an anticipated tomorrow. Do not view today as less capable because of the last day, week, or month. View it simply as Today.
And finally...
9. Remember: these are NOT ways to be okay. If discouraged because you don't feel better after doing these things, you've slipped into trying to be okay. This list is about how to be okay with NOT being okay.
If God says it's okay, who are you to disagree?
Philippians 3:12-15, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you."
"Who, for the prize set before him..."
EVER FORWARD. This is the motto of my husband's battalion.
Anne of Green Gables: "It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"
As a result of this study, in the next "mock" session (who am I kidding, it was real!), I was able to talk through some of the highlights of what I had learned and how to apply them to my life. I was able to say I had moved from a 5 on a scale of 1-10, 1 being anxious and 10 being peaceful, to a 7 1/2. In the moment of doing the study that morning, I was even at an 8! This will go up and down, and I should expect it to. But as I explored and processed what was going on with me, I found that I moved from an emphasis of sadness with hope to the side, to an emphasis on peace. I moved to what could only be described as a "peaceful hurt." It still hurt, but the anxiety was gone. The sadness was there, but peace washed over and through it. The promises of God are real and tangible, and I know that He is faithful at all times.