We generally talk about worthiness as being a process of earning – to become worthy is to achieve a certain standard of “goodness” in order to obtain certain rewards. There are rules that accompany worthiness. While striving to be better and to be worthy of great things is a wonderful thing, sometimes we over-apply rules of worthiness, deciding that we have to be worthy of love, of communicating with a higher power, of becoming successful, and of becoming whole. “Worthiness to receive love, compassion, and the rest is inherent in our being.” (Fishman, 2018)
Many of us spend too much time being hypercritical of ourselves. We are aware of everything we didn’t get done and all of our flaws. We constantly “should” ourselves: “I should have said this”, “I should have been able to do that”, and so on.
“When we take it upon ourselves to pass self-judgment and simply declare, “I am not worthy,” we build a barrier to progress and erect blockades that prevent our moving forward. We are not being fair when we judge ourselves….Worthiness is a process. …Perhaps it is reasonable to conclude that personal measurement or judgment oftentimes may be severe and inaccurate. We may get bogged down as we try to understand and define worthiness. All of us are particularly aware of our shortcomings and weaknesses. Therefore, it is easy for us to feel that we are unworthy.” (Ashton, 1989)
All of us, regardless of what we have done or where we currently find ourselves, are worthy to be better, smarter, more talented, more kind, more whole, more healthy, than we were yesterday. We are all worthy of allowing ourselves to be more whole, regardless of what we have done, or what situation we currently find ourselves in.
You are worthy of love.
We are all worthy of love – of being loved, and biologically it is something we crave. To feel worthy of receiving love from others, we must also love ourselves and feel worthy of caring for ourselves. We can and have written pieces on self-love, so while I am going to move on, remember that self-care is crucial!
This is what we need to understand: We are responsible for putting effort into maintaining the relationships we value, and it is important to take ownership of our mistakes. That being said, we do not have to earn love from those who we care about. And we do not need to carry shame for our imperfections and feel that honest mistakes disqualify us from the love and compassion of others.
We all want to belong. But,“some individuals grow up feeling that love from their caregivers is conditional upon living up to certain expectations, and thus gaining love from their parents may come at a steep price. These perceptions of the conditionality of love may lead to feelings of unworthiness of love even later in life.” (Overup et al., 2013) Those struggling with self-doubt are often involved in less satisfying relationships. Sometimes when we doubt our worthiness of love, we are excessively cautious, and struggle to find or allow ourselves to feel security, even when behavioral realities are secure. (Murray, et al., 2003)
When I refer to security I mean a sense of security within our relationships. Because of our experiences in our family systems, romantic relationships, religious congregations, workplaces and in other environments, we carry with us unspoken rules about what it means to be worthy. Some of these rules may be appropriate, but some of these rules are often shame-based as well. “These rules do not govern only who is worthy of receiving our love. They govern how we view our own worthiness to receive.
These rules are generally not universal. Although some are cultural, most are specific to each of us as individuals. These rules are typically not conscious. You likely don’t walk around with a checklist. And yet, you know your rules. You know your rules because you’ve been living with these rules for as long as you’ve been alive. We learn early in life what we must do to earn love and affection from our parents. We learn what makes us worthy of receiving compassion and care, and what we must do to be worthy of respect.” (Fishman, 2018)
Understanding worthiness and spirituality
Worthiness generally has religious and spiritual connotations. For many who are religious, the goal is to be worthy enough to live in heaven, nirvana, paradise, or moksha. For many, there are certain rites, ceremonies, and/or behaviors or qualities that make us worthy to be in the presence of our higher power. This is certainly not incorrect, and understanding worthiness as a process of growth helps us to have patience with ourselves and achieve our spiritual goals. Having said that, sometimes we impose these standards for worthiness upon things which don’t need them.
For example, as I have researched “worthiness”, one thing that has frequently come up is that many question their worthiness to pray or communicate with their higher power. Many even question whether they are worthy of having a relationship with their higher power. The general consensus I can find across many religions is that while certain privileges require some level of worthiness, our ability to pray to or commune with our higher power is not contingent upon any level of worthiness. Regardless of our situation in life, we are worthy of love, and we are worthy of seeking divine guidance and help.
One Christian’s perspective was this, “So often we hear about what we are supposed to do for God. But the emphasis of the Bible is not so much on what we are supposed to do for God, but rather on what God has done for us. If we can get hold of that in our minds and hearts, it will change our outlook and actions. The more we understand of what God has done for us, the more we will want to do for Him.” (Laurie, 2020)
As Brené Brown puts it, “You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for worthiness. (Brown, 2015) As we become more wholehearted about who we are and what we want, and work to remove self-doubt, we rewrite our personal rules for worthiness. Interestingly, we feel more worthy when we own our stories and don’t try to push tough emotions and experiences out of our stories. Allowing ourselves to feel worthy of good things like, love, compassion, happiness, and healing takes time – because worthiness is a process of growth.
This week, practice owning your story. Practice being more intentional in affirming that you are worthy of good things.
References
Ashton, M. J. (1989). On Being Worthy. Ensign, 20-22.
Brown, B. (2017). Rising strong: How the ability to reset transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. New York: Random House.
Mruk, C. J. (2013). Defining Self-Esteem as a Relationship between Competence and Worthiness: How a Two-Factor Approach Integrates the Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Self-Esteem. Polish Psychological Bulletin,44(2), 157-164. https://doi.org/10.2478/ppb-2013-0018
Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., Griffin, D. W., Bellavia, G., & Rose, P. (2001). The Mismeasure of Love: How Self-Doubt Contaminates Relationship Beliefs. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,27(4), 423-436. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201274004
Øverup, C. S., Brunson, J. A., Steers, M. N., & Acitelli, L. K. (2014). I know I have to earn your love: How the family environment shapes feelings of worthiness of love. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth,22(1), 16-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2013.868362
Aubrey-Dawn Palmer was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico, and she has a bachelor’s degree in family studies from Brigham Young University. She has two younger brothers and is married to her best friend, Richard. In addition to her research on relationships, human attachment, and healthy sexuality, Aubrey-Dawn volunteers with her husband as a teacher for the Strengthening Families Program, is a research director for a counseling center, and works as a home counselor at a residential treatment center.
Written by Hillary Bowler Davis, Marriage and Family Therapist
What does loss feel like to you? Some might describe it as a painful gap, hole, or chasm. Through grief work and healing, the gap generally becomes more manageable as it closes little by little. Except when it doesn’t.
Some losses are ongoing. They raise questions without answers, pain without resolution, and they lack a clearly defined path to closure. To put it simply: “Something is lost, but something is still there” (Boss, 2009, p. 31). Pauline Boss, a therapist and researcher specializing in family stress, named these ambiguous losses, extreme and persistent losses that result in a frozen grief (Boss, 2007). Her theory sparked an entire movement and a field of training for therapists.
Ambiguous loss is generally experienced in one of two ways: a physical absence and psychological presence (leaving without goodbye) or a psychological absence and physical presence (goodbye without leaving) (Boss & Yeats, 2014). A typical loss, while hard in its own way, has a finality to it because of the clear physical and psychological absence (leaving and goodbye).
When there aren’t clear boundaries defining what’s been lost, there’s a lack of tradition to tell how you mourn it (Cacciatore et al., 2008; see Figure 1). Examples include miscarriage, infertility, estrangement, divorce, chronic illness, severe mental health disorders, suicide, dementia, missing persons (soldiers missing in action, accidents or disasters leading to missing bodies, kidnappings), desertion/abandonment, adoptions, immigration and incarceration (Boss, 2007; Boss, 2009; Boss & Yeats, 2014).
As with most things, there is a spectrum of loss experiences. Many everyday losses can also carry enough ambiguity that it disrupts the grief process. For example, a young woman who successfully broke off an unhealthy relationship may struggle with how much she misses her former partner, despite it being for the best. A parent might grapple with their newly empty nest—excited for the opportunities ahead for their adult children but struggling to put a finger on why they feel suddenly unsure of themselves. We constantly navigate transitions and changes where we simultaneously gain and let go, and it leaves us with a mess of emotions.
Some ambiguous losses cause mild distress and avoidance—we don’t talk, think, or acknowledge our feelings about it. Time does heal some wounds, and people are remarkable for their ability to adjust. However, the greater the ambiguity, the worse the symptoms, and the more likely the loss becomes traumatic (Boss, 2007). Symptoms can include anxiety and depression, identity issues, substance abuse and self-harm, and feelings of guilt and helplessness, just to scratch the surface (Boss, 2006).
Imagine experiencing a loss so confusing and so painful that you also seem to lose your relationship with yourself and others around you. Families, couples, and individuals can become completely immobilized, struggling to communicate and make decisions, reconcile differing grief experiences, and carry on with their lives (Boss & Yeats, 2014). The challenge at hand is not only attempting to move forward after a loss, but to move forward, period.
How do you manage grief for a loss that by its very nature seems to have no resolution? How do you change something that won’t change?
Boss proposes that the change happens not because the situation will ever change, but because we can learn to change ourselves, nurturing tolerance for ambiguity and the resilience to live our lives in spite of the ongoing gaps (Boss, 2009). She developed six ways to manage ambiguous loss (Boss, 2006), and the following suggestions are adapted from her work.
To navigate the painful losses and ambiguities in your life, try the following:
Define the loss and find meaning
A critical component for managing ambiguity is making the experience as concrete as possible (Brier, 2008). For example, researchers have found that when parents who experienced a pregnancy loss used a name or label for their loss (even tender nicknames such as “Little One”), it increased their coping (Sawicka, 2017). Defining the loss strips away the first layer of ambiguity to not only make it more tolerable but also to open the door for the rest of your healing process.
Once it is acknowledged and defined, people naturally try to make sense of the loss. However, by its very nature, ambiguous loss defies logic and is therefore difficult to make meaningful.
Your first attempts at making meaning out of the situation might even be negative, such as wondering whether this loss is some kind of a punishment (Boss & Yeats, 2014). Keep going. You can seek a healthier meaning by investigating what this loss really means to you personally. Be gentle with yourself as you move you through the following:
You have experienced a loss.
You have lost _____.
This loss means____.
Meaning making is at the heart of all ambiguous loss work (Boss, 2009). It is just your first step toward healing— consider this your “rough draft” meaning.
Let go of what you can’t control, master what you can
You might be familiar with the idea of choosing to focus on what you can control and letting go what you can’t. But an ambiguous loss pulls back the curtain on something that has always been true: There’s not much that is under your control.
Since you can often do little to restore what is lost, ambiguous loss experts recommend finding a balance through self-mastery: prayer, meditation, creative endeavors, goal setting, exercise, etc.
While these disciplined activities can help you take charge of yourself in moments when everything feels out of control, they are not meant to replace the truth. They must be tempered with acceptance and surrender, which can be cultivated with activities like mindfulness (Boss & Yeats, 2014).
Reclaim old identities, construct new identities
As mentioned before, it can be helpful to find things you can make more concrete to ease the ambiguity, and your identity in relation to what or who was lost is one of these points (Sawicka, 2017). Are you still a mother? A son? A spouse? How has your identity changed with this loss? You can’t have resilience without flexibility and clinging to what was will keep your grief frozen. You have the opportunity to redefine you as someone who lives well, questions and all.
Ride the ups and downs
Without a doubt, dealing with ambiguous losses can leave us feeling ambivalent, having mixed and conflicting emotions (Boss, 2007). It is perfectly normal in any context to have feelings that might contradict one another, but ambiguity tends to polarize these mixed feelings and cause even more confusion and distress (Boss & Kaplan, 2004). On top of this, you might also feel ashamed over specific emotions like anger, envy, and loneliness. When you anticipate ambivalence as part of the process, it can neutralize shame so that other feelings can flow. Remind yourself it is normal to feel strong emotions, refrain from requiring your emotions to make sense, and accept them as they are. They will pass.
The societal push to “get over it” is likely even stronger when the loss doesn’t make sense— if you can’t make it fit into a predefined storyline, it’s tempting to cut it out entirely. In reality, the answer lies in finding a healthy balance between letting go and remembering. In therapy, traditional grief work often directs people toward some final stage of acceptance where the person says goodbye, which is usually not an option with ambiguous loss.
An alternative approach might be especially helpful in cases of ambiguity. Rather than forgetting and moving on, you can deliberately remember and keep whatever or whomever as part of your life (Carr, 1998). Boss’s theory about “revising attachment” walks the line between keeping and letting go, and it requires some decision making on your part. In the case of some ambiguous losses such as divorce and abandonment, you won’t want to keep the person, but you may want to keep an idea or symbol. Perhaps you want to get married again, or you want to break unhealthy cycles in your family. Keep what serves your healing.
Another way to balance keeping and letting go is to turn your focus to what is still certain despite the uncertainty. Your love for the person might be certain. Your happy memories might be certain. Your other remaining relationships might be certain. Your dedication to finding a healthier opportunity or new relationship might be certain. In fact, clarifying roles, rules, and boundaries within our remaining relationships can help ease ambiguity and provide a sure context for the lost person, experience, or idea, to remain alive in our lives (Boss & Yeats, 2014).
Discover new hope
Waiting for closure hinders your ability to heal from an ambiguous loss (Boss & Yeats, 2014). Consider this: What if a sense of justice, peace, and resolution is something you can create? This is the step where you create options for yourself. What rituals, traditions, or other activities can you engage in? Can you join or start an organization? Make a donation? Celebrate a certain day?
Hope is more an action than it is a feeling. Don’t wait for it to happen.
While each of these research-based tips can be considered steps to healing, they are often circular in nature rather than sequential, meaning that healing continues when the steps begin again (Boss & Yeats, 2014). Odds are that once you have worked through the previous steps, your definition and meaning of the loss will change. Apply these again and again until you are living well.
Lean into the ambiguity by engaging with, rather than avoiding, your complicated sense of loss. You can work through the first few steps above through journaling or by speaking up: talk to your spouse, a family member, or friend, to name the loss and begin the work of meaning making. Many of these losses are traumatic. There is no shame in seeking professional help as you work through these steps to develop hope and resilience in the face of all types of losses.
References
Boss, P. (2006). Loss, trauma, and resilience: Therapeutic work with ambiguous loss. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Boss, P., & Kaplan, L. (2004). Ambiguous loss and ambivalence when a parent has dementia. In K. Pillemer & K. Luescher (Eds.), Intergenerational ambivalences: New perspectives on parent-child relations in later life (pp. 207-224). Oxford, UK: Els
Boss, P. (2007). Ambiguous loss theory: Challenges for scholars and practitioners. Family Relations, 56(2), 105-111.
Boss, P. (2009). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Harvard University Press.
Boss, P., & Yeats, J. R. (2014). Ambiguous loss: A complicated type of grief when loved ones disappear. Bereavement Care, 33(2), 63-69.
Brier, N. (2008). Grief following miscarriage: a comprehensive review of the literature. Journal of Women’s Health, 17(3), 451-464.
Cacciatore, J., DeFrain, J., & Jones, K. L. (2008). When a baby dies: Ambiguity and stillbirth. Marriage & Family Review, 44(4), 439-454.
Carr, A. (1998). Michael White’s narrative therapy. Contemporary Family Therapy, 20(4), 485-503.
Sawicka, M. (2017). Searching for a narrative of loss: interactional ordering of ambiguous grief. Symbolic Interaction, 40(2), 229-246.
Hillary Bowler Davis was born and raised in Riverton, Utah. After starting her career in writing and marketing, she took a leap of faith to study to become a therapist. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and works as an associate therapist in the Salt Lake Valley with individuals, couples, and families. Hillary is passionate about personal growth and healthy relationships and gets most excited about digging into life’s hard questions. Her next big adventure is building a family with her husband.
Hearing the word may make you uncomfortable but we need to talk about it.
Scratch that, we HAVE to talk about it.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the world for those between ages 15-24 (SAVE, 2020) and the tenth leading cause of death in the United States for all ages. This means that the majority of people will in some way be touched by suicide in their lives. Yet, many are unsure of how to talk about suicide or how to get help if they become suicidal.
Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels
Myths and Facts
Myth #1: Talking about suicide causes suicide
Fact: Talking about suicide opens the conversation and can be a preventative measure. Having these sometimes difficult conversations allows the person struggling to talk about what they are going through and can help them to see things from an outside perspective. It’s okay to ask questions and to be specific about those questions. It’s okay to share your own experiences with suicide or suicidality because sharing helps us know we’re not alone, and helps to fight shame and stigma. (Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, 2019)
Myth #2: People who are suicidal want their life to end
Fact: People who are suicidal usually don’t want to end their lives, rather they want to end their suffering. They are often in such a dark, hopeless place that they feel there is no way to end their suffering other than by taking their own life. (Fuller, 2018)
Myth #3: Suicide only affects those who have a mental disorder(s)
Fact: While mental disorders can be a risk factor for suicide, that does not mean that everyone that has one has suicidal thoughts, ideation etc. You also do not have to have a mental illness to feel suicidal. Often there are other stressors such as relationship problems, abuse, illness, crisis, etc. that can lead to suicide. (Fuller, 2018)
Myth #4: Most suicides happen suddenly
Fact: Rarely does suicide happen suddenly. Usually the person who is suicidal shows warning signs. These signs are often shown to those who are closest to them, and those people may not recognize that these are warning signs. It’s important to know the signs so that we can help those who may be at risk for suicide. (Fuller, 2018)
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
What we need to change when we talk about suicide
Using the Word – We need to use the word suicide rather than beating around the bush or using other terms. It’s okay to say the word suicide, and it’s okay to say that you’re suicidal. It’s important that we use the word because the more that we talk about it, the more we can end the stigma around it. (Roe, 2019)
Change the Language – We need to be careful about what words we use when discussing suicide. We partitcularly need to stop using phrases like, “Successfully committed suicide,” or, “Failed suicide attempt”. Words like “successful” and “failed” can carry other meanings, some with positive implications, like “successful”, or negative, like “committed”, which makes it sounds like a crime has taken place. Rather, we should use phrases like, “Died by suicide,” because it’s more accurate and less emotionally charged. It is important that we talk about suicide respectfully because we are all human and vulnerable. (Roe, 2019)
1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help – You do not have to face this alone. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or thinking about taking your own life, PLEASE reach out to someone you trust. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255, or you can chat online at this link here. If you feel more comfortable texting, you can text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. If you are part of the LGBTQ Community, you can call the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or visit their website for options to chat and text. (LGB youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth.) (The Trevor Project, 2017)
2. Make a safety plan – Having a plan in place for when you are in a suicidal mindset can take away some of the pressure of having to think critically when you are in a state of overwhelm.
What you might include in your plan:
Warning signs to watch for (thoughts, images, mood, situations, behavior, etc., that indicate a crisis might be happening)
Ideas for how to help yourself (self-soothing techniques, positive distractions, etc.)
People you can ask for help (include names and contact information)
Ideas for how you can make your environment safe for you
A list of things that are important to you and/or worth living for
3. Remember, feelings are temporary – No matter how hopeless things may seem, you are wanted and needed on this earth. Do not make permanent decisions based on temporary feelings. You can and will get through this.
1. Watch for signs – If your friend is feeling suicidal, it may be difficult for them to reach out and ask for help. Here are some signs to look for that can help you recognize that they may be struggling:
Verbal Signs
Talking about wanting to die or kill themselves
Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live
Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain
Talking about being a burden to others
Behavioral Signs
Increased drug or alcohol abuse or relapsing after being in recovery
Looking for a way to kill themselves, like searching online, buying a gun, stockpiling pills
Unexplained anger, aggression and irritability; behaving recklessly
Sudden interest or disinterest in religion
Giving away prized possessions
Getting personal affairs in order
Sleeping too little or too much
Withdrawing or isolating themselves
Extreme mood swings
Previous suicide attempts
Situational Signs
Fired of expelled from school
Unwanted move
Loss of major relationship
Death of someone by suicide
Diagnosis of serious or terminal illness
Other life events or changes
2. Ask, and then listen with empathy – It’s important that you ask the question directly–are you thinking about killing yourself? Are you suicidal? Do you have a suicide plan? It may come as a natural flow of conversation or you may just have to ask out of the blue. When you ask, make sure it is in a private setting, and give them the time that they need to talk. However they respond, listen with empathy and avoid reacting with shame or judgment. Don’t feel like you have to present a solution or fix it for them right then and there. Just let them know that you care about and are there for them.
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
3. Take their thoughts and feelings seriously – Remember, when someone says they are suicidal, it’s important to believe them and not assume they are just being dramatic or seeking attention. Regardless of whether or not you feel your friend’s situation is truly as hopeless as they feel, if someone is thinking or talking about suicide, you should always take them seriously.
4. Get help – Encourage your friend to seek help, and don’t promise to keep their struggles a secret. Neither of you has to bear this burden alone. Help your friend identify others who can also be a part of their support system and help them get through this difficult time.
5. Know what resources are available – Your friend may be overwhelmed and not know where to go to get help. If you are on a college campus, find their counseling and psychological services as well as their after-hours line. If your friend is an immediate danger to themselves, call 9-1-1. Do a quick Google search or refer to the previous section about help lines you can contact or direct them to. If your friend protests and gets upset that you have contacted someone, don’t worry. It’s ALWAYS better to have an angry, alive friend.
Suicide is painful and tragic, and also one of the only causes of death that is 100% preventable. We have the power to stop suicide by talking about it, fighting shame and stigma, and by empathizing with and being there for one another. For the sake of ourselves, and our loved ones, we HAVE to change the conversation.
Share one of the facts about suicide from this article on social media or with a loved one.
Anasteece Smith is a Utah native who is now living it up as a Texas girl. She is the oldest of seven children and married her sweetheart in 2018 who happened to have her same last name. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Life. In her free time, Anasteece likes to read, paint, swim, hike, camp, hammock, and do graphic design. She is passionate about mental health, healthy sexuality, family resilience, feminism, religion, and research on shame, vulnerability, and perfectionism.
Rian Nicole Gordon is from Orem, Utah, and graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Life and Human Development. She has been married to her best friend Mark for five years, and they have two beautiful children, one boy and one girl. Apart from her full-time job as a stay-at-home mom, she works for The Dibble Institute, which specializes in relationship education for youth.
You are not alone. We are living in unprecedented times, and that tends to stress us out. A lot of the outlets that we may normally use to cope with our stress have been restricted or taken away and that makes it harder to maintain fluctuating levels of stress.
Let’s talk about some ways you can better manage your stress, because, as a professor of mine would so lovingly remind me, “stress management is life management.”
Prioritize
When we’re stressed, it can be really hard to figure out what we need to do and how to accomplish it. What things absolutely have to get done and what things can wait? There is a wide variety of resources out there to help answer this question, such as the Covey Quadrant Method, the prioritized to-do list, Productivity Boot Camp, etc. My personal favorite is the sticky note method, which essentially gives you a visual representation of what you’ve accomplished.
The sticky note method goes like this (Wheeler, 2019):
Get a pad of sticky notes
Write down what you need to get done, one task per sticky note
Make sure that when you write the task you are specific. For example, “spend 30 minutes trimming the bushes” instead of “yard work”
Once you have the tasks you need to get done written out, take the sticky notes and put them somewhere you can see them in order from most important to least important
When you finish a task, take the sticky note off and throw it away
If you don’t finish all of the tasks by the end of the day, that’s okay! Rarely do we finish everything we intend to accomplish all in one sitting. Leave the sticky notes up and then keep working on them the next day.
We have talked a lot about self-care here at the Healthy Humans Project, and that’s because it is so important! Being stressed out all the time often leaves us feeling like we don’t have the time or energy to take care of ourselves, but it’s absolutely vital that we do. It may seem more important to get those dishes done or disinfect the high-touch services for the third time this week, but this will ultimately leave you feeling tired and even more exhausted than before. Make the time each day to take care of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to take three hours for self-care! Your self-care is going to look different depending on your current level of stress, and on your needs for that day (Gordon, 2019). One day it may be taking 20 minutes to watch an episode of your favorite show, doing a face mask, or even taking a nap. Other days you’ll have more time to take that bubble bath or watch that movie on your watch list. What matters is that you are taking the time to take care of yourself.
Exercise
Exercise is one of the best forms of stress relief. The type of exercise you choose doesn’t really matter, what matters that you move your body on a daily basis. Find what makes you feel good! Moving your body can mean dancing in the kitchen to blasting music, going for a run, doing a workout video from YouTube, or going to the gym (if, you know, that’s an option). Exercise has many benefits for stress. When you exercise your body naturally releases endorphins (sometimes known as a runner’s high), which makes you feel happier. When you exercise consistently it can boost your mood and help with mild depression and anxiety (Exercise and Stress, 2018).
Additionally, exercise is great for helping ease the body’s response to stress. Our bodies have two major nervous systems that govern a wide variety of physiological responses, known as the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous systems. The parasympathetic system is commonly referred to as the “rest and digest” system, and the sympathetic as the fight, flight or freeze response. When we are stressed, our body triggers the sympathetic nervous system, causing muscle tension, a racing heart, and adrenaline release throughout the body to prepare for fight, flight or freeze. As we exercise, our body is able to use this stress response to actually benefit our body by building muscle and strengthening our cardiovascular system. It also helps to regulate our body’s stress response. Check out this video here, and this one here if you would like to learn more.
Sleep
Stress can impact our ability to sleep, which is problematic because we also need sleep to help combat stress! While we sleep, our bodies do maintenance to repair and heal our bodies, as well as helping with memory consolidation (Stress and Sleep, 2013). When we are stressed, we often don’t get enough sleep, leaving us tired or even more stressed (anyone else stress how much sleep they aren’t getting??). Most often, stress leaves us unable to get high-quality sleep, which then affects our mood and our ability to cope with life.
We need to make sure that we are getting at least 8 hours of sleep at night regardless of age (kids, babies and teens are in the group that needs more than that). Thankfully, there are some things we can do to help us sleep better. First, establish a routine around bedtime. For example, take a shower, brush your teeth, read for 30 minutes, and then go to sleep. Sticking to a routine signals to the body that it is time to go to sleep. Second, turn off electronics two hours before bedtime. Blue light is notoriously known for interfering with the ability to sleep. Or, if you have to use a device, switch it to night mode where it turns down how much blue light your screen emits. Third, save the bed for sleeping and sex with your partner. The less we do in bed, the more the brain will associate it with sleeping, making it easier to actually get sleep. (How to Sleep Better, 2020)
Mindfulness—Breathing
Mindfulness and its various practices have endless benefits. But I want to talk specifically about breathing because it’s one of the most underrated stress management techniques. As we all know, we have to breathe in order to survive. But our breathing has a greater effect on our bodies than we sometimes realize. Our breathing has the ability to help calm the sympathetic nervous system (remember that fight, flight, freeze response?) by lowering our heart rate, relaxing our muscles, and helping us get back to our thinking brain.
Here is an easy breathing technique you can try, taught by LMFT Tammy Hill:
Close your eyes and sit comfortably
Inhale for three counts
Hold at the top for three counts
Exhale for three counts
Repeat as needed
Connect
“We are neurobiologically hardwired for connection with other people. In the absence of connection, love, and belonging, there is always suffering.”– Brené Brown, Netflix Special The Call to Courage
We are hardwired for connection, and that connection helps us to deal with our stress. We need other people to talk to, to vent to, to support, and to support us. Being around others and interacting with others helps to ease the stress of everyday life. When we feel we have people we can turn to, or know that we have people supporting us, we can get through difficult times because we know we are loved regardless of our personal successes or failures. While it may not be possible to connect with people in person right now, we can video chat, text, call, write letters, etc. to keep connected with others.
For me personally, it has been so hard to not have in-person interaction with people outside of my spouse. Yes, I have been able to video chat and text, but it’s not the same as sitting down with friends at a restaurant or participating in in-person church services. It feels isolating to sit behind a screen and not be able to give someone a hug or be there for them when it feels like everything is falling apart for them or to be able to celebrate a graduation or marriage. Just know that if you are struggling too, you are not alone.
Gratitude
Sometimes in the mounds of stress, it’s easy to forget that there is more to life than just getting our to-do list done. Being grateful doesn’t take a lot of time,. It can simply be saying, “Today I am grateful to be alive,” or “I’m grateful that I got out of bed today.” It can be sitting down at the end of the day and writing down three things you’re grateful for in a journal. These few moments may seem insignificant, but they can literally re-wire our brains. Research has found that people who keep a gratitude journal see a decline in perceived stress in as little as two weeks, meaning that when we are grateful we see things more as they truly are rather than just what we are stressed about (UC Davis Health, 2015). As we look for things to be grateful for, our perspective shifts and it makes it easier to cope with our day-to-day lives. So, right now, pause to write down three things you’re grateful for, send a text saying thank you to someone, and remember that life won’t always be like this!
Finally, when we are stressed, one of the most important things we can do is to remember to have compassion for ourselves. Often, we won’t get everything done that we would like to, and that’s okay! Some days we won’t get anything done because stress, mental health etc. require us to step back and take a do-nothing day to take care of ourselves. When those days and moments come, it’s imperative that we have compassion for ourselves. It’s okay to step back and say, “I’m struggling right now and so are others. I can be mindful of my emotions and acknowledge them without being consumed by them. I can be kind and understanding to myself regardless of whether I got everything done that I would have liked.” Self-compassion is a powerful principle! If you’d like to learn more about it, I would recommend checking this Ted Talk by self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff.
Don’t let your stress get the best of you. Take things a day at a time, don’t give up, and be kind to yourself. We’re all figuring this out, and we’ll make it through together!
Anasteece Smith is a Utah native who is now living it up as a Texas girl. She is the oldest of seven children and married her sweetheart in 2018 who happened to have her same last name. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Life. In her free time, Anasteece likes to read, paint, swim, hike, camp, hammock, and do graphic design. She is passionate about mental health, healthy sexuality, family resilience, feminism, religion, and research on shame, vulnerability, and perfectionism.
This week, practice owning your story. Practice being more intentional in affirming that you are worthy of good things.
Hillary Bowler Davis was born and raised in Riverton, Utah. After starting her career in writing and marketing, she took a leap of faith to study to become a therapist. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and works as an associate therapist in the Salt Lake Valley with individuals, couples, and families. Hillary is passionate about personal growth and healthy relationships and gets most excited about digging into life’s hard questions. Her next big adventure is building a family with her husband.
