You gotta go there to come back!

I’m feeling a little lost today. I like to think I have the answers, and quite often I do. 

However, today I’m feeling a little lost.

I have the solution to so many problems, but I’m struggling to share it.

I’m too soft and I’m too abrupt, I struggle with the middle ground.

I trust everyone, accept all help.  There’s always advice and it’s always good, but I can’t find the central way.

I want to curl up and hide but I can’t. I know that won’t help.

Today I’m feeling a little lost.

It’s hard to trust and just let go, there’s fear out there and it’s all mine.

I need to pick myself and get on. Listen to myself and what I say.

That’ll help me on my way.

I’m a little lost today.

I wrote the poem on a difficult morning.  Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you think you know.  How much you think you know about mental health. How much you think you know about how to manage it.  It’s hard!

You can hear your own words echo around your head.  You can hear your wife’s voice in your head.  You can hear your mentors voice running around your head.  You can look at social media and there are any number of well-meaning posts all trying to help.  Like this one!

It can be hard to pull yourself out of your funk.

The advice just seems to compound what you are already feeling and it’s hard not to focus on the problem which just multiplies the problem. There I’ve written the word twice in one sentence, never do that! The problem just got bigger.

Maybe the first step is to recognise where you are.  You have got to be here to come back from this place.  It may not be right now, but you will come back.  You have to.  That’s why its OK as they say, not to be OK.  What’s not OK is to settle for this feeling.  It is OK to wallow for a while, I think wallowing for a while is totally acceptable.  What’s important is not to spend too long wallowing. 

And recognise that thought as well.

Sickness is just the body or the mind being out of balance and the best way to be rid of sickness is to be sick of it and say to yourself enough.  That can be hard too.

On that morning the poem just wrote itself.  All I did was hold the pen, albeit a metaphorical pen, but I was just a conduit for the words.  That helped. Then I went and found my to do list and did a few tasks on there.  Simple Ones, that helped too!  Then I tackled a task I knew needed attention that I had avoided, making a mental note not to get bogged down.  That helped too.  It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t back off.  That helped too.  And then I thought I might be able to help someone else and wrote this blog.  That helped a lot.

Helping other people is an awesome way to help yourself.  Like anything though, when you’re feeling a little lost the most important thing is to do something, something constructive and positive.

Or even better, try to have a process in place that that stops you from getting to low in the first place.  In the past my anxiety in these situations would have bogged me down for days.  Not anymore.

I have a system, a morning routine that helps me spiritually, physically, mentally and helps me grow at the same time.  As I’ve proved today, its not fool proof, but it certainly raises the baseline and for me that essential.

Find out more in the next few blogs.

For now though, love…